The slingbox of video games. spawn box...Really awesome?

[smoothy]

Okay guys

Here is my review of this thing. Firstly let's start with what it is:

The spawnbox hd-720, it's like a sling box but for video games. it's selling in the US for $200 your probably thinking that's expensive but for what it does its pretty mind blowing. Basically put this device turns your games consoles into a data center for games which can be played on your home network or remotely anywhere in the world. I got a friend in the US who just invited me to join his network and I played a XBOX 360 game remotely and I am in the UK. It just works and it's amazing. I have got an 8mbps connection with a sustained rate of 5.5mbps and an upload of 512kbps but only get a sustained rate of 280kbps. I was streaming it in low quality mode as I am in the UK and he's in in the US. If he was in the UK I could of done 720p. Anyway the picture quality is awesome, you have full control of the xbox 360, menus, dashboard, you can turn the console on and off. It's just like the xbox is in your home playing locally. Games are played either from the consoles hard drive or from it's optical disc. The company wants to eventually even allow streaming of bluray discs and dvd's.

You only need like a sustained internet speed of 1.5 mbps for standard definition and 3-5mbps for 720p. It's a bit like otoy, onlive, gaikai and playcast-media who are some of the other cloud gaming companies who are releasing soon.

Here is an article:

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/24/ha...-games-to-you/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Well that article is dated from late last year, Spawn Labs continue to make updates to their software and have the latency really down now, when I played it I didn't experience any lag. Okay first person shooters will create a little bit more of lag than say a racing game or little big planet kind of games.

By the way, you can play 720p games on your network even with tiny uploads as at home it doesn't need your upload speed. Only when your playing remotely around the world it uses it. So when you are inviting friends to play on your console.

So here is an example:

I could purchase the HD-720 box and connect my wii and ps2 to the device and then onto my my network. Then I could invite some of you to have access to my consoles without you guys needing to own the console to begin with. You guys just play it with any entry level PC on a browser. You can either have full control to play games on the console in single player mode. Or join me in multi player. You get to set for how many hours or days you allow people to play on your console.

Now here is the amazing thing

Imagine not having to buy games or games consoles anymore.

You could just buy the HD-720 and connect your current console up and then invite people and they could do the same and invite you and let you play on their console that you don't have and vice versa.

We could set up on here a list of everyone in the UK, USA or rest of Europe who have bought a spawn box and we could all invite each other for a gaming session. This company has basically made the P2P of video gaming.

Isn't it amazing google spawn labs and read all about it

[cybereality]

Sounds interesting but if its not in 3D why bother?

[smoothy]

I thought you could do 3d on it, it should be possible. All it is doing is sending it's signal remotely. Can't we already send a 3d signal from one PC to another PC in your home, if so then this is definitely possible. But you would probably require a bit of extra bandwidth.

I have been doing some more reading about this spawn box and I do really find it quite amazing. I think there are probaly some people that think this kind of sharing would be illegal so I been researching it a bit. It really isn't.

I read the spawn labs website. They never actually say that you can invite someone to play a single player gaming session on your console. They only say that you can invite someone to play against you instead of them having to come over to your house to play a 2 player game.

So this isn't illegal. It's what people do with the concept that can make something illegal. For instance Bit torrent was designed to move large chunks of legal files quickly using P2P in an efficient way. It was very successful but like with all P2P it can be used in an illegal manner. But this is far different to general P2P. In P2P mass amounts of data are distributed illegally, we are not talking a few hundred digital copies but thousands if not millions of copies daily moving across the internet.

What the spawn box does on the other hand is just letting you share a game with another friend. Which is just like you giving your games or games console to a friend for a day or a few days and vice versa. There's nothing wrong with that.

As well I just read an internet article the other day which said 30% of gamers in the USA do not buy games or games consoles. They like to play for free as in download demos and go over to a friends house to play on their consoles or borrowing them.

Also Spawn Labs has got a number of investments with some pretty big capital. Such as recently 1 million dollars. I don't think their investors would invest that kind of money if they knew this was totally illegal and that the company would be sued upon. Nothing that they have done has even gone against the EULA. I don't think even games console companies even care. Because you still need the spawn box to start, then the games console and next the games. So everyone wins.

Now of course there will be people that would invite others to come and play a single player session on their computer and probably say someone like Sony would eventually perhaps put a stop to this if that's possible. But right now because it's in it's infancy. The company is a new company not many people have the spawn box and it is limited to the persons bandwidth and as internet connections aren't so good in the US, console companies know that for every user a spawn owner could only invite there could only be one user at a time to play on their console remotely because they have a low upload connection. US speeds are also much lower and less reliable than in Europe. Still it works as for the service for you to play remotely a large upload connection is not needed as long as that person your streaming from isn't too far, unless you have a fast internet connection of 6mbps sustained like I have then this spawn gaming rocks. Also I don't think Sony cares as for their new experiences such as 3d gaming, you need an actual console. They probably think the spawn box is a great way for their own customers to demo the PS3 and then purchase one.

I would say this spawn box is ideal for Japan and European markets as we have some pretty amazing connections and with a mass customer base for fiber optic connections on the horizon, this market works. So it would be a long time before the console market even stops something like this and it probably can't even be stopped and perhaps it doesn't need to be stopped as there is no wrong doing in spawn labs business model. One other thing I must bring up, PSU.com is really big and very good playstation website a bit like a gamespot but for just PS3 gaming. They have for many years been running their own game sharing service on their forums. You need at least 500 posts to gain access to a special part of their forum. I don't quite know how it works but I think it's something to do with PSN, you can trade games digitally or something a long those lines. Lot's of people are doing it, I never got into it. But if this whole game sharing was illegal Sony would of put a stop to it years ago but PSU continue to run this service. So I see spawn labs here to stay and we in Europe with are connection speeds are the ideal market for this great device. So we should all get into this spawn gaming and share each other's games.