Thursday, November 15th 2012

OnLive Builds Console-Quality Gaming Into LG Google TVs, No Console Required

OnLive, the leader of on-demand cloud gaming, announced that its OnLive Game Service has just been integrated into the LG Smart TV with Google TV (G2 Series), making console-quality games instantly playable as part of the TV experience. The OnLive app is the first commercial deployment of instant-response cloud gaming in a TV with no console necessary. OnLive offers something that consoles can't: the ability to continue playing your saved games on the go, on nearly any PC or Mac, and many Android tablets.

The OnLive app was delivered over the air today to the LG G2 Series TVs that are already in homes and will be preinstalled on future LG Google TVs. With the OnLive Wireless Controller (available at onlive.com/controller), LG G2 TV owners in the United States can go to the Premium Apps menu on their TVs and play hundreds of video games on demand. The OnLive catalog includes games from more than 80 publishers, with everything from blockbuster new releases to classic franchises to family-friendly sports, racing and action-adventure games.

Uniquely, OnLive makes console-quality gaming truly portable and accessible across multiple platforms. With a single purchase, OnLive games can be played on any OnLive-compatible device -- on PC, Mac, many Android tablets, TVs with the OnLive Game System, and now LG G2 TVs -- anywhere there is broadband. Users can start a game on one device and continue playing on any other device, with full saved game data intact in the cloud, whenever and wherever they want. OnLive even enables cross-platform multiplayer gaming, so that an LG G2 TV owner will be able to play with (or against) friends on PCs, Macs and tablets.

Games can be demoed free and purchased or rented a la carte, or players can subscribe to the OnLive PlayPack for unlimited play of more than 200 games, with more titles added monthly. OnLive also offers free access to unique social features, such as game spectating in the OnLive Arena, recording ten-second Brag Clip videos of players' best gaming moments, and sharing videos and Achievements with friends on OnLive and Facebook.

"We are proud to be working with OnLive to deliver an incredible home entertainment experience with a full range of interactive viewing and gaming possibilities on LG G2 Series TVs," said Georg Rasinski, Director of Home Entertainment Brand Management, LG Electronics USA. "OnLive's premium-quality gaming service offers customers a great opportunity to test the dual-core performance of our G2 Series TVs. We think customers will be very impressed."

"Our partnership with LG has enabled us to take an important step forward in making high-end gaming accessible to everyone, across a variety of consumer electronic devices," said Gary Lauder, OnLive Chairman. "Gamers can now enjoy hundreds of amazing console-quality games with no new hardware necessary beyond an OnLive controller and LG's fast and intuitive Google TV."

Combining the power of the Google TV platform with the speed of LG's L9 dual-core chipset and a user-friendly interface, the G2 Series is LG's first TV to make OnLive cloud gaming an integral part of the consumer experience. To find out more about OnLive or to purchase a Universal OnLive Wireless Controller, visit www.onlive.com or www.onlive.co.uk.
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36 Comments on OnLive Builds Console-Quality Gaming Into LG Google TVs, No Console Required

#26
Deadlyraver
Man, I hope consoles fade away, they have held us PC gamers back for too long.
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#27
EpicShweetness
I know bandwidth is always an issue with VM's but that is the limitation more of the TCP/IP protocol (IPV4) then anything. I'm not gonna get into it to much but the way is handles packets, and the way that packets pile with streaming high definition content (Oh boy there are alot! Our VM's at work just doing a 2D desktop will generate 2 million packets a min.) you need bandwidth to over come it, I wonder if the extra bits of IPV6 can help . . .. hmmmm.
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#28
Xzibit
EpicShweetnessI know bandwidth is always an issue with VM's but that is the limitation more of the TCP/IP protocol (IPV4) then anything. I'm not gonna get into it to much but the way is handles packets, and the way that packets pile with streaming high definition content (Oh boy there are alot! Our VM's at work just doing a 2D desktop will generate 2 million packets a min.) you need bandwidth to over come it, I wonder if the extra bits of IPV6 can help . . .. hmmmm.
Hope this helps


