Gadgetory

you know it's funny we've collectively bought into the streaming on-demand concept for movies and TV shows to the point where the idea of going to the video store to rent a DVD seems so crazy that self-park managed to turn it into the shining parody so why then do we as gamers have such reservations about letting go of our dedicated gaming box be it a PC or a console in favor of a streaming service well let's start with explanations of some of the ways that games can be streamed first is local network streaming this has existed in the form of Sony's remote play for PS Vita and Nvidia's game stream for PC for a couple of years the way it works is a powerful gaming device sits somewhere rendering your game frame by frame then turning the output frames into a compressed video stream nearly instantly before beaming them to a much less powerful and sometimes even portable and wirelessly connected device sounds like science fiction right well it's not it actually works I tested in video game stream with a high-speed camera and found that it actually adds less latency then the image processor built into some televisions so from there then what if rendering could be done in a data center somewhere completely remote with the resulting gaming experience beamed to you over the Internet well that's where industry giants like Microsoft Sony and Nvidia are directing their attention now Microsoft's vision seems to be to use the cloud for heavy lifting and a less powerful client to do the basics delivering a bandwidth savings but also increasing the complexity of the process one reason why we haven't seen them do much with this yet while Sony ran out and purchased online and NVIDIA is building out data centers full of graphics processors around the world in an attempt to make the video beaming paradigm viable now and there's a lot of cool stuff about this approach it replaces an upfront cost for a new box every few years with a monthly subscription that particularly for light users could actually end up being cheaper thanks to bulk licensing of games being done over by the service provider not to mention that paying only for the time that you spend with those games could be cheaper than going overkill on a GTX 15,000 TI ultra or whatever just for the few games that demand that kind of horsepower when you spend most of your time playing games that would run on your thermostat if you turned it down far enough but there are some challenges too for some people the future is now I mean I'm not a hard core of a decent gamer but I can easily enjoy third person games and even fighters with the nearest GeForce now data center 1,500 kilometers away but many people will need faster speeds lower latency and bigger data caps on their internet connections to make this viable though services like Google Fiber are amazing for making that future scenario become a reality sooner and another consideration is that not every gaming experience is ideal for this VR for example will likely need to run locally forever to keep users from becoming nauseated so as always it's going to be horses for courses which I guess is the conclusion that I came to when Nvidia approached us about doing a fastest possible video about the shield Android TV and I countered with well I want to talk about game streaming in general with a sponsored bit at the end about how the shield Android TV occupies a unique position inside this rapidly changing ecosystem so that's what I did and here's the bit about the shield Android TV as a PC gamer with a sick gaming rig but very little time to sit in front of it I've been an avid Nvidia game stream user since the launch of the shield portable since I can take that experience with me to the other places that I need to be like the bedroom or the living room but that device lacks some of the newer features that this new gizmo has thanks to its Android TV integration and upgraded internals like 4k 60fps Netflix and YouTube streaming as well as support for other streaming apps like sling plex Kodi and sports app with voice control with the included controller or optional remote and offers up all the Vantage's especially for more casual users or guests who come over that I just outlined before and it can handle it all at up to 1080p 60fps and the really unique thing is that thanks to his Tegra x1 processor it also delivers a surprisingly competent local gaming experience in the growing number of controller friendly android games and other natively supported games like doom 3 Talos principle and war thunder you can even stream straight to twitch from the shield with a quick click of the controller so then Linus how much for one of these set me back well if you're looking at the shield Android TV you're looking at 199 bucks for the 16 gig flash based model and $2.99 for the 500 gig model and then you can beef up the gaming experience with GeForce now for only 8 bucks a month after a 3 month free trial so it's kind of an exciting time then to be any type of game or isn't it I hope if nothing else this episode of fast as possible has given you some food for thought about where the technology is heading and what the limitations are thanks for watching guys if you like the video hit the like button if you disliked it and I'll hit that other button I guess if you have comments with video suggestions feel free to leave them in the comments below don't forget to subscribe and following all that good stuff and if you're looking for something else to watch check out channel super-fun where we have the video for you rocket league in real life with RC cars and a bouncy ball what could be better than that nothing