> What non-gaming use cases do you imagine people might use these for?

Media box under your TV? Right now I don't have a lot of options that also don't inundate me with ads.

Sure, I can build one, but if Valve can put this out at a price that makes me go "Nah. Not worth building it myself." that's a win.

Couldn't you use a Raspberry Pi or a mini PC for this?

Sure? But RPi's are anemic and not cheap while refurb mini PC's are $400.

So, there's quite a bit of pricing room.

	▲	lotyrin an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think the mini PCs they're talking about are more likely to be N100 systems or similar that are sub 100 dollars new. Significantly less anemic, and their hardware media decode (which is well supported by software) is more than sufficient for realtime 4k playback.