Today, Twitch is the default service when it comes to streaming video games on the internet. Tomorrow? It might be Google.
YouTube just announced a number of improvements to its streaming capabilities that are going to be of interest to anyone who plays games in front of other people.
Google’s video service now supports 60fps streaming in both 1080p and 720p, same as Twitch, but because it’s YouTube, it also supports HTML5 playback, which not only uses less resources than flash (which Twitch is stuck with), but lets you do this:
As of this week, YouTube live streams will use an HTML5 player in supported browsers. And because our HTML5 player supports variable speed playback, you can skip backward in a stream while it’s live and watch at 1.5x or 2x speed to catch back up.
Handy. Whether it convinces anyone currently using Twitch for its community (and established celebrities) and god-awful chat, though, is another matter.
Comments
16 responses to “YouTube Vs Twitch Gets Real”
“What’s a stream?” – says every Australian ever.
It’s funny because it’s true. Although, maybe less so since the introduction of Stan, Netflix, etc.
and they’re trying everything they can to prevent it.
Downstream bandwidth is fine, or at the least usable. [for netflix et al]
It’s upstream bandwidth where we really get screwed over, which basically makes streaming to twitch/youtube/anywhere really poor quality [and it also kills both up/downstream traffic for anything else needing data].
Except for those on NBN … Which is me in 7 more days >.>
FTTP too – I hope the government eventually realizes they have to keep FTTP going and drop FTTN quietly.
I’m NBN ready but I’m pretty sure they’ll try and squeeze every cent out of me to switch over.
No, they’ll just remove the copper.
or people that have cable, and have had it for years…
I have NBN, I feel fine about my internet speed…. y u mad tho?
I know what a stream is. It’s those small and narrow rivers of water that run through some places and have no real practical use other than maybe for filtering and drinking because they’re too small and slow for a water wheel or even to ship large boats down. Oh that’s right, I was meant to talk about streams,not Australia’s internet.
It’s what people who don’t have Foxtel use to watch live sports.
Streams are those things I find coming out of the telephone pit outside my house whenever I go out when it’s raining to check why my phoneline/ADSL has dropped out.
Thankfully, the government is going to eventually upgrade to a newer system which will use that exact same pit and wires to deliver internet to my house. SO MUCH TO LOOK FORWARD TO!!
I wouldn’t expect many to change over so long as Twitch has much better subscription options.
Was gonna say the same thing. Unless youtube implements a subscription model similar to twitch it’ll not change…
granted, it’s quite easy for youtube to implement the subscription model and offer even more options. Life’s great when your war chest is like a million times bigger than the competition
This kind of thing? https://www.youtube.com/channels/paid_channels
All Youtube needs now is a chat section for streams. I see many Youtubers who use Twitch for streams, then upload it straight to Youtube. Add a chat box to the stream, keep the comments section down below. Once the stream is over, save the video to youtube and remove the chat box.
it’d be nice if youtube added support for high quality audio as well
I have attempted streaming via Twitch with my PS4, however with HTML5 being the better method than flash we will need to see Sony introduce YouTube streaming as an option.
Unsure if XBONE have YouTube streaming yet, however this needs to happen.