OnLive is both a product and a service. The service is simply this: streaming gameplay over the Internet, without lag, playable over either a PC, Mac, or a set-top box connected to your television. It sounds absolutely bonkers, but Perlman's pitch was absolutely genuine. Essentially, they've designed and created a set of high-performance servers that not only run the games you'd be playing, but also export the performance data as low-latency video to your computer or set-top box. All the heavy lifting -- the 3D computations, etc. -- are handled by these servers, so there's no need for your box to do any of the work. Without going into details, Perlman claimed that the breakthrough lay in reconsidering the way that video compression is handled. When watching streaming video, even a slight lag is noticeable, but it doesn't necessarily ruin the watching experience. In an online game, however, it can make all the difference in the world. By focusing on how the compression occurs, OnLive purports to reduce lag to as low as 80 milliseconds, which they say is good enough to enable a functional experience.

Frankly, at some point, all this techie talk just starts sounding like mynah birds chattering. The true test will come when the product goes live in the Winter of this year. While pricing was unavailable, the one requirement Perlman did announce was that the minimum download speed OnLive would demand is 1.5 Mbps -- which, if you've been paying attention, is swiftly becoming the de facto speed for many users. While the rest of it is still unknown, let's talk about the rest of the service.

First of all, Perlman was quick to point out that the OnLive service would run on PCs and Macs of modest capability, though he stopped short of making any specific hardware recommendations. For those eschewing the computer, a set-top box unit was available. This unit contained USB, Micro-USB, Video/audio out, Ethernet, and S/PDIF optical out ports, and was roughly hand-sized. The controller will come in both wired and wireless versions. But the star of the show was the service itself, and this is that part that blew me away.