Seeing new live stream platforms coming online and seeing some old ones disappear I often get asked if the livestream platform matters, and for me it’s a resounding yes! There was/is a lot of complacency in live streaming something that is often driven by the platforms. When COVID was THE talking point and streaming became a big thing not just for gamers it was about availability and often it had to be free because the world was reeling under COVID restrictions. Nowadays there isn’t those restrictions but instead there are massive hikes in prices due to cost of living increases and the mahoosive hangover from COVID that still lingers on…
Now remember that this post is about my opinion, and others will dispute what I am saying, so this is just a general post about the platforms right now and how I feel about them. I’m going to go right in straight away about my biggest gripe about the livestream platforms and that is how they nearly all seem to be rooted back in 2019. Take Twitch for example, the actual livestreaming part hasn’t changed in years. Still stuck with RTMP, x.264 codec (poor quality), 8k maximum bit rate and resolution capped at 1080p is, in my opinion, laughable. Owned as they are by Amazon, they have huge server capacity and could easily do so much more to advance livestreaming. I know they are bringing forward some changes but they appear to be only available to nvidia 40xx owners with huge pockets. Even HEVC and other codecs could be implemented as the RTMP+ or RTMP Enhanced specs are out there and have been for quite a long time. HEVC has been on graphics cards/pc’s for years and offers almost twice the quality at the same bit rate. Don’t start me on offering better ingest protocols like SRT which offers buffers, latency setting, resending of packets rather than the if it’s not happening drop it way that RTMP works. Remember RTMP has had NO updates since 2012, something that in the tech industry is literally a lifetime…. Mind you SRT seems to have pretty much lost it’s ground in the “home” streaming marketplace, though 90% of the big tech companies use it for TV broadcasts. SRT *should* be available for many more but the platforms seems oblivious to it really, though a few of the platforms that enable multi-streaming like Castr and Restream offer it. Of course to use it then there are fees, and that seems to be a theme with livestreaming, free is fairly easy but the quality and choices are limited whilst a subscription or fee is needed to move to the next level. Couple that with the common held believe that a livestream should be free and you can see why there has been so little development and need to improve things. At least youtube has seen fit to improve things, slowly, with support for RTMP+/Enhanced which at least allows HEVC and AV1 to be used for much better quality, and you can pretty easily stream 4k nowadays. However we are still stuck for most people with RTMP ingest with all the issues that entails, rather than a streaming protocol with error correction built-in. You still see stuttering and bad quality streams just because there is no way to correct things if there are tinternet hiccups at the time of your stream. You take your streaming life into your own hands if you have an event planned for a Saturday evening for example! I cannot really see why they fail to get better streaming on board, but of course, they are in this to make money, so actually making better quality streams isn’t at the front of the queue really.
So here we are in 2024, and livestreaming for the most part appears to have stalled. We need a new platform to come along and shake things up. Live.space has just come to my attention, and whilst not perfect, at least it offers SRT streaming and has some decent ideas moving forward. You can follow me on there using this link HERE but most of my livestream stuff is still on youtube HERE
I am liking peertube as a youtube alternative, and my main channels are available over on makertube, so if you like ad free videos/stream then check out my channel on that platform HERE
As always, I welcome posts/comments/shares in fact any interaction! Take car y’all and catch you all later!
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