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OnLive Streams Almost 3GB An Hour
46
That's a lot of data.
Published: 10:56, 04/10/2011 by Tuffcub.
72Blogger 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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04/10/2011 at 10:59
Member since: Forever
and this is why (for now) cloud gaming will never work.
04/10/2011 at 11:12
Member since: Feb 2009
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:16
Member since: Jun 2009
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.
04/10/2011 at 16:51
Member since: Oct 2010
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:44
Member since: Nov 2009
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:51
Member since: Dec 2008
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.
04/10/2011 at 12:07
Member since: Nov 2009
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.
04/10/2011 at 12:03
Member since: Dec 2009
Spotter5 is bang on!
04/10/2011 at 13:34
Member since: Mar 2010
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
04/10/2011 at 14:07
Member since: Forever
The maths is right.
A 100Mbps connection can give you 44Gbs in an hour* and 6.4% of that 44Gbs is 2.9Gb.
*= If the connection is running at 100% (http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&cp=45&gs_id=4&xhr=t&q=100+megabits+per+second+in+gigabytes+per+hour&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&safe=off&site=&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=100+megabits+per+second+in+gigabytes+per+hour&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=e1b5f971f40b7a5&biw=1280&bih=699)
04/10/2011 at 14:28
Member since: Mar 2010
I take it back, just worked that out too… But i don’t know where he got that percentage.. Jst seems to me a little off…
04/10/2011 at 14:30
Member since: Forever
connections never run at their theoretical max, he couldn’t have done it in a more incorrect way especially when software can tell you exactly how much data is actually being used by a service & not just a percentage of your advertised speed
04/10/2011 at 19:19
Member since: Nov 2009
This comment is hidden.
04/10/2011 at 11:03
Member since: May 2010
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:13
Member since: Forever
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:17
Member since: Forever
Yep, definitely less for me too. Totally depends on your connection.
04/10/2011 at 11:37
Member since: Forever
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.
04/10/2011 at 13:03
Member since: Oct 2009
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.
04/10/2011 at 14:15
Member since: Aug 2009
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
04/10/2011 at 11:26
Member since: Feb 2009
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:26
Member since: Oct 2009
so the guy is lying then?
04/10/2011 at 11:34
Member since: Forever
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:32
Member since: Jul 2009
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:38
Member since: Jul 2009
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.
04/10/2011 at 12:51
Member since: Jul 2011
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.
04/10/2011 at 13:29
Member since: Jul 2011
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:18
Member since: Oct 2008
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.
04/10/2011 at 11:24
Member since: Nov 2008
lol u sure u weren’t downloading TB’s of torrents?
04/10/2011 at 12:18
Member since: Oct 2008
Not at all, I was a week overdue on my account with £7.90 left to pay :S
04/10/2011 at 11:24
Member since: Aug 2008
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 ;)
04/10/2011 at 11:44
Member since: Forever
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 ;-)
04/10/2011 at 12:18
Member since: Nov 2010
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.
04/10/2011 at 12:31
Member since: Forever
Great stuff, i went looking and couldn’t find any rules. Looks like OnLive will be used well in my house
04/10/2011 at 12:32
Member since: Sep 2008
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!
04/10/2011 at 14:17
Member since: Aug 2009
Same thing, good news
04/10/2011 at 11:58
Member since: Jul 2009
My BT Infinity connection has a 350GB limit per month. It’s plenty but we already burn through half of that with other stuff.
04/10/2011 at 12:04
Member since: Forever
You’ll be needing eye tests soon then
04/10/2011 at 11:59
Member since: Forever
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
04/10/2011 at 12:23
Member since: Feb 2010
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.
04/10/2011 at 13:01
Member since: Jul 2009
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
04/10/2011 at 14:01
Member since: Oct 2009
I’m with bt & took advantage of the free 3 month trial which states ‘will not affect your usage’ :)
04/10/2011 at 15:00
Member since: Sep 2010
Anyone for Scrabble?
04/10/2011 at 23:09
Member since: Forever
Oh, me! Not played a good game of scrabble in ages.
Actually not played any board game in ages, my suggestions of Monopoly were always shot down. I think they got sick of all the bonuses I awarded myself ;)