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Using a high-end PC without actually owning one: PC streaming

We've gotten used to obtaining all sorts of content online. Internet-based texts, images or videos are common place - but how about a high-end PC that is accessible from anywhere and without ever having purchased one? Although still in its infancy, this approach may soon become mainstream for users who seek to play real games on their Macs, don't want a gaming rig in their homes or shun the high prices and fast aging of computer hardware. So how does PC streaming work?

High-quality gaming on any device

The idea itself may take some getting used to. We usually know our machines quite well. They sit under the desk and, from time to time, we may even opt for a hardware upgrade here and there. PC streaming is different: there's no longer a PC under your desk, instead, you benefit from the computing power of a data center located some place else. The concept is simple: take the terror out of the buying experience for users (purchasing the PC and setting it up) and offer an Internet-based computer as a subscription. What companies have already been doing for quite some time (it's called infrastructure as a service) is now poised to conquer the end-user market.

Shadow is one of the companies that are slowly gaining a foothold in this market. Unlike business PCs that often tend to be slowpokes that solely target office work, here, home users can expect peak performance. So far, the technical specs are impressive: machines will be running Windows 10 with 12 GB of RAM, modern Xeon processors and, essential for gamers, GTX 1080-level graphics performance. The GTX 1080 alone usually costs around $500 and can run current games at max settings. And with a bandwidth of 1 Gbit/s, streamed PCs will have a speedy Internet connection. What doesn't impress me though is the amount of disk space each user will have at their disposal: 256 GB. Whoever set this limit is no gamer! Final Fantasy 15 alone requires a whopping 148 GB and The Witcher 3 needs 50 GB so users will be running out of space fairly quickly.

The Shadow Box in all its glory The Shadow Box in all its glory

Here's how you access your streamed PC: first, you need a stable Internet connection with a minimum bandwidth of 15 Mbit/s. You will then need to install the Shadow app on a device of your choosing. Windows, Apple and Android devices are already supported and other platforms will follow. Once installed, the app will display a regular Windows 10 desktop that behaves just like a regular desktop. If you don't own a supported device, you can obtain a dedicated set-top box (called Shadow Box) that looks neat and comes with decent connectivity. 4 USB ports along with LAN, microphone and headphone ports will most likely cover all your needs. Your personal files will then have to be uploaded to your streamed PC (e.g. through cloud services). Gamers will be better off installing STEAM (or GamersGate etc.) on their streamed PCs and downloading titles directly to them.

Initial tests show that not all promises are met (yet). Even with 60 Mbit, users still experienced lagging and latencies (delays) and there appear to be major differences depending on the receiving device. Overall, the Shadow Box had more issues than Macs which I find surprising. Thankfully, things are looking up as Shadow are currently expanding their data centers (currently, everything is routed through Paris, Amsterdam will soon be added) and improving their codec. But while they have direct control over these factors, the Internet itself remains an element of uncertainty that is out of their reach. At present, it's hard to stream content via WLAN between rooms in your own home without issues so how is this ever going to work on a global scale? Realistically, we'll likely have to fall back on our good old network cables and pray for stable Internet connections.

The real location of your PC The real location of your PC

Naturally, there's more to streamed PCs than just gaming. Streamed PCs ultimately mean on-demand PC access from anywhere in the world. But they also mean you'll have to trust another company and a remote machine with your private data. Objectively, streamed PCs may offer better protection since providers have a vested interest in decent security and more resources than private consumers. Still, many will feel uneasy about the whole idea. Besides, everything stands and falls with Internet quality. For instance, users in the countryside might quickly discover that, more often than not, their remote machines would either be unavailable or user experiences slow to a crawl thanks to shaky connections. Then again, roaring fans and processors so hot you could fry an egg on them would be a thing of the past. Streamed PCs are accessible from any place on earth, theoretically. That's a nice thought! Prices will also determine the success of this business model. Users will likely have to pay around $34.95 a month for a duration of 12 months to use $1800 worth of equipment. I'm honestly excited to see how this concept will catch on with the gaming community and whether other offers will be made to normal users. Finally, a project worth keeping an eye on!

What I would like to know: can you see yourself using a streamed PC either for gaming or work?

Pic 2 and 3: Shadow newsroom

8 comments
  • J

    Hi Sven,

    Thanks for the interesting article.

    I often wonder why some people spend a great deal of money on a super-duper computer on which to play games.

    Many years ago there was the Mario Brothers on a Nintendo game player, now there is Playstation, X-Box and a plethora of games to play on those products, so why not use a computer for it's original concept, a game-box for games and save money to update a lap-top or desktop PC as existing units become redundant after many years, some people at present continue to use Windows XP with complete satisfaction (including some departments of the British and USA Defence Forces).

    To pay a monthly fee for computer use without seeing the computer, without the ability to have full control of the unit, without the ability to know who 'owns' the invisible unit and where in the world is the, or those computers situated.

