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Google Rolling Out Live Streaming For YouTube 60

An anonymous reader writes "YouTube has already live-streamed a number of popular concerts, sporting events, and interviews, but most were one-time deals. Now Google wants to crank it up a notch, and has announced YouTube Live. YouTube Live integrates live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform. From the announcement: 'Today, we'll also start gradually rolling out our live streaming beta platform, which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube. The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we'll roll this offering out incrementally over time.'"
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Google Rolling Out Live Streaming For YouTube

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08, 2011 @01:28PM (#35761056)

    A live Rick Astley performance.

    • by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      Even better: when you try to view the live Rick Astley stream, you get rickrolled with the original video version.

    • I happened to catch one of the live streams about 1hr ago, where a guy from the hak5 podcast was setting up for a show and answering questions.

      He quickly grew frustrated and stopped answering questions, concluding "well, the live comments have turned into YouTube comments, so I'm going to focus on setting up". Once again proving Gabe's GIFT [penny-arcade.com].

  • of this over justin.tv or ustream.tv? Does it have a desktop client, can it work with quicktime broadcaster for mac?
  • I know youtube doesn't allow adult content but what's to stop random people from streaming porn or something with one those apps that emulates webcams and streams a video. Are they relying on their report button? How fast will that work I wonder.
    • by guruevi ( 827432 )

      That's why they said partners in good standing. It's not your random dweeb posting emo videos of himself, partner channels have thousands of viewers already and no legitimate reports against them.

      • >> It's not your random dweeb posting emo videos of himself

        No, but that's the obvious application of the technology.

    • by ackthpt ( 218170 )

      I know youtube doesn't allow adult content but what's to stop random people from streaming porn or something with one those apps that emulates webcams and streams a video. Are they relying on their report button? How fast will that work I wonder.

      Other streaming sites have this problem with copyrighted sports broadcasts. You can find them all over the internet. Usually they stay up for the full match or even a long part of it before being shutdown - week after week, month after month. If those who want to find them are the only ones aware, they will continue to prosper.

      Perhaps Google could create a little program where users could sign up as Freelance Police and report them for money. Get 25 cents each or so and you'll find people willing to spe

      • by dmomo ( 256005 )

        Grand scheme!! If they do that, I'll write a bot that will auto-create accounts to stream porn. I'll be the first to report each and every one!

      • No they will have to do it as partners in good standings as a previous post stated, Low cost police won't accomplish anything, it would 1. Be abused in the wrong way (feeds of opposing political/religious views would be censored). Secondly the stakes are far higher for youtube then the smaller streaming sites. 500 little guys spread out across multiple countries that may or may not have any respect for copyright law is one thing. Youtube/google on the other hand, that's a big red bulls eye for lawsuits. Hec
      • It's a dicey but promising business model. I don't think a freelance police force is going to work. Hell, Google's email abuse workforce can't even stop 419 spammers after a week.

        The standards would have to be pretty clear, and will have the same problems everyone does with defining them very specifically. Enforcement then means that they lose some of their legal distancing, and different culture, hate laws, pornography standards, licensing agreements, DMCA theories, and other potentially expensive argument

      • Google could create a little program where users could sign up as Freelance Police and report them for money.

        Only if I get a badge, a gun, and a DeSoto. (I'll find my own homicidal little buddy.)

    • by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

      I know youtube doesn't allow adult content but what's to stop random people from streaming porn or something with one those apps that emulates webcams and streams a video. Are they relying on their report button? How fast will that work I wonder.

      They'll probably handle it the same way that chatroulette (AKA "how many clicks to dick?") does.

      Brave new world!

  • by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Friday April 08, 2011 @01:44PM (#35761274)

    YouTube is large enough to have the big content producers jump aboard this streaming platform. I like that you can stream YouTube over a simple MPEG4 stream so maybe finally we'll have a real IPTV provider in the US that can replace my overpriced cable TV.

  • by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Friday April 08, 2011 @01:47PM (#35761328)

    Seriously.. I can't imagine what happens to bandwith when multiple people at the same ISP or office all stream the same live video at the same time.. (I think IPV6 multicast could be one of the truly bright stars pushing IPv6 adoption..)

    • by gclef ( 96311 )

      Content multicasting (as opposed to the v6 network information multicasting) is possible in IPv4, and it works identically to how content multicasting would work in v6. If content multicasting isn't used in v4, what makes you think people will use it in v6?

