Valve starts beta sign-ups for Steam's In-Home Streaming feature

Valve has started the beta registrations for one of the new features that will be making its way to the Steam client as well as SteamOS—In-Home Streaming. Those interested can register by joining the Steam Group . Of the group’s members, beta participants will be randomly selected, so don’t worry if you don’t get an invitation to the beta immediately . Valve has stated that the service will go live for beta testers “later this year”.

In-Home Streaming is one of the key features of the upcoming SteamOS. The other features are music, TV and movies and family sharing. With In-Home Streaming, you will be able to stream games from your PC to any device running on SteamOS or the Steam client wirelessly. Steam will also act as a media hub of sorts and will allow you to access your content wirelessly, much like In-Home Streaming.

Will likely work well with Big Picture mode

The company earlier revealed that SteamOS will be based on Linux. It will be released as a free stand-alone operating system, which essentially means that users can download and install it like they do with any other Linux distribution.

The company claims that it has achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing. It is now working on audio performance and reducing input latency at the OS level, thus giving a better overall gaming experience. A few developers also seem to be working with Valve to bring their games to the new OS.