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Steam's Big Picture Mode beta starts Monday Sep 10th [out now]

First impressions:
- Can hardly hear the sounds if they're there
- Needs an option to specify resolution beyond 720p/1080p
- Better than the Xbox dashboard
 
Why the change to blue? For the home theater feeling? Steam's more serious no nonsense colors should've been kept for this IMO
 
First impressions:
- Can hardly hear the sounds if they're there
- Needs an option to specify resolution beyond 720p/1080p
- Better than the Xbox dashboard

Turn your sound up? It's super loud on my setup and I have the volume fairly low right now.
 

When it comes to the buggy categories menu, sure. But when it comes to the omission of D-pad navigation? Having a really hard time believing that's a bug. A beta is supposed to be feature-complete, so it sure seems to me like they simply left that very important feature out.
 
Client needs to show games in a grid not in a row in the library. Lots of wasted space. Client also needs to support non TV resolutions for us monitor folk as well. Blur is bad. Also would like to get rid of the crap "Here's some garbage for you to buy 'for you" notification.
 
Store search is broken.

Even though the browser stinks for regular sites, it is BLAZING fast on the valve sites like your community profile page.
 
There really needs to be a way to get non-360 pads working. I'm using x360ce to emulate one and Steam just doesn't recognize my pad at all. This setup works in 95% of my other 360-compatible games so I figure something is up on Valve's end.

Has anyone gotten this to work?
 
There's obviously still a lot of work to be done as the new Steam Community features (Game hubs etc.) are nowhere to be seen.
 
Just opted into the beta and the button showed up right away. Working fine with keyboard and mouse. Haven't tried it with a controller yet.
 
This is worthless unless every game on steam also has a big picture UI mode. Most PC games out there are unplayable on a TV because the UIs and text are so small.

The beauty of PC gaming is that you can have games perfectly suited to being used on a TV with a controller at the exact same time as having a hardcore sim that could in no way ever be played with a controller.
 
games need more info one page, way too many submenu's to get game stats/achievements, info on game and browsing screenshots, need to take a leaf out of XBMC.
 
RT being the equivalent of Back when using the browser will take a bit of getting used to.

I love that the Xbox guide button opens the Steam overlay in-game.
 
There really needs to be a way to get non-360 pads working. I'm using x360ce to emulate one and Steam just doesn't recognize my pad at all. This setup works in 95% of my other 360-compatible games so I figure something is up on Valve's end.

Has anyone gotten this to work?
Have you tried it with a normal generic gamepad configuration, no special drivers? (assuming you have a Logitech or something)
 
So does this fix the tiny non-scaling font issues that PC games suffer from on TVs? If it doesn't, I don't see how this is all that great- I love PC games on my TV but it doesn't work unless they are coded for it. I was hoping this would be a fix for that...
If this is just a steam interface streamlined for a TV that's pretty underwhelming
 
When it comes to the buggy categories menu, sure. But when it comes to the omission of D-pad navigation? Having a really hard time believing that's a bug. A beta is supposed to be feature-complete, so it sure seems to me like they simply left that very important feature out.

Weird how they've been working on BPM for over a year, and they somehow miss the (obvious) addition of D-pad support for navigating menus. Perhaps they ran into trouble trying to implementing it, but in any case it should've been a high priority from the start imo. I'm sure they'll add it eventually though.
 
There really needs to be a way to get non-360 pads working. I'm using x360ce to emulate one and Steam just doesn't recognize my pad at all. This setup works in 95% of my other 360-compatible games so I figure something is up on Valve's end.

Has anyone gotten this to work?

Works 100% using a DS3 emulating a 360 controller through MotioninJoy.
 
Anybody know if there's a command line parameter that you can add to a Steam shortcut? Trying to make a Windows 8 tile that opens directly into BigPictureMode. :p
 
The browser sucks. It's really slow. Like 3DS slow.

lol what? No it's not. It's essentially the same speed as Chrome. Really fast. The problems it seems to have though are related to text fields. You can't tab into the next field, so when signing into Giantbomb for example getting into the password field required a little bit of work. The zooming with the right stick is kind of weird too though that is probably because i'm using a PS3 controller that is emulating as a 360.
 
There's some bugs (store search is borked, custom images doesn't work or are wrong, no D-pad support) but overall I'm really very impressed.
 
Really amazed by how smooth this all works without any loading, makes me wonder why the normal client acts so sluggish at times.

Same goes for the browser, page rendering is as fast as Chrome and I already feel more at home in it after 5min usage than in the PS3 browser after years.
 
Anybody know if there's a command line parameter that you can add to a Steam shortcut? Trying to make a Windows 8 tile that opens directly into BigPictureMode. :p
I think someone said pressing the guide button immediately opened big picture mode (presumably from Steam), so maybe you can get to that after autolaunching Steam. Not as nice, but it could be a workaround for now if that's how it works.

So cool that the xbox middle button opens up Big picture mode when your in regular steam.

This is so smooth


yep
Is there punctuation on the gamepad keyboard? :P
 
So does this fix the tiny non-scaling font issues that PC games suffer from on TVs? If it doesn't, I don't see how this is all that great- I love PC games on my TV but it doesn't work unless they are coded for it. I was hoping this would be a fix for that...
If this is just a steam interface streamlined for a TV that's pretty underwhelming

They're not magicians. And I don't know of the problem you're referring to since nearly every game these days is a console port with narrow FOVs and huge, overscan-safe HUDs.
 
lol what? No it's not. It's essentially the same speed as Chrome. Really fast. The problems it seems to have though are related to text fields. You can't tab into the next field, so when signing into Giantbomb for example getting into the password field required a little bit of work. The zooming with the right stick is kind of weird too though that is probably because i'm using a PS3 controller that is emulating as a 360.

Strange. Alt tabbing between the two, my Firefox loads this Gaf thread instantaneously except for the pictures and sometimes the ads. Steam takes about ~5 seconds as all the posts, pictures, ads, formatting is loaded in.
 
I want Valve to make a Windows controller. Something akin to what the 360 pad is with the chatpad attached. It's such a great idea but for the current use. the fan drivers, while much appreciated, are very makeshift. It's very handy to have a real manner of typing and a toggle for mouse control without swapping hardware.

Shame Microsoft can't be assed to do anything proper for PC gaming anymore, even with their own hardware.
 
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Is there still no bandwidth limiter in steam? I feel it's been years since it's been promised. The thing hogs my memory and bandwidth when updating games.
 
Loving this. I get better performance in games since my TV is only 720p, and it's seriously been so long since I gamed on my couch that I forgot how comfortable it is. Of course I'll play competitve FPS games on my PC though.
 
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