Valve's latest Steam client beta brings open codec streaming to its handheld. The update adds AV1 video streaming support for Steam Remote Play on the Steam Deck, letting users replace proprietary codecs like H.264 and H.265 with the royalty-free format developed by the Alliance for Open Media. AV1 streaming currently requires the experimental SteamRT3 (Steam Runtime 3) client, Valve's newer container-based runtime environment for Linux gaming.
The same beta also enables HDR streaming for the Steam Deck OLED model specifically. Players streaming games from a host PC can now preserve high dynamic range output on the OLED's display, which has supported HDR locally since its launch but lacked it during Remote Play sessions until now.
AV1 hardware decoding has been available on the Steam Deck's Van Gogh APU since Mesa gained support for it, but Valve had not wired it into the streaming pipeline until this beta. Using AV1 over H.264 or H.265 should deliver better image quality at the same bitrate, or comparable quality at lower bandwidth, a meaningful improvement for streaming over Wi-Fi or across networks. Full details and minor bug fixes are listed in the release notes.
