This niche service is really going to need some heavy investments to get it up and running. Not to mention high monthly costs initially for the company to sustain a profit or at least break even at some point.
Services like Netflix HD work because the content is premade, and to me, it's more or less just like watching HD content on TV. Receive data, decipher, and view. It's easier to send files that don't require much further processing on the end-user's equipment (HD receiver decoding a relatively simple set of data).
A baseball game in HD will be the same game in HD from the field to the house. There's no changes to the content in terms that it's static. Camera records, person watches. Nothing really changes except for what's being recorded. The framerate will be more or less constant.
With games, it takes calculations in real-time in order to play. And if the user wanted to move or blow up a barrel, more calculations are needed to do such a thing. Calculations include rendering, physics, etc. I use this term broadly.
The workload on the end-user's computer to churn out the encoded files will also require upgrades. Streaming Crysis onto a low-end system and playing it on-screen without delay seems impossible to me. Unless the quality was very low.
It would work if it was static like a video, but games are more dynamic. If you move the mouse towards an enemy, all that has to be accounted for and sent back to the "processing" machines, to say. Then sent back to the end-user and decoded again. All within a few milliseconds, not counting latency.
Search a phrase on Google. The results aren't instant and those are only words. I haven't used a fiber connection or any super-fast connections, but I'd still assume that nothing is instant. The point is that there's going to be a slight delay, more noticeable as the end connection is slower.
Not everyone has fiber connections, and upload speeds on copper lines are slow. Some people I know can't even max out 1.5Mbps on their DSL lines. Not sure how much symmetrical DSL/cable lines are priced at, but it's definitely more than the $10-20 for basic ADSL service. To the consumer, is it worth spending this much just to play some low-setting games (or high, if possible)? The game itself is only $XX, a one-time fee.
The concept is interesting, but the United States' infrastructure (majority) is too outdated to support it. Maybe in a place like Japan or HK where their connections can support the high amounts of bandwidth. Even if the company spends $100 million on their hardware, some people's old, crappy copper wires will be the limiting factor. That's not an easy fix, and will come at a price.
The concept is not practical unless it was being deployed by say an ISP (ATT, Verizon, etc) willing to dig up copper for fiber. What will be the cost of that? More than $30 a month for us. Billions for them.
Something will bottleneck the whole process. That bottleneck will cost money to fix. The economic gains are slim, the market is actually quite small, and the problems will be endless.
(I might be incorrect on some areas, so please feel free to correct me.)
Services like Netflix HD work because the content is premade, and to me, it's more or less just like watching HD content on TV. Receive data, decipher, and view. It's easier to send files that don't require much further processing on the end-user's equipment (HD receiver decoding a relatively simple set of data).
A baseball game in HD will be the same game in HD from the field to the house. There's no changes to the content in terms that it's static. Camera records, person watches. Nothing really changes except for what's being recorded. The framerate will be more or less constant.
With games, it takes calculations in real-time in order to play. And if the user wanted to move or blow up a barrel, more calculations are needed to do such a thing. Calculations include rendering, physics, etc. I use this term broadly.
The workload on the end-user's computer to churn out the encoded files will also require upgrades. Streaming Crysis onto a low-end system and playing it on-screen without delay seems impossible to me. Unless the quality was very low.
It would work if it was static like a video, but games are more dynamic. If you move the mouse towards an enemy, all that has to be accounted for and sent back to the "processing" machines, to say. Then sent back to the end-user and decoded again. All within a few milliseconds, not counting latency.
Search a phrase on Google. The results aren't instant and those are only words. I haven't used a fiber connection or any super-fast connections, but I'd still assume that nothing is instant. The point is that there's going to be a slight delay, more noticeable as the end connection is slower.
Not everyone has fiber connections, and upload speeds on copper lines are slow. Some people I know can't even max out 1.5Mbps on their DSL lines. Not sure how much symmetrical DSL/cable lines are priced at, but it's definitely more than the $10-20 for basic ADSL service. To the consumer, is it worth spending this much just to play some low-setting games (or high, if possible)? The game itself is only $XX, a one-time fee.
The concept is interesting, but the United States' infrastructure (majority) is too outdated to support it. Maybe in a place like Japan or HK where their connections can support the high amounts of bandwidth. Even if the company spends $100 million on their hardware, some people's old, crappy copper wires will be the limiting factor. That's not an easy fix, and will come at a price.
The concept is not practical unless it was being deployed by say an ISP (ATT, Verizon, etc) willing to dig up copper for fiber. What will be the cost of that? More than $30 a month for us. Billions for them.
Something will bottleneck the whole process. That bottleneck will cost money to fix. The economic gains are slim, the market is actually quite small, and the problems will be endless.
(I might be incorrect on some areas, so please feel free to correct me.)
