Twitch shortens streaming delay by a third
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If you’ve ever streamed on Twitch.tv, you might have noticed that there is a significant delay between the real-time gameplay and what the viewers can see. The Twitch team knows that’s an issue for some people, and so they’re working on reducing the delay to a more manageable time window. While this could potentially cause some
If you’re interacting with your audience, this is a real game changer. If the chatroom attached to your stream is seeing your gameplay with a significant delay, it can be a real pain to parse what they’re talking about. The smaller the delay, the easier it is to have a real back and forth discussion on your stream.
When you add in collaborative games, the delay reduction is even more important. For example, I’ve tried to play the Jackbox Party Pack with my European friends over Twitch, but the stream delay made it nigh-on impossible. To get it working, I ended up piping my PS4’s output into a Google Hangout video stream. It solved the problem, but it involved an elaborate hard capture set-up. If I could just hit the share button on the PS4 controller to stream to , it would make the process a lot less tedious.
Despite having clear benefits, there is a downside to having a smaller delay window. Twitch makes it clear that people with shaky internet connections will likely end up . While that’s certainly an unfortunate side effect, that’s no reason to force longer delays on everyone.
Thankfully, streamers are in control here. If you’re not interacting with your live audience, the delay makes no real difference, so you can safely leave it on. But if you think you and your community will benefit from less delay, the option is available to you. Truth be told, I’m actually quite impressed at the way this is being handled.
If you head over to the on the Twitch site, existing users should see a toggle labeled “Reduce Stream Delay.” The feature is still in beta, though, so don’t be surprised if there are occasional hiccups. Hopefully, will minimize the buffering issues in the coming months.
Does all of this sound foreign to you? I whole-heartedly recommend checking out Twitch, and seeing what it has to offer. You can quickly find hundreds of people streaming , and you can even find professional content produced by big names like or .
And if you actually want to stream your own content, it’s never been easier. Both the and can stream out to the world with the press of a button. And if you’re a PC gamer, is what you want to use to get started. And once you start streaming regularly, you’ll never want to play by yourself again.