Stream Theory
I can’t tell you how annoying it is to download a huge 100-megabyte game demo only to have to unzip it and then install it.  By the end of the process, you literally have three copies of the game on your hard drive.   Hence, you can imagine my excitement when a new company named Stream Theory contacted me with a compelling pitch: how about downloading the 100+ megabyte Voyager: Elite Force demo in less than a minute?  Better yet, how about not having to install or unzip anything?  I was sold on the concept.

The hitch is that you need a fast Internet connection to try out this new form of demo downloading – it’s recommended you have a Cable Modem, but I tried it on DSL and it worked reasonably well.  But if you have a fast Internet connection, the results are truly stunning:  I clicked on a webpage icon to download Elite Force and sixty seconds later I was at the main menu of the game.   Now that’s impressive 

Using a patent-pending form of streaming technology, Stream Theory actually downloads the game as you play it.   Mind you, on my DSL connection it did take two or three minutes for the first level of the Elite Force demo to load (along with the cinematic), but I’d imagine that is the only time you have to wait for the download to catch up.  Just think: as you are playing through the first level, the rest of the levels are downloading.    While I did experience a few hiccups in the sound, the actual gameplay was smooth as silk.

Stream Theory is particularly exciting because it appears to take an existing game demo and automatically stream it – other games available here, after you download the 1.5 MB Stream player, include Quake 3: Arena and Unreal Tournament.   One would think streaming a demo might require developers to significantly re-engineer parts of the code, but based on the quality and number of demos already available, it seems the modifications needed on the part of a developer are next to none.

If you try Stream Theory, let me know what you think of it.  Based on my first encounters with the technology, I think it’s going to change the way we download demos and perhaps even the way we buy full products.