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RCM
02-13-2012, 12:31 PM
OK, who is going to buy a new TV for Gaikai? Anyone?

"David Perry, founder and CEO of Gaikai, has admitted that current TVs are not suitable for his company's cloud gaming platform because of in-built input latency.

Last month Gaikai announced a deal with LG that would see its service built in to the South Korean electronics firm's Cinema 3D range of Smart TVs, beginning with models produced this year. In an interview, however, Perry tells us that TVs won't be up to the job until next year.

"Televisions are not designed to be fast," he tells us. "The signal comes in and it's moving from board to board internally before it hits the screen with around 70 to 90 milliseconds of delay.

"At Gaikai, we're constantly battling latency. It's been my objective to build the fastest network ever. So when you suddenly get 90ms in the TV architecture, that's a big problem.

"But imagine a TV manufacturer totally gets into bed with us and gives us a direct link from our ethernet port to the screen. They would have to make modifications to their circuitry but say they plan that for the 2013 TVs.

"It's going to get to the point where the consumer won't be able to tell if it's going through the internet or TV. 2013 is my prediction for when we won't be able to distinguish between a streamed and a console version of a game."

Rather than being specific to LG, Perry believes latency is a problem all TV manufacturers are currently working on, and that cloud gaming will soon become a TV standard. "Every major brand will soon sell televisions with cloud-gaming services in-built," he says. "I haven't spoken to a single major TV brand that isn't in some process of deciding to do this."

Perry's comments are extracts from an interview in our new issue, E238, which should be with subscribers any day now and will be on shelves on February 14."

SOURCE: http://www.edge-online.com/news/current-tvs-not-good-enough-gaikai

joshnickerson
02-13-2012, 09:50 PM
http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqywxqMF8M1qgykhbo1_500.gif

Zing
02-13-2012, 10:25 PM
Is he being literal when he suggests a direct connection from ethernet to screen? The video rendering will be done on the server side, then the display data alone is pumped to the player's screen? Interesting.

But, how in the world could this possible be more responsive than the current setup of a console connected to a display with ~30ms display lag? If the server is doing the rendering, that means that the control input has to be sent over the internet first, before the scene can even be rendered. There's 10ms of latency to the player's ISP alone. Double that (input data to server, then back again) and you are already at the local-console threshold without factoring in the latency of all the other links in the internet path.

70-90ms of latency seems extremely high. That far beyond what a modern digital display has with a progressive source. Even the worst displays have only around 60ms.

Icarus Moonsight
02-14-2012, 12:54 AM
Rendering latency is easy to account for, especially when the engine doing the work is on your side and/or standardized (such as with consoles}. Display manufacturers produce sets that present within a varing band of latency from signal to output. Which is not possible to fully account for in coding. A direct pipeline from signal to display keeps things predictable. A requirement, especially in interactive media that requires fast user input response and precision between user I/O.

Unless, I'm missing something...

BlastProcessing402
02-14-2012, 03:25 PM
My TV's no good for your stupid service? Oh well, guess I'll go back to playing real systems like PS3 or 360. kthxbye.