Laptops, smartphones, whenever I rarely watch on my switch. That's all the screens I have though. And the modem is some ZTE one and uses fiber optics

Yeah, but YouTube will buffer the video and (depending on your settings) adjust it's quality to keep it running smoothly. With Stadia that won't work, and if there is a dip in network speed for just a second, it will produce immediately noticeable problems with the stream. Just wanted to point that out. Playing a game in 4K and having the image go blurry for a second will be quite jarring

I do agree though that 50 Mbps will be enough for a 4K stream, but what I don't necessarily agree with is that compressing the data is an argument in favor of this. My biggest concern is image quality, and I have my doubts for as to how well this will perform. I've used PS Now, and while it's "passable" for many games, it's nowhere near good enough to be a replacement for standard console gaming. 

I want Stadia to have low-latency (where the latency is so low that it occurs before the frame is even drawn, making it negligible), and a crisp, RGB image. I really hope that this is achievable because if it is, this could be that leap forward to the next generation that I never thought we'd see again. PS3/360 -> PS4/Xbone did not feel like a major leap in performance, and I imagine the PS5/Nextbox to be similar.

Google is one of my favorite companies, so I am very excited that they are going all-in with this, and I would really like to see it succeed.

Believe me you are preaching to the choir.

The whole compression thing wasn't my point but rather Kirby's point to counter mine of how we will need at least 50Mbs to maintain a steady 4k stream.

And that is assuming yo have a rock solid connection because as you said a slight dip even for a second from what your speeds should be will instantly result to your rez dropping down to like 720p or even lower to compensate. Because unlike video streaming there is no buffering with game streaming. No matter what google does, they cannot account or the innumerable variances in peoples connection quality and the only way this is circumvented is by brute forcing on the end of the end user.

Basically, what you want is to have double to triple the connection speed you actually need for the service. So if you need like 50Mbs for a 4k@60fps stream, you probably should be on an 80Mbs to 100Mbs network. That wa when tose network fluctuations happen (and they will) you are still above what you need to be to maintain your stream.

In the real world what will end up happening is that majority of the users out there will be streaming at 720p/1080p max. Which isn't the end of the world but is a far cry from all goggles talk aut 4k@60fps like everyone lives in their rosed garden. I really don't think a lot here understand just how hard this is to pull off, especially when 70% of the issue are all going to be on the users side of things where google can't do a thing about.

Game streaming is one of those things that sounds nice, great and modern that everyone may think we need.... but like VR its coming waaay too early to be anything but a niche. There is a reason why everyone that's done it before and are still doing it hasn't made any real traction. 

Pretty much my thoughts. But what I am wondering about is whether or not it actually is too early. While watching the conference, I was extremely impressed with the offerings they had. I didn't think we were at the point yet where a company could be capable of the power needed to run a game at 4K@60 while also streaming it's output; that came as such a surprise to me and was the turning point in where I changed my opinion from negative to positive towards Stadia.

Having a cloud-based infrastructure allows Google to rapidly build up a collection of these Stadia drives and serve a large number of people (as they only need as many as their are concurrent users). I live in the US, and internet speeds here (and probably everywhere I would guess) increase at a relatively quick pace. I have a 250 Mbps connection today. Last year I was at 75 Mbps. A year before that it was like 40 Mbps. I live near Chicago, so maybe that's why.

One thing I do disagree with is bashing Google for offering 4K. I'm not sure where that was derived. If that was just a flippant remark you made as a negative reaction to the product, then that's fine, but there are plenty of people with the capability of streaming in 4K. I guess you have to ask yourself if your opinion would have been different had it been a product from Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft.

In general, though, we are pretty much in agreement.

They upgraded here last year. 300 is still max.

Was going to say not being able to stream 240p must be a device issue but could be modem related if it happens on multiple devices. Because with that supposed speed you should be able to stream multiple 4k movies at once😅