Steam Audio Output / Watching Videos on Chrome

[sunkenau]

Heya everyone,

firstly let me start with what the issue is.....

I am a big fan of steam, I mean almost all of the games I play are on steam, so its my go to place for all my gaming needs at the moment. My issue is that if I want to play something on steam and my girlfriend or anyone else who is over wants to watch something on my TV (3rd Monitor), I cant really put anything on from my browser due to the fact that both my browser (chrome) and pretty much any steam game has no option for audio output.

I have headphones which I wear when I play games and I have an Pioneer surround sound system as a secondary audio output, is there anything I can do to be able to still play games and allow people to watch eg. Youtube/Netflix at the same time? I am currently limited to Blizzard based games once they start watching as I can change the Audio Output to my headphones.

My current fix is to open Media Player Classic and put on movies/tv shows I already own but then that limits what they can watch. I do have a soundcard which I am currently not using but its in my machine, the Xonar Essence Stx if that helps in anyway.

Appreciate the help as this has been going on for years now and I am really getting annoyed with the amount of back and forth whenever someone wants to watch.

 

[Suztera]

If your tv has built in chromecast or you have a chromecast laying around, you could use that. When you cast a tab in chrome, the video and audio should be only sent to the display connected to the chromecast.
I do this when someone wants to watch a film etc.. whilst I can do my own things whether gaming or browsing.

 

[jimmysmitty]

The game has to support the option of selecting a sound card. Since most of them use DirectSound (there isn't much option anymore) they all just run through the DirectSound API and use the default audio output device.

Honestly I don't see much of a solution since if it has no way of being told it is pretty much a no win scenario. It has to be able to see and select the output to be able to work and in that case you would need two sound cards, a default Windows sound output for Chrome and a card for the game to run through.

Honestly you are better off building a cheap HTPC for your TV instead like I did. I used to have a similar setup to you and got tired of not being able to play a game when my wife wanted to watch TV. Now she can watch TV while I game much easier.