Remote Streaming Face-Off! Parsec vs Pro & Gaming Services: Image Quality, Latency Tests [Sponsored]

Content sponsored by Parsec. In a deep and wide-ranging analysis, Digital Foundry has been commissioned by Parsec to independently test remote streaming services for image quality in both 4:2:0 and 4:4:4 modes and of course, latency across a range of applications. Both remote working professional solutions and gaming-focused streaming services are stacked up here in a deep dive test, some months in the making!

[ParsecGaming]

We greatly appreciate you all for taking the time to not only create this, but complete the testing as a whole ❤

We also appreciate all of you in these here comments for your kind words. We're nothin' without ya!

[zaidlacksalastname]

Imagine your product being so good you sponsor a video where it's compared with everything else

[alexsilva]

This is probably the best and most impartial sponsored video I've seen. Great analysis 👍

[blackhoggaming]

If there is any sponsored video on YouTube that is clearly not shilling for the company sponsoring, it’s this one.

[LordLiquidBaconII]

My favorite thing about Parsec and Steam Remote Play is to play fighting games that don't have rollback netcode or any built in online like emulated console games like the older Dragon Ball fighters with friends (both these options aren't as good as a well implemented version of rollback netcode but it is passable).

[genmasamurai]

Parsec is the absolute best. I use it daily for basic computing as well as gaming and almost never have any issues. Free version is amazing. Considering subscribing just to support the devs, it is THAT good.

[TheVentrexian]

Parsec has breathed new life into fighting games on PC that use 20 year old netcode solutions, even new ones using it.

[manuel]

The problem is that all these latency tests highly depend on your location. You could get completely different results at your location and with your setup.

[guspaz]

I literally just installed Parsec for the first time today for sharing a PC over a home network. With under 5ms total encode/decode/network latency, I swear it feels local. If it wasn't for the free version's 4:2:0 encoding, you wouldn't be able to tell the computer was in a different room and not under the desk. However one big drawback for me is that it requires hardware video encode on the host. I wanted to use this for my work VDI machine, and VDIs (something like a VMWare instance running in your employer's server room) don't usually have hardware accelerated graphics. So no hardware encode, and thus Parsec. I'm stuck with remote desktop (which even over a LAN is much slower than Parsec, let alone over a VPN to another city), or even worse, VMWare Horizon, which makes remote desktop seem lightning fast by comparison.

In any case, for my LAN use case, Parsec is amazing, enormously better than remote desktop.

[zerocal]

Thank you very much for this. You've convinced me to try Parsec. Your review was in-depth, detailed, everything tech & business peeps need! 👍👍

[corckie]

One important matter that you have not mentioned is that Moonlight is capable of 120Hz stream with 150mps bitrate. It's far better in both quality and latency than parsec can achieve. Since discovered, I never returned back to parsec.

[guspaz]

Did you compare Parsec latency in h.264 versus h.265 modes? You appear to have done all the testing with h.265, but I've seen reports that on some systems, h.264 can offer much lower latency.

[pretendawatch]

We've been looking at work streaming options and this video was super helpful. Thanks so much!

[ouvreboite]

It would have been interesting to include Shadow PC, as they are one of the rare cloud service that gives you access to a full windows environment

[MrKadjit]

Just to say in a bitrate limited situation (my upload is 42mbps max) Moonlight in h265 is WAY better than parsec in video quality, latency and number of stutters.
Am i doing something wrong with parsec or is moonlight really better than parsec for limited bitrate situation ?

[richardx]

I use it to play Smash online with my friends, Its WAY better than when I play on my switch with it's built in online.

[abdullaal-naimi]

Wow! I've been hoping DF would do a Parsec vs Moonlight vs others, but they went above and beyond and even included enterprise level solutions. Only DF can provide in-depth tech analysis of this level.

I personally use Moonlight on my Nvidia Shield TV to stream locally to my bedroom TV and I absolutely love it. It's 100% gamepad friendly. Parsec on the other hand is less friendly to my USB-less Shield.

[HoleLeashIt]

Great video! I use Moonlight a lot, but only through my LAN so I could play my PC games on my couch. Can’t really tell much difference, except that I run the game at 1080p and streamed to a 4k TV

[potatothistle]

Although being a sponsored video, this was a nicely detailed explanations, observations and tests. Thanks!

[jscs]

Amazingly production of content, i was looking for something like this for weeks on