    Should a person, or people require to pay a fee for the latest and greatest in computers and the ability to touch, turn on or off the computer, and have a new replacement when the machinery internally is made bigger, better, quicker then there are many companies from which to rent such products.

    There are too many felons reaping the goods from the billions of people on the invisible Internet 'super-highway and from my point of view we do not need more havens in the 'ether' in which our private and personal information is placed.

    Guarantees of safety and security no longer exist in this world because someone, somewhere will create a method of extracting the information and using it to their own advantage.

    Maybe the person with the 'computer-for-use-for-a-monthly-fee' is Mark Zuckerberg.

  • S

    "Objectively, streamed PCs may offer better protection since providers have a vested interest in decent security and more resources than private consumers"

    Maybe, but so much data under the control of one entity, in one "place", will be an irresistible target for serious hackers - and they only need to get lucky once.

    A data center definitely holds more appeal than a single user's PC. Still, experts consider the average end-user PC at a greater risk because of a greater lack of know how and security mechanisms.

  • E

    NVIDIA's GeForce Now for Mac is currently in beta and free, and from what I've read works well. I trust that NVIDIA's service will end up better simply because it's a big company and it makes the GPU hardware.

    I'm sure that developers will be happy if all Mac users moved to play via streaming. Developing cross-platform for the Mac isn't that easy already, and Apple deprecating OpenGL and OpenCL won't make things any better.

    I'm interested to see whether Apple will eventually target the gaming market. I'm rather skeptical about that.

  • G

    Sounding like a great idea, which I have to say I already thought of this , the only issue I can see is it would mean the charges per month make me wonder what spec PC you could afford to own for $34.95 per month and consider that you will pay that continuously without ever owing the hardware.

    As for internet connection, how many times has anyone suffered gaming lag with a PC on/under their desk,? Now consider in that your internet is streaming high quality content and your playing a top end game with maybe 64 other players and 63 of them don’t choose this option! No wonder your kill to death ratio will be 1 kill to 50 deaths, if your lucky!

    Great idea, but something I feel won’t work for most of the market at the moment including myself because until we all have 1TB internet connections it’s just never going feel right.

    I remember one day having a hard drive of 1TB and thinking I’m not going to need another because I have so much drive space. How many games can I fit on their? Answer was probably a few hundred, but that was when games took around 2GB each. Nowadays with the likes of Final Fantasy 15 you won’t even get 8 games on one. Same goes with internet speeds, we never have insane speeds for content we are using, ie enough one day to stream YouTube at 720p and now with 4K streaming I never get to watch without it buffering. One day we may all have 1TB internet but by then we will have video streams with 16k uploads and again we are back to wanting faster internet connections.

    When will the internet speeds ever far outweigh any content we want to use over the internet so that downloading a game through Steam will take only a few seconds to 1 minute? Somehow that’s a race we are always going to come 2nd place with.

    I have the same points of criticism and I can't wait to see whether they can sort these issues out.

  • H

    Thanks for keeping us up to date, Sven

    Though not in the same class, I am often using my Chromebook when my Win 10 is annoying me with another update / upgrade... Of course, Chromebook is probably unsuitable for games (not my thing), but for simpler things it flies!

  • L

    Never ! Give me my good old PC or Laptop. Who wants to be connected to the unreliable NET 24/7, with my download speeds of under 1mb/sec (829.3kb/s to be exact). I might be old fashioned, but I cannot trust my data over to any cloud... not with all that HAARP weather manipulation going on... and not to mention the NSA Spying, and Camridge Analytica capers... With 2TB External hard drives at $99.00, who needs anything else?

  • J

    It doesn't seem like something that I would be interested in. I am not a fan of saving data to any cloud. I prefer to save my work on external hard drives, or flash drives (for portability). I would rather have a high end laptop and a fast internet connection. With the right program I am able to connect to my computer from anywhere. I see no reason for me to use Shadow Technology.

  • L

    Hello Sven,

    Thank you for an insight into this tech.

    I won't be using it for a few reasons.

    Firstly, when using a PC for games, latency will affect user input to the PC as well as responses.

    Secondly, a PC for work generally has a longer useful lifespan than a PC that needs cutting edge GFX and processors, so a subscription PC will very quickly cost more than a stand-alone one in an office due to it containing unnecessary high-end components. Consider the uproar from Windows XP users being forced onto Windows 10 not so long ago. Many of those PCs must have been over 10 years old. A 10-year sub to Shadow would cost $4,194, which is not economically viable. So the equipment is worth $1,800. I think that if the average user spent that on a PC, they'd use it for more than a couple of years, so eventually the sub cost becomes higher than the $1,800 initial payment.

    I guess the final reason is control. Handing over FULL control of a computer to a company somewhere means that I won't be able to tinker with components. Furthermore, Windows 10...Blah! I'm a Linux guy.

    Linux does have its advantages. Personally, I'm running Ubuntu (alongside Windows 10) but I don't think I will ever feel quite as home on that platform.

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