The problem they'll have the most trouble with in live streaming is simultaneous viewers. YouTube can fudge it with On Demand videos now by using progressive download and a lighttpd plugin, but streaming live to that large of an audience will choke them.

Wow, 105 people watching now at probably 300kbps and it's incredibly blocky and jittery. Now it's having technical issues, off the air.

The legal ramifications will be interesting once it is released to the masses and not just a few partners.

Org's such as the UFC or NFL will hate this far more than they hate justin.tv/ustream.tv because it will make live streaming more mainstream for the masses.

Except of course that YouTube won't allow their site to turn into http://www.justin.tv/directory?order=hot&lang=en

The current sites could prevent it, but they have VCs to impress and no assets to protect.

i see a lot of "canned" content getting streamed over there. what's the point of that?

i can just as easily download that stuff, in higher quality, watch it whenever and wherever i want, and i can even pause and seek.

It's communal viewing. Watch a program and chat about what is happening.

I'm thinking it would be a bigger problem if people can stream from their phones. You would be able to see a lot of different angles, and behind the scenes type of footage.

and then someone goes Photosynth on the footage and we get 3D all-angles live feeds.

> Live streams will only be available on YouTube proper (you can’t embed it in widgets yet), and YouTube won’t be archiving the footage, either.

Someone make an archiver of youtube live steams.

I think this is a natural step that youtube should be taking and I would say good bye to most of the online streaming sites.

I don't think youtube will open up the live stream feature to the masses, where anyone can live stream, like ustream or JTV because their infrastructure can't handle it and honestly most of the stuff regular people produce are horrible and a waste of resources.

They will in the short run offer live streaming to content partners and special people (celebrities) that produce content that people actually want to watch and has production value.

Ustream is known for having celebrities on their platforms, but once Youtube live stream platform comes out they will be gone. No celebrity will be able to resist the amount of eyeballs that youtube can bring and the switching cost is very low. It would be safe to say that people who have Ustream accounts also have Youtube accounts and Ustream hasn't signed any exclusive deals with celebrities.

Youtube will be the distribution platform of the premium live streaming content and the rest will be for the low brow stuff and illegal content.

I don't get why this is being down voted, but i don't care. It will happen just wait.