Comparative Study of Ipv4 vs. Ipv6 Network performance in Windows 7
Aaron Thomas is a MS candidate in computer science at California State University Chico, CA
V. Conclusion As expected, throughput for IPv6 was slightly lower than that of IPv4, due to the increased header size. When considering small packet sizes this difference could be significant, but when considering average packet sizes and rates the difference was relatively insignificant. When considering most circumstances that might maximize the throughput of a link, packet payloads will generally tend to be larger minimizing the effect of the header size increase over the total amount of transferred data. Regardless, special consideration should be taken when calculating maximum potential network capacities, especially with regards to smaller packet, sizes when using Ipv6. All other test results showed no significant statistical difference between IPv4 and IPv6 on the Windows 7 platform. Delay and Jitter remained within statistically indistinguishable values over all tested payload sizes. Neither IPv4 nor IPv6 were favored at any payload range. These results conclude that there is little difference between IPv4 and IPv6 performance when considering Windows 7 in a common switched environment. IPv6 appears to be quite capable of performing at the same levels as IPv4 and these tests show that in a simplified environment IPv6 is unlikely to cause any performance issues or significant differences in network traffic.
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#29
remixedcat
phanbueycontroller latency will be mushy compared to a hard wired desktop... the bet is that they will not be so mushy as to be unplayable. It all depends on your connection - the bandwith needed is not much, but if someone starts uploading some massive file in the other room to skybox, you better believe that your game experience will change very quickly LOL.

Also, I have used onlive, and all I have to say is that the graphics quality is really crap. Played some assassins creed on it and it was no good :(.
use QoS or other shaping features of your router and that will solve that.
Posted on Reply
#30
yogurt_21
BingeI've been actually running and running on these servers in my day-to-day job. Guess what? I currently work for a large government body. Do you know how hard we stress the BIG servers with our bandwidth? Packet-size will become enormous vs current multi-player game use, and the challenge of how to handle players with increased latency further exasperates the complications of online play.

I don't understand how you can honestly say that your 720p video is actually 720p. Please provide your magical low bandwidth 720p video that ACTUALLY REPRESENTS all 720p rendered pixels in the game. I would loves to see as I can not believes!

This enormous impact to our already lacking infrastructure will cause more issues with the ISPs and down-times forcing the infrastructure to expand to compensate or this company to fold under the pressure of losing subscribers to XBox.
way to try to use big boy words and then fail to actually back it up.

how is it going to increase the latency in-game? the server is virtual, the desktop is virtual, all exist on a local network. the only bandwidth you have to worry about is to the end user from the virtual desktop. You comepletly ignored the xendesktop bandwidth utilization link, those numbers aren't made up.
The high def wmv files typically range in the 5-50GB range so sure playback on that uses quite a bit, but otherwise its nowhere near enough to tax a 1.5Mbps connection. You're sending pixels, not files. Yes moving picture trumps static, but the bandwidth per user is still low.

On a server with tons of vm's? sure the hosting site needs the proper backbone, other than that the users are fine. Also 720p = 720p not sure where your hangup on that is. An instructional video with the resolution of 1280x720 at 30 fps on a web based educational LMS that is surrounded by graphics, tranparencies, and transitions. All qc'd over virtual desktops because the virtual is local to the content and it uses less bandwidth than qc'ing it directly from the website where the files have to be streamed/downloaded onto a local desktop.

we ship media appliances that host the content locally to the schools that use our product to avoid the bandwidth issue.

seriously think about it, what uses more bandwidth, downloading the content directly or accessing it over a vm? If the answer was the former, why would we use vm's? it's not like desktops/laptops, etc can't be imaged.
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#31
nt300
I see this taking off in about 5 years time once all issues are resolved.
Posted on Reply
#32
kid41212003
Google optic internet service + OnLive = big win.
Posted on Reply
#33
RejZoR
Some have a very weak understanding of video streaming here. Streaming for video (which OnLive essentially is just that) requires to stream full data at the realtime point in the game. There is no "send just unchanged parts". Thats the job of the video encoder, but you still need to get the full image to the end client. If it's 720p or 1080p, you need nearly lossless quality in order to get nice sharp image, otherwise you'd get a blurry mess. Imagine like comparing regular XviD DVDrip with a 1080p from a BluRay. Or a very low bitrate 1080p video. It won't look good despite the resolution.

