Well, after a few months absence from the camera and the Scene of Online Streaming, I am back!!
I am back, I am back, I am back, yay !!! ( Read this part singingly to the appropriate tune!! LOL and dont forget to move your hands to the tune!!! LOL ).
Ok But all jokes aside, I have begun test streaming again!! Im not back full powered and Im not even sure if I will continue it as of yet!! But let me tell you guys It feels great to be back and getting in touch with old friends again!! I owe this to a few that Im going to name here: @fireman17, @CM, @Jimmymac, and Bubba aka Steiny !!! I also want to thank @iellie for making me feel welcome on Ustream and in her chat :) Her Ustream page is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iellie
I have come back on 2 platforms now and I will continue to be on both platforms Yahoo Live (http://live.yahoo.com/paykan) and USTREAM (http://www.ustream.com/paykan's-world) as long as my PC can handle streaming live video on 2 places simultaneously.
Let me tell U that since I left USTREAM a few months ago, a lot has changed!! A ton of new features have been added, Im not even going to bother talking about them cause first of all I dont have the time right now and Itll make this entry way too long and second of all I dont know many of the features yet myself just cause I didnt have time to play around with them yet!!!
So far I have experimented with 3 different platforms for streaming live video. Let me give U a little run down of each in my own experience. (Keep in mind your experience may vary and this is mostly just my opinion ).
Ok lets start with the biggest and most well known one USTREAM.tv . With a funding of 13.1 Million Dollars (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/29/confirmed-live-video-on-youtube-this-year/) it is a fairly large pond with many big fish such as Hollywood Actor Dane Cook and G4Tech TV's Leo Laporte and former TECH TV host Chris Pirillo, to name only a few!! USTREAM also has seen many big events from a Hannah Montana Concert which actually crashed the servers due to a huge number of viewers to the many Presidential Candidate speeches and a recent one on one with LL COOL J that actually happened today (August 27th).
However for a newcomer it can be very hard to feel at home and one with the crowed at Ustream.tv. This is because of 2 reasons. First of all USTREAM has a moderating system in place that I do NOT agree with. Certain people who R called OPs (operators) run and moderate chat rooms. Yeah it gives USTREAM a cleaner environment but in many cases the owners of channels ( the person who streams the show) dont have a clue whats going on in the chat and who is being kicked or banned for what reason, in part because they totally trust the OPs and in some cases because they could just care less!! this unfortunately leaves a lot of room for certain OPs to do as they want based on personal problems they may have with a certain user who hasnt even acted inappropriately at all to give the OPS reason for a kick or ban!! Ive seen a lot of that happen on USTREAM and I have even experienced some of it myself!!.
Second of all many of the featured streamers on USTREAM were there from the very beginning and have therefor formed a very tight network of friendship with each other making it almost impossible for a newcomer to insert himself in. As many of U may already know I had an unfortunate and very unpleasant situation on USTREAM which lead to me being forced to leave the platform a few months ago. Since then many things have changed including a managerial shift which was caused by Tim Villanueva ( Chief Technology Officer of USTREAM) the person who forced me to leave the platform , resigning and stepping down.Many of the people who were involved in that situation have now seen the light and have changed their attitude and I am good friends with them now. But every time I step in to a USTREAM show and chat I still feel a lot of resentment towards me and a feeling of heaviness settles on me. Plus lets face it Im a very small fish in a very big pond when it comes to USTREAM and it was the same before I left the platform!. Im not very entertaining and definitely not even an average looking guy. Which brings me to my next point, being a guy I do not have the BOOBS factor (No disrespect to my female friends and streamers out there, U know I love yall ), and this all leads to me getting an average of 0-2 viewers a day on USTREAM !!!In terms of video image quality with the setup I use which is a Canon ZR200 Mini DV camcorder as my camera and with USTREAM's highest quality settings, Its still fairly average, sometimes even below average and has a fair amount of pixelation at times!.
