Onlive remote gaming

On the receiving side, you can use either a browser plugin or a 'microconsole'. The plugin is currently for PC and Macs with Linux under consideration if the market warrants. The microconsole is a little box with a USB port for the controller and HDMI outs. It looks like a smooshed pack of cigarettes with a PS3 controller wired in.

The silicon in the console is proprietary and there are no specs to be had on it. One nice feature is the compression algorithm is flexible and heavily server loaded. Compression is intensive, decompression far less so, and it can be done serially or in parallel. The light-duty parallel bit strongly hints that the console chip is a multi-core part, and is said to have custom hardware compression blocks.

There are actually two streams sent out at once, the one you play and a higher-rez version. The play stream is adaptive and varies compression and data rates on the fly, based on network transit conditions. The high-rez version is not playable or really interactive, it is meant for 'brag clips' or filming of the session. Think of it as what the spectators see on the big screen at a Lan party. It is multicast for efficiency whereas the play stream is unicast.

Pricing isn't set, nor is it going to be really done by Onlive. The company will OEM the boxes and run the cloud or let you run your own should you want it. You are much more likely to see an Onlive box with your cable company's branding than theirs, and the pricing will (shudder) also be done by the cable company.

In the end, Onlive has the first end-to-end complete package for streaming games that looks viable. Nothing is particularly new, nothing is particularly exciting, but it is all done seemingly right. Without playing with it under live Net conditions, you can't say how well it really works, but for now, it looks to be not only functional, but best of breed. Keep an eye on it.