Can OnLive work? Sony says yes, we already do it!

This is somewhat of a suspect title, but it’s true, in a round-about way.  Not only does Sony think it can work, but many forget that they are actually doing it right now, it is called remote play.  Hook a PS3 up to the internet, relate it to your PSP and you can manage the console and even play some PS3 games streaming to your PSP via the internet.  This is all done without a specialized hardware encoder/decoder infrastructure or tricked-out server farm.

We are going to delve into the numbers a bit on this one, but we have done the math for you so don’t worry too much.  Now keep in mind that the numbers used here for each scenario are based on company claims and anecdotal evidence.  In the case of Sony we used numbers from session-dump data and for OnLive we used the claimed 1.5Mbps for SD number.  Also keep in mind that both systems are capable of using less bandwidth when needed and often will– these are the peak numbers.

The first things that need to be pointed out here are the discrepancies in resolution and throughput needed by each system.  Sony’s remote play sends a 480×272 pixel as compared to OnLive’s 720×480 pixel stream, and if this seems like a big difference, it is.  This is 130,560 versus 345,600 total pixels respectively with OnLive’s system streaming over 2.64 times as many pixels just with the SD option.  The interesting thing is that the Sony stream caps-out at 1.02Mbps whereas OnLive’s does so at 1.5Mbps.  Doing the math, this shows that although OnLive is sending 2.64 times as many pixels, it only requires 1.47 times as much bandwidth.  This puts Sony’s streaming right at about 56% efficiency when compared to OnLive’s.

These numbers show that OnLive is using a compression method that is much less demanding than Sony’s.  Whether this means the actual picture quality of Sony’s system is better than OnLive’s is hard to say, but all eyes-on reports seem to point to the fact that OnLive’s is very good, so we can assume it is at least comparable.

Keep in mind that Sony’s mechanism, baring control issues not related to latency, results in a pretty playable experience while serving from a home connection even to a PSP connected by respectable wi-fi.  If we remove the inconsistency of wi-fi, assume a solid tethered home connection and account for video being served by specialized high-speed servers as opposed to a home “server,” we should find that things run considerably smoother.  Even with all of the choking-point variables, Sony’s method already technically works rather well.  With OnLive’s implementation promising to be revolutionary, it should be at least noticeably better.

This is all just food for thought though.  This comparison does not take into account actual visual quality of the streams, just the amount of pixels that are being accounted for.  Looking at Sony’s implementation, the SD option of OnLive’s platform seems completely doable.  Once we start considering HD, the current practicality becomes harder to judge without having the system in the wild.

[Sources PS2Dev Forums | Bandwidth conversion calculator]

Note: We are in no way streaming video geniuses here, but we thought it would be interesting to crunch some numbers and make some comparisons.  If there are any huge misconceptions or errors in calculation please let us know.