Collaborative Project - 08/10/19

What is a streaming service?

A streaming service is a service that allows you to watch or play you favourite games without downloading anything*. Steaming can be split into 3 main categories:

Game Streaming

Services such as Geforce Now, Playstation Now and Google Stadia offer ways to play games without downloading them. Google Stadia and GeForce now offer the hardware to play games on but the user must own the game that they want to play. On the other hand, Playstation Now lets users play a wide range of games with the hardware supporting it.

There are also smaller streaming services that work differently like Parsec which lets users host their own hardware for them to play their own games on. This is exactly how Steam's in-home streaming works.

Game Video Streaming

Game video streaming services includes Twitch, Youtube and Mixer. Unlike game streaming, game video streaming is where users watch live content that other users make and is based around communities.

Film and TV Show Streaming

Film and TV show streaming services like Netflix and Now TV offer a wide range of movies and shows for people to watch these are much better than regular tv because you can put anything you want at any time. Services like Netflix also allow the user to download videos for offline use when there's little or no internet but limit you to a certain amount and they can expire after a few weeks or days.

Advantages

• Free entertainment (Youtube, Twitch, etc...)
• No waiting for downloads
• Doesn't use up storage
• Access anywhere

Disadvantages

• Requires an internet connection
• You don't get access to everything
• Less quality depending on internet speed

Internet Requirements

Game streaming services such as GeForce Now focus on latency because if the video is 2 seconds behind your input it might be the difference between that headshot and totally missing. Game streaming services are also required to send user input which further increases latency. Latency is one of the biggest problems with game streaming services.

Services such as Netflix only stream video content and doesn't need to send user input which means they can get away with latency and deliver higher quality videos.