If 4k can be streamed why do we even have consoles and pcs anymore?

[SvennoJ]

Zekkyou said:

kirby007 said:

Zekkyou said:
The majority of people barley have internet speeds good enough to stream a game in 1080p, let alone 4k :P That's not even accounting for data caps and throttling from service providers.

and thats why High Efficiency Video Coding is somehting we as gamers need to take a look at

Totally agree. It will be interesting to see how streaming goes over the next few years. PC gaming has already become a primarily digital market so it will likely be the first to switch. Console gaming i haven't a clue; It's going to depend a lot on Sony/Nintendo/MS. I doubt we will see them completely rid of the console model, they make too much of the royalties. However, give it 5 years and i could totally see a super cheap streaming only version of the PS4 and X1.

Or they could all go PC only and make me a happy panda :D

HEVC or H.265 is not magic. It can reach twice the efficiency of h.264, however how much of that can be achieved at reasonable quality with real time low latency encoding remains to be seen. If that works then you still need twice the bitrate of a 1080p h.264 stream, for 4x the resolution, to get to the same so so quality that you currently get for game streaming. And add another 5mbps on top for lossless compressed audio.

Ok let's stick to lossy audio, 10mbps for low quality hevc 4k video and 1.5mbps for lossy dts, 11.5mbps = 5.1 GB per hour of gaming. It's possible, but why would you get a 4K screen to get an OnLive/Gaika quality game experience on it.

HEVC could double the current quality of Gaika though, if low latency real time encoding becomes affordable.