When I was forced to leave USTREAM ( My USTREAM broadcaster was disabled and account deleted ) I immediately looked into other available platforms. Infact I pulled a trick on USTREAM when my Broadcaster was disabled before my page was deleted,that Im sure they didnt expect me to do. What I did was I started streaming on 4 other platforms and embeded those streams on my USTREAM page!! This was the only way I could let my group of followers and friends know what had happened. Included in the 4 platforms I tried were Justin.tv and Yahoo Live. After an emergency get together of me and my online friends Justin.tv seemed to be a logical choice for my new platform!
(This decision was based on the fact that JTV is more mainstream and well known than the other choices)
My streaming on Justin.tv was very short lived since Justin.tv shut my account down as soon as they could!!! Thats how close Justin.tv was with USTREAM at the time! The video quality I had on Justin.tv with theire best quality settings at best sucked big time and I got a video delay of about a minute and half!! While on USTREAM the video delay is usually about 30 seconds or so. After my account was shut on Justin.tv I jumped on a new born project called Yahoo Live!.
On February 17th,2008 my channel on Yahoo Live was created and shortly after I went on air on Yahoo Live. Of the 3 platforms I have tried and tested Yahoo Live by far has the best video image quality with my equipment I listed above. Unlike USTREAM and Justin.tv Yahoo Live doesnt give U a choice of tweaking picture quality Frame rate or anything like that. Even with that Ive had the best quality video image on Yahoo Live. When I joined Yahoo Live it was only 10 days old!! Now you probably dont know this but its been reported that Yahoo Live's development team is a 6 person personnel! Not something you would expect from a large company like Yahoo!.Infact here are two very interesting articles about Yahoo Live that you should definately read:
Yahoo Live has many technical shortcomings, one of which is a very non secure chat system. The ban or kick commands of the chat are faulty at best and users can come back within a few seconds sometimes even with the same user name!!! This has made Yahoo Live home to many annoying groups such as 4Chan and the many others out there!! They frequent the chats harassing the streaming person and the viewers and keep demanding such things as " Shoe on Head!!! Keyboard on Head!!" The streams and chats can easily be hacked by even novices in hacking!!! While other video streaming services can be assumed semi safe for younger adults and people with good taste, the same does not stand for Yahoo Live as I have too often seen naked guys with their penis's hanging out and masturbating on cam!!! or my favorite ,naked chicks on cam :) Now I love those!!! :)
However all that aside Yahoo Live is one small tiny pond and has more room of growth for tiny microscopic fish like myself! Infact the following is a screen capture of my Yahoo Live profile page with my stream stats:
Here is my Yahoo Live stream stats:
52912 Live Viewers
936 Broadcasts
41.5 days Time Live
Even with all its shortcomings I have found a lot of good friends on Yahoo Live such as miss @tendersphinx !! Yahoo Live also has its share of big fish and its own grown celebrities!! The Democratic National Convention was live on Yahoo Live the other day as it was on USTREAM!! Sheena TV is definately worth mentioning as she has become an iJustine of Yahoo Live and the Former American Idol winner Jordin Sparks frequents Yahoo Live all this coupled with the many DJs and other artists that often make it to the front page of Yahoo Live lifecasting!!
The other day when I first came back on both platforms simultaneously within a matter of minutes I got 15 viewers on Yahoo Live and 1 viewer on USTREAM and the second day I got 0 viewers on USTREAM all day while I had 10 viewers on Yahoo Live!
I guess what im trying to say is that these platforms each have their own positive and nagative points, but I will try my best to bring them closer together and unite both the viewers and streamers of these platforms !
Before I close this entry I wanted to mention that my friend JD Carr has lost thousands of dollars due to his 2 websites www.gotwebmojo.com and www.gotpartymojo.com being shut down because NING.com has screwed up! JD my thoughts and prayers are with you. I hope you come back and even stronger than before !! :)
wow thats one long ass entry!! I hope I didnt bore U :)
Please feel free to leave comments :)
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