It's pretty damn cool. Here's a short video of me playing games on my HTPC streamed from my gaming PC.

Why not just play them on your HTPC? Double download and storage requirements (on two systems) I guess, but just wondering... Plus, what about latency?

Cause he can . WHY WHY WHY I ask every time I go for a drive.

Because my HTPC is way underpowered for playing any video game on. I think another angle Valve is shooting for here is streaming windows games from your PC to your linux based steambox. I didn't have much luck using my ultrabook over wifi but after reading it sounds like 5Ghz wifi is a must for that to work because of interference.

Latency playing on the HTPC isn't too bad actually. I was trying hard to notice it and it's BARELY there.

I spent last night integrating Steam into Media Center so I can launch it from there and when I exit Steam MCE pops back up.

I just started buying pieces for my own Steam Box to put in the living room. Initially I thought about making it a light weight machine, and having it stream from my workstation. But now I've ended up with a pretty high-end gaming rig. My workstation can still crush it with brute CPU power, but I think this new machine will have some finesse.

I should make a thread listing the parts...

Here's some new videos I made showing more footage of games that work pretty well and my integration with WMC.

http://youtu.be/roVJRi8FDls
http://youtu.be/VlFC1piEyKI
http://youtu.be/S5IESXgA3bU

In the first video you mention that the integrated video can't even display the Steam Big Picture interface at 720p. What's your built-in video?

So let me get this straight. You are running NFS on the gaming machine and streaming it to your htpc which is running WMC and playing on the big screen. Are you using a keyboard /mouse or a controller.

I should say the graphics can't render Big Picture at 1080p well at all but 720p is reasonable good thou not completely buttery smooth. At 1080p there is lots of studering, Steam warns you when trying to set big Picture to that resolution. The desktop is set at 1080p thou. That startup splash screen isn't completely smooth even on 720p. The system is an i3-2100T (low power SandyBridge) with Intel 2000(?) integrated video.

Plus I run my WHS in a VM on that box that handles all my storage needs, offsite backup (bitcasa) and home automation (HouseLinc). The WMC side of things does all my Live TV/DVR functions (HD Prime), media playback, DVD and Bluray.

This is why I find the streaming so cool, allows me to play my games on it even thou it's in no way a gaming PC.

Ya, all the real processing is happening on my game PC. I can use a controller or keyboard on the HTPC to control it.

What is your network speed between your main gaming machine and your HTPC?

Yeah, the Sandy Bridge i3 has HD 2000 video integrated.

Since I don't know what video card I'm getting, and I want to measure the power draw of the system before settling on it, I was going to run my new machine with the HD 4600 for a bit. I was hoping the performance wouldn't be that bad--at least for media playback.

HD4600 should do media playback just fine.

All the Intel integrated video going back to Clarkdale I believe are more than adequate for up to bluray playback.