      • by riflemann ( 190895 ) <riflemann@NOspam.bb.cactii.net> on Friday April 08, 2011 @05:36PM (#35763842)

        The multicast address space in IPv4 is woefully small just a few /8's (each provider generally only gets an allocation of a /24 or /23). Multicast on v4 is just not feasible at internet scales.

        IPv6 is much more promising however, given the vast improvement in address space. The only problem with multicast in general, is that content providers dont like the lack of control (anyone can join a multicast stream WITHOUT the provider knowing about it). Providers want total control over every client (somewhat of a common theme with modern media delivery mechanisms).
        Perhaps the solution, is some kind of crypto on the streams that clients must negotiate the key for via unicast before getting the stream. But then its scarily close to drm.

        Either way, I'm quite excited about the possibility of v6 multicast taking off once v6 is the norm (probably not long after duke nukem forever is released).

        • Perhaps the solution, is some kind of crypto on the streams that clients must negotiate the key for via unicast before getting the stream. But then its scarily close to drm.

          The best part of this encryption scheme is that the encryption key is the same for everyone since well... the encrypted data is sent over multicast and is the same for everyone. So the moment a pirate sets sail on the high seas and copy pastes the stream info and encryption key to his buddies there will be tons of people watching the stream for free. If the key changes every X minutes you could setup a program that simply distributes the keys (perhaps using something like UDP multicast, since we have all th

        • by Comen ( 321331 )

          Not true, even with IPv4 you can use all multicast ip space over for every single source ip on the internet, that was a change with IGMP v3, source specific multicast. I think the main problem has been that you have to get all backbone providers to route multicast everywhere, even to the home, and that just has never been done that I know of, and might not even with IPv6. Today cable companies use multicast to get video eveywhere on the own network, and it really would be a big waste of bandwidth for live r

    • Seriously.. I can't imagine what happens to bandwith when multiple people at the same ISP or office all stream the same live video at the same time.. (I think IPV6 multicast could be one of the truly bright stars pushing IPv6 adoption..)

      Seriously? You can't imagine people using webcams on chat networks or even teleconferencing, using programs such as skype?

  • I wonder how long until this new service is inundated with camwhores and illegal sports or television feeds?
  • I'm wondering if these live streams will be available on Apple products (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)? Currently they're very restricted; Apple pushed out it's own YouTube app, and Apple has rejected a lot of video streaming apps. You can watch some HTML 5 video, or mp4s, but that's about it. I'd love to for this streaming to "just work", but I can't imagine Apple would allow itself to get cut out of a potential revenue stream.
    • There's a justin.tv app that works just fine. Which other ones have they rejected?
    • Apple rejected a lot of video streaming apps?
      My iPhone has:
      Netflix
      UStream
      TV.com
      Qik
      tosh.0
      Discovery channel
      Hulu plus
      [adult swim]
      Facebook video
      Al-Jazeera English

      The App Store also has:
      Slingbox
      MLB live

      Is there a video streaming app that Apple has rejected?

  • It would seem to me - if they really wanted to push VP8 into the mainstream - they could've figured out a way to do this using that protocol rather than falling back to Flash.

    I do understand, politically, why they didn't go with h.264. But choosing Flash at this point just seems backwards.

    • Timing and throttling are a bitch to deal with in HTML5 video. RTMP (still) is better at that.

    • by mldi ( 1598123 )
      Well, Flash isn't a protocol, it's a runtime. A video player in flash is an application. It can deliver different video encoded in a set number of codecs, which is what h.264 and webM is. Flash does not yet support webM. There is no viable alternative to Flash right now for streaming live video, especially with the same market penetration.
      • by Moochman ( 54872 )

        There is no viable alternative to Flash right now for streaming live video, especially with the same market penetration.

        Yes there is, it's called RTSP/RTP and it's well-supported by VLC and QuickTime (and by extension their browser plug-ins). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rtsp [wikipedia.org]

        • by mldi ( 1598123 )
          Flash isn't the protocol. I believe that was well pointed out. You need an application to actually use that protocol. Nobody's putting VLC in their web pages. There's over 98% market penetration for Flash. Name one browser plugin that is multi-platform that has that same kind of market penetration and then we'll talk.
  • I don't know why it hasn't been mentioned, but this will allow Google to threaten the broadcast news industry.

    Why watch news on TV at *all* if you're busy watching livecast after livecast on YouTube?

  • Youtube streamed the entire IPL4 cricket tournament. I appreciate that no one in the USA noticed..... :) but it was pretty cool for everyone who liked cricket. - http://www.livecricketchat.com/ [livecricketchat.com]

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