OnLive Streams Almost 3GB An Hour

Tuffcub 45 Comments

Blogger Greg Pfister has been monitoring the data streamed to his PC when using OnLive and has found some surprising results.

When viewing ‘non action’ video OnLive was using around 3% of a 100MB/sec connection, however when playing Borderlands or watching trailers of games such as Deus Ex he found that the usage went up to 6.4% of 100MB/sec, the equivalent of over 2.9GB of data an hour.

Greg notes that his ISP considers over 250GB a month ‘excessive’ and ground for terminating the account. If you are using OnLive it’s probably worth reading the small print on your Broadband agreement to make sure you have enough bandwidth.

Source: Perils Of Parallel Blog

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45 Comments

  1. and this is why (for now) cloud gaming will never work.

    • yup its a lovely idea and will probably happen within the next 10-15 years but with my 6.5mbps internet connection and fairly low monthly limit its just not workable and as soon as someone else starts streaming iplayer or something game over.

      • said all along it wont work for a VERY long time. If this is true, then no way will this happen in my house. I still don’t see the advantage over buying the product from the shelf, but hey ho.

      • This is exactly what Sony themselves said when asked when physical media will no longer be used. They said 10 years AT THE LEAST. Before then it’s just not viable. Not enough people have broadband speeds of 5mbps let alone what would be needed to use OnLive as a full replacement to a console. Onlive is and always was a poorly thought out idea. I’d put it next to the 3ds in the failure warehouse of the human race.

    • And this is why I’m glad I don’t live in the UK. In Germany we don’t have these kinds of limitations on a broadband connection. If you have a flatrate you can cause as much traffic as you want without having to fear that your speed will be capped or your account terminated.

      • I have unlimited, as do a lot of people – but ISPS still have fair usuage policies, transfer too many GBs a day and you may be in trouble.

      • We do have contracts with monthly traffic limits but I don’t consider them a flat rate. Flat rate for me equals unlimited traffic. I’m not aware of any fair usage policies here in Germany. They might exist but I have yet to stumble across one or anyone who was affected by it.

    • Spotter5 is bang on!

    • These figures are all wrong, my maths is pretty bad but a 100 mbps connection doesn’t mean 100 megabytes per second, its mega bits per second… Big difference

    • I really can’t comprehend how cretinous the mainstream media are, if they have only just worked this out.

      I can’t get fullscreen iPlayer on my PC without lag, let alone remote rendering and sending low latency control input…

      Clearly OnLive is doomed in this country at least. My ISP gives me 20GB a month to play with….

  2. Yeah, i’m going to say no to onlive and stick to good old fashioned playing on my PS3 offline to avoid Virgin Media telling me off.

    I’ll save up and build a decent gaming rig to play some PC games. :) Plus i have no idea about the contract with virgin media as i don’t pay for it(my mother does as she uses the net as well) and i’m nearly broke so even if i could get Onlive, i wouldn’t be able to due to having to buy food and stuff.

  3. There is no way this is true – I’m getting less than 2GB an hour.

    As someone who works extensively with video, I’d love to see you try and get an hour of 1080p video under a gig or two, let alone with all the actual game-playing nonsense.

    • Yep, definitely less for me too. Totally depends on your connection.

      • Yeah, I guess it’s based on connection – for example, my internet couldn’t even pull down the nearly 0.9mbps realtime that this guy is claiming, yet my connection to OnLive is flawless.

      • would you not be better just downloading a game & saving loads of bandwidth & you own the game on your harddrive & can play it without the net.

      • I think its great for renting, Wouldn’t even bother with Space marine since it isn’t worth what it costs to me, great game

    • With my current connection I cant download more than 3.5GB during peak times (4-9) so I would get about 2 hours tops before the cut the speed of my connection by 75%. It’s that, that makes this not very viable to me at the moment.

    • so the guy is lying then?

      • I’m not saying he’s lying, I’m saying his method of tracking the percentage of a total connection OnLive is using seems designed to artificially boost his results. Setting up a bandwidth or usage tracker on the OnLive process itself would seem much more honest.

    • With a couple of hours gaming a night you could tear through 150 to 250GB in a month, easily. I hadn’t even thought about this as a problem but with the grunt work being done their end it means that your dumb terminal (as such) is simply streaming interactively which means… shit… quite serious bandwidth costs.

      Then we add on other family members, other services, etc. Cripes.

      • Add Frames Per Second into the mix and surely that doubles things (potentially) when going from 30FPS to 60FPS. Ugh.

        Hope I’m wrong about all of this.

    • I agree, the measurement technique he has used is far from accurate. The individual process for OnLive needs to be measured for actual bytes transferred. Not just a percentage of overall NIC utilisation. If I get time I’ll give it a go tonight.

      The fact that he incorrectly states “OnLive won’t run on WiFi, only on a wired connection” also makes me question the validity of the information.

      • Also, I have just noticed that the blog was written in July 2010. What’s to say the OnLive compression technique hasn’t improved significantly since then?

        Maybe back then Wi-Fi wasn’t supported so he was correct with that statement, but the fact that Wi-FI is now supported would also suggest that the banwidth requirements have come down.

  4. Whoa !
    This would’ve been fine for me a few months ago as I literally had an unlimited broadband package with o2. Unfortunately they decided to just disconnect me from their service without warning for no reason whatsoever, forcing me to sign up to one of their new ‘traffic monitored’ packages with a 200gb limit. Ass-faces.

    • lol u sure u weren’t downloading TB’s of torrents?

      • Not at all, I was a week overdue on my account with £7.90 left to pay :S

  5. I live in a the equivalent of a cardboard box in Cambridgeshire where I get a 1.5MB connection in the evenings if I’m lucky. Think its safe to say I won’t be getting this service ;)

  6. Ive got the Unlimited Sky package but I’m off to check the small print in the T&Cs to see what their fair usage policy is.
    Thing is though I see OnLive as a supplement to my PS3, like a games rental service but in my house. I probably wont play so long as to get myself in trouble with Rupert Murdoch ;-)

    • I have sky as well and they is no fairusage policy download as much as you want, I have had days where I have downloaded 100 -150gb peak time and not a word from sky it is great.

      • Great stuff, i went looking and couldn’t find any rules. Looks like OnLive will be used well in my house

      • I’d give them a call and get them to add a note onto your account saying you’re using OnLive and check they are okay with the high usage. Protect your own back!

      • Same thing, good news

  7. My BT Infinity connection has a 350GB limit per month. It’s plenty but we already burn through half of that with other stuff.

    • You’ll be needing eye tests soon then

  8. Not sure thats the way to do it, seems a FUD spreader too me, people never achieve they’re max theoretical connection for a start so he seems to be working it out as a percentage of his /theoretical/ nax connection speed.

    You’ll use roughly the same as iPlayer or YouTube, its a streamed video you’re playing, sure if you’ve got a better connection the image quality will be better & obviously a bit more data used but there wont be any real difference between this & online video sites

    • I dunno, I’ve downloaded 300gb in the last month off steam and psn, plus my dad around another 160gb on top of that, no idea how much my sister has downloaded but she’s been on the store a lot. People can sometimes reach their limits, luckily talktalk (who I’m with) arn’t arsey about it and we download as much as we want. Pay a hell of a lot though.

      • You might find this month is the first one where you get a warning letter. Maybe not. Either way, you appear to have backed-up the internet! :-p

  9. I’m with bt & took advantage of the free 3 month trial which states ‘will not affect your usage’ :)

  10. I already thought the previously mentioned 2GB per hour was a lot just for gaming anyway.

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