Friday, September 17, 2010

YouTube and Live Streaming

While I was checking my Facebook, I came across a site that my blockmate form college posted. It said that YouTube was about to launch their new live streaming feature. Or update their present one, something like that. Anyway, unsure of what that meant even though I’ve heard of it, I decided to ask my boyfriend about it. He works in the I.T. field so I figured he could explain it to me, and I was hoping, in terms that even I could understand.

Well, he tried. And I sorta got it, although I likened it to watching a TV show on my computer through the Internet. He acquiesced to that, but I think that I still didn’t quite get it. But this is what I’m sticking to. So the way I understood it is that YouTube now offers live streaming, as opposed to their cache of uploaded videos. So I could actually watch something in real time, if I wanted to.

As interesting as that sounds, there are still a few glitches. One would be the Internet connection. Or the speed of it anyway. To maintain a steady flow of the video and the data, I think that one would need a fairly fast connection to keep it real time. Otherwise, it would be choppy and lagging. And unlike a video, when a part is skipped, you can’t go back to see it again. Another might be the resolution. I’m not entirely sure on which party that aspect falls – YouTube or the place where the feed is coming from – so I’m not entirely sure how that will turn out.

I haven’t really seen it. I do want to check it out, just to see if YouTube was able to pull it off, and just how they did it.

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