The Official Twitch Blog just announced that they now officially have video player controls in HTML5 instead of simply in Flash.
A couple months ago, the most popular streaming service currently available, Twitch, announced that they would be moving from Flash to HTML5 and Java in due time. This was met with joy by streamers and viewers alike but the process has been pretty slow due to the expenses involved within it. Now, it seems like Twitch has finally taken the first step into becoming an HTML-friendly site by allowing the controls to go from Flash to HTML5 and Java. Soon, Twitch will be boasting a full HTML5 player.
To many, this might seem like a small change but Twitch users and even more so, streamers, have been clamoring for this change for months on end. You see, the fact that Twitch runs on Flash is actually very tasking to both streamers and viewers as it unnecessarily uses a large part of your CPU to operate. Other streaming services like Youtube are already providing HTML5 players and it is working wonderfully as they can provide higher quality without being too tasking to people who don’t own a high-end PC.
Thus, what this change will eventually allow is for Twitch streamers to up the quality of their streams (hopefully) and for viewers to watch streams in higher quality without the need of high-end PCs. To the eSports market, especially the Fighting games, this is a very nice addition as they require high framerates and high quality streaming to allow viewers to see all the actions. Slower games like RTS or Action RTS (MOBAs) won’t be as affected but they could potentially look nicer.
For now this feature will only be available on channel pages first and the implementation of HTML5 will be a “gradual rollout” according to Twitch.