BluRay can have up to 54Mbit datarate. Not exactly something every household can take just for games. Maybe in major cities with FTTH but in general, large populations are still on copper wires...

And not to mention nasty input reply lag. You need to use a very low delay video encoder in order to compensate commands response time. When you press "Left" button, your command has to go to the OnLive server, their it is received and moves you left in the game. Video capture of that action is then encoded and streamed back to you. If latency between you and the server is up to 100ms, that means you get automatic 200ms delay in both directions without even encoding any video. Add video encoding latency and things start to look pretty bad. And even if latencies are dumbed down, they may still be annoying to those who are used to instant response on local machines.
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#34
vawrvawerawe
RejZoRSome have a very weak understanding of video streaming here. Streaming for video (which OnLive essentially is just that) requires to stream full data at the realtime point in the game. There is no "send just unchanged parts". Thats the job of the video encoder, but you still need to get the full image to the end client. If it's 720p or 1080p, you need nearly lossless quality in order to get nice sharp image, otherwise you'd get a blurry mess. Imagine like comparing regular XviD DVDrip with a 1080p from a BluRay. Or a very low bitrate 1080p video. It won't look good despite the resolution.

BluRay can have up to 54Mbit datarate. Not exactly something every household can take just for games. Maybe in major cities with FTTH but in general, large populations are still on copper wires...

And not to mention nasty input reply lag. You need to use a very low delay video encoder in order to compensate commands response time. When you press "Left" button, your command has to go to the OnLive server, their it is received and moves you left in the game. Video capture of that action is then encoded and streamed back to you. If latency between you and the server is up to 100ms, that means you get automatic 200ms delay in both directions without even encoding any video. Add video encoding latency and things start to look pretty bad. And even if latencies are dumbed down, they may still be annoying to those who are used to instant response on local machines.
Depends on who's doing the compressing. I've downloaded 1080p movies in under 300mb and look just about as good as 25GB blueray. However, rates that good are extremely rare because it takes serious skill. But more common is 1080p at 700mb that looks as good as 25gb bluray. However, most uploaders do 700mb and it looks half as good quality as a 25gb bluray disc, but still that's pretty good considering the size decrease.

So in essence, it really just depends on who (or what software) is doing the compressing.
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#35
Xzibit
vawrvaweraweDepends on who's doing the compressing. I've downloaded 1080p movies in under 300mb and look just about as good as 25GB blueray. However, rates that good are extremely rare because it takes serious skill. But more common is 1080p at 700mb that looks as good as 25gb bluray. However, most uploaders do 700mb and it looks half as good quality as a 25gb bluray disc, but still that's pretty good considering the size decrease.

So in essence, it really just depends on who (or what software) is doing the compressing.
Not a good comparison because they do lots of things to cut data/quality of it by lowering original FPS of the movie and decrease original frame size and also sound from 7.1 or 5.1 to a stereo MP3/AAC along with quality.

Just the image quality the video bitrate quality goes from ten thousand to a few hundred.

Similar issue when your watching SD signal tv on a 1080p/720p screen once you stretch it to fill the screen the missing information or lack there of visualy is very noticable.
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#36
vawrvawerawe
XzibitNot a good comparison because they do lots of things to cut data/quality of it by lowering original FPS of the movie and decrease original frame size and also sound from 7.1 or 5.1 to a stereo MP3/AAC along with quality.

Just the image quality the video bitrate quality goes from ten thousand to a few hundred.

Similar issue when your watching SD signal tv on a 1080p/720p screen once you stretch it to fill the screen the missing information or lack there of visualy is very noticable.
Yea I guess you're right
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