Google I/O is fast-approaching. It’s actually a week away and enthusiasts and watchers like yours truly who won’t be in San Francisco for the annual developers conference will be left with one option if they have any hopes of being up to date with the many announcements expected to be made: live stream. Yes we can do that via the official I/O 15 application that went live on the Play Store just a few days ago but since there are a number of us in the office and we don’t want to be zombies staring at tiny screens, we can stream the conference live via YouTube. Not just at 30 frames per second as has been the norm but at 60fps as well.
Google has now made it possible to live stream at 60fps on YouTube. Anyone with a browser (HTML5) and a capable device should be able to live stream at 60fps. Users can also go back a few seconds in case they missed anything in the live stream and also fast-forward to catch up with the event.
Since applications that use YouTube’s live streaming API will also benefit from this, it becomes particularly exciting for gamers as gaming at 30fps leaves room for improvement and 60fps presents just that.
While Google has always been quick to update YouTube on the desktop, its mobile apps particularly the Android one have for some time been a step behind unless it is visuals like Material Design we’re talking about. The Android app is also getting some love with the option to stream at 60fps appearing for some users. This comes at a time when personal live streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat that feature live streams with questionable quality are surging in popularity. We’re yet to see if Google plans to enter that space in any form but for now, it could bank on YouTube’s global popularity to finally stand up to live streaming app Twitch which it unsuccessfully tried to acquire a while back.
