Boltstream

Infrastructure

self-hosted live streaming

SHOW HN2020

Legend

Boltstream

Self-hosted full end-to-end live video streaming platform

github.com

#live streaming#self-hosted#rtmp#hls

510points
93comments
#48of 3,028 in 2020
Top 2%of 2020 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

9 positive, 14 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 4 critical, out of 28 comments about the project. Thread score +0.20.

Idea: 3 for, 0 againstPerformance: 0 for, 2 againstDesign: 2 for, 0 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Shows actual backend code, unlike typical self-hosted streaming sites

    From 1 comment
    • This is really great. I've seen so many of these "self-hosted live video streaming" sites show up here and this is the first one that show the actual backend code. Usually…
      VWWHFSfQ on HN
  • Timely alternative to centralized streaming platforms

    From 2 comments
    • This is really needed right now, thank you for making this! More self hosted solutions people! Less centralized things.
      HHC-Hunter on HN
    • Really great project to decentralise video
      killingtime74 on HN

Objections

  • Bandwidth costs could be high without bitrate limits or transcoding

    From 1 comment
    • Cool! Some thoughts from a former Twitch engineer: - Probably the hardest part of running these things is managing outbound bandwidth costs. You'll need to either limit inbound…
      spenczar5 on HN
  • Ingest and playback on one nginx host limits scaling

    From 1 comment
    • Cool! Some thoughts from a former Twitch engineer: - Probably the hardest part of running these things is managing outbound bandwidth costs. You'll need to either limit inbound…
      spenczar5 on HN
  • RTMP is outdated and insecure

    From 2 comments
    • Cool! Some thoughts from a former Twitch engineer: - Probably the hardest part of running these things is managing outbound bandwidth costs. You'll need to either limit inbound…
      spenczar5 on HN
    • > RTMP is very old as a protocol. Would you consider that this is, by itself, a reason not to use it?
      tleb_ on HN
  • Setup looks easy to DDoS and lacks admin/moderation tools

    From 2 comments
    • Cool! Some thoughts from a former Twitch engineer: - Probably the hardest part of running these things is managing outbound bandwidth costs. You'll need to either limit inbound…
      spenczar5 on HN
    • You'll almost certainly need admin and moderation tools soon. Expect lots of pirate streams, as well as some horrific content. You can't run a live streaming platform without…
      OpuRahman on HN
  • Python backend is odd for performance-critical streaming

    From 1 comment
    • Strange to see a python backend for such a performance critical application.
      sim_card_map on HN

Requests

  • Support a modern ingest protocol beyond RTMP such as SRT or RIST

    From 3 comments
    • Cool! Some thoughts from a former Twitch engineer: - Probably the hardest part of running these things is managing outbound bandwidth costs. You'll need to either limit inbound…
      spenczar5 on HN
    • > Please don't keep using RTMP. ... You might consider accepting an alternative modern protocol. What would you recommend as an alternative modern protocol to RTMP for shipping…
      toomuchtodo on HN
    • (disclaimer: I'm participating in the libRIST development) RIST! It's a well thought out protocol without technical debt (which SRT has), supports multicast (if you need it),…
      gizah on HN
  • Add admin and moderation tools

    From 2 comments
    • You'll almost certainly need admin and moderation tools soon. Expect lots of pirate streams, as well as some horrific content. You can't run a live streaming platform without…
      OpuRahman on HN
    • Cool! Some thoughts from a former Twitch engineer: - Probably the hardest part of running these things is managing outbound bandwidth costs. You'll need to either limit inbound…
      spenczar5 on HN
  • Support for multi-platform simultaneous broadcasting

    From 1 comment
    • I have some questions for people in this field. Is there a good way to broadcast to Twitch, YouTube, and Reddit simultaneously? Is it a bad idea to target multiple communities?…
      echelon on HN

Questions

  • How widely deployed is the nginx rtmp/vod stack in the industry

    From 1 comment
    • This is really great. I've seen so many of these "self-hosted live video streaming" sites show up here and this is the first one that show the actual backend code. Usually…
      VWWHFSfQ on HN
  • How is pay-per-view enforced with plain HLS playback

    From 1 comment
    • This is really great. I've seen so many of these "self-hosted live video streaming" sites show up here and this is the first one that show the actual backend code. Usually…
      VWWHFSfQ on HN
  • How is long-term storage of recorded streams handled

    From 1 comment
    • This is really great. I've seen so many of these "self-hosted live video streaming" sites show up here and this is the first one that show the actual backend code. Usually…
      VWWHFSfQ on HN
  • Has load testing or scalability been measured

    From 1 comment
    • Have you performed any load testing or measured performance and scalability?
      artfulhippo on HN
  • Why HLS instead of DASH with MSE

    From 1 comment
    • > Playback via standard HLS Why HLS instead of DASH + MSE? Isn't HLS Apple only?
      shmerl on HN

Alternatives named

  • Twitch

    From 2 comments
    • It's a chicken and egg problem where there is not much point in building your own whizbang streaming platform and have no one come to it. Twitch is getting increasingly…
      keyle on HN
    • How secure do you think Twitch (Amazon), Facebook Gaming (Facebook), and Youtube Live (Google) are at the top of the streaming world? We’ve recently seen Mixer (Microsoft) fall,…
      eli_front on HN
  • YouTube Live and Facebook Gaming

    From 1 comment
    • How secure do you think Twitch (Amazon), Facebook Gaming (Facebook), and Youtube Live (Google) are at the top of the streaming world? We’ve recently seen Mixer (Microsoft) fall,…
      eli_front on HN
  • PeerTube live streaming

    From 1 comment
    • Peertube is getting live streaming capability.... actually you can check it right now on https://live.canard.tube/videos/watch/5e7b916e-c5b5-4996-a970-cf106967fe32 The p2p part…
      2Gkashmiri on HN
  • AWS IVS

    From 1 comment
    • Having worked with AWS IVS, which is using the same infrastructure design as Twitch (or the other way around), it only accepts RTMP (well RTMPS to be fair) as an input. To me it…
      nowahe on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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