Back when Valve first announced SteamOS, it said that users could be ready to either play PC games by itself Steam Machines hardware or stream games from another PC in the home to the tv. While Steam Machines won’t go on sale until next year, Valve is now letting interested users register for the Steam In-Home Streaming beta.

Valve recently unveiled the community for the Steam In-Home Streaming beta. You’re required to sign up for this Steam Group on the way to perform the In-Home Streaming beta as participants may be chosen at random from the crowd later this year.

While the Steam Group doesn’t divulge any details as how Steam’s In-Home Streaming works, screen caps of the beta client were uncovered by Polygon. It appears like a gorgeous standard set-up where users can stream gameplay from any connected devices on their local network. It also has a lot of settings to assist improve performance, from limiting bandwidth and framerate to disabling hardware acceleration.

As for the alternative Steam OS projects, Valve should be soon be shipping out 300 Steam Machines to those that won a raffle to check the company’s beta hardware. These machines could be powerful enough to play PC games on a television without the desire for streaming. They are able to, however, be used to stream content out of your main gaming PC. If truth be told, some Steam Machines would be marketed as cheap streaming boxes on your main PC.