Steam in-home streaming beta goes live

Invites sent out to partners and community for free streaming service.

Valve has begun sending out beta invites for its in-home streaming service, with users posting early impressions on the community pages.

As with any beta, results are hit and miss at this early stage.

"Once everything was working, I spent some time playing the Bioshock Infinite DLC this evening," wrote user jhouk00. "Great to be able to leave the laptop unplugged as I played since all the heavy lifting was being done on the desktop.

"However, the controls were somewhat stuttery as I played. Maybe 5% of the time when I would try to move the keypress didn't make it to the host computer and 1% of the time the keypress got stuck down and I'd keep moving in the same direction even after I lifted my finger up.

In-home streaming is free and allows users to stream games from one computer to the next, including those hooked-up to the TV. The feature was originally announced in September as part of the SteamOS reveal.

During its Steam Dev Days event this week, Valve has shown off a tweaked Steam Machines controller, and revealed that it would eventually like to make Greenlight "go away".