Operating in a similar fashion as the popular Slingbox, this device connects to your two favorite consoles at your home and allows you to access your gaming system remotely from your computer using the Spawn Player, which is a free download. The Xbox 360, Xbox, Playstation 3, Playstation 2, and Gamecube are all compatible, but only the PS3 and Xbox 360 controllers have native support. Adapters will be sold for the other consoles or you can map your favorite controller with any system. Want to play Xbox 360 games with your PS3 controller? Apparently this device will let you do just that.
The Spawn HD-720 will also support high-definition video up to 720p at 30 frames per second and will trasmit PCM and AAC-LC stereo audio at speeds up to 256Kbit/sec per channel. Sounds great, right?
Well, there is one caveat. You’ll need access to the internet while you are on the road and pretty solid uplink capabilities in your home. To play in standard definition, each remote player needs a minimum connection of 500kbps, but 1Mbps is recommended. To play in high definition, each remote player needs a minimum of 2Mbps with 3 to 5Mbps being the recommended connection speed. One would imagine that these speeds would be difficult to obtain at your standard Holiday Inn. Even if you find a good broadband connection on the road, most home internet offerings have low uplink speeds and this will likely only allow you to play your games in standard definition. Latency may also be a problem, which is a killer when you are playing twitch-style games. If you own a Slingbox, you may be familiar with these unfortunate limitations.
There is some good news, though. The Spawn HD-720 will also support game play access from inside your home if you want to set up a LAN party. In this mode, Spawn Labs claims that you should be able to play in high-definition 720p video at 30 frames per second, with minimal latency. Another cool feature is that, in addition to remote play, the Spawn HD-720 allows remote spectators the ability to view your game play in real-time. Just imagine: with this mode, you now could conceivably watch the live games between the other owners in your Madden franchise.
Does The Spawn HD-720 interest you? Let us know below. And if you do buy it for remote game playing, just remember to put your favorite game in the console before you leave or you might excitedly fire up this device to find out that your little sister just finished playing High School Musical 3.
The Spawn HD-720 ships on January 10, 2010.
Source: Spawn Labs
