f13.net

I was carping in the console thread about wanting to find a way to watch twitch on my tv. I'm betting that someone here can confirm or deny some of the ideas I've started to research. Clearly stated, my goal is to watch dota 2 on my living room TV. The less hassle the better, and if its cheap enough to put on my xmas list that would be awesome. Heres what I've looked into so far:

PS4/Xbone - PS4 talks alot about how easy it is to share things on twitch, I've not heard specifically that its really easy to watch streams. Anyone that has one already can confirm/deny?

HTPC - Would definitely work the best, but would also be the most expensive. I also dont see myself getting any extra utility (Steam big screen?) out of it. I wish steambox was out already.

Chromecast - The price seems awesome, but my googling indicates that twitch is not supported at this time. Some posts that cause my eyes to glaze over had something that looked like workarounds. Does anyone have this and could comment?

AppleTV - Again, twitch not supported at this time. However, people seem to have success by pairing it to their ipad or whatever and accessing from that.

??? - What totally obvious thing that does this have I completely overlooked?

A chromecast can display a chrome browser window, I have streamed Twitch.

Fucking Google needs to hurry up and open the api.

If you have a laptop you can probably hook it up to your TV with just a cable and possibly an adapter.

I've heard some people have been pc gaming on their tv Since 2003.

Really ? How do they like it ?  :ye_gods:

Don't encourage him :oh_i_see:

It makes ducks excited.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40386/Macros/facepalm3.jpg)

I have a roku and there is an "unofficial" twitch.tv channel I watch frequently.

How does this work? Are you happy with the quality? Is it functionally any different than watching on your pc/laptop?

If you own a roku you can add private channels through a password page on roku's site.  Then your roku will be updated with the channel info.  Basically it's like the website, though it doesn't really have a search functionality and only displays like the top 50 games being played, so finding that one guy playing "pokemon adventures, the legend of pika" isn't really a thing.  It's just some program some guy made to take twitch channels and stream through a roku feed.

I haven't noticed any difference in quality though.  If twitch is lagging and stuttering, you'll get roughly the same quality through roku, though instead of pausing you get repeated signals or echo broadcastings for a second or two.

I'm happy with the quality, but if I want to see detail the tv screen is a bit too far away, but if I want to have background noise and there's an entertaining streamer, say OddOne, I'll put it up on through the roku.

 :why_so_serious:

I ended up going with a chromecast. I'm very satisfied so far. I've been streaming MLG columbus all weekend to my tv from a macbook pro, and the quality is outstanding - I think a large part of that is due to the MLG streams being higher quality then your average twitch stream. If anyone is on the fence about a chromecast, I'd highly recommend it.