A few days ago, Youtube premiered a new live streaming service that they will hopefully be offering soon, called Youtube Live. Youtube test drove this with a few of their partners, featuring a schedule that had a constant live feed going on throughout the day, with a special embed-able web app made just for it . To me, this feels like something that should have been coming for a very long time, So this feels very much of an “ugh… finally” sort of thing for me, but I am definitely excited for it.

All the broadcaster needs is a webcam (external or internal), or a firewire camera. The video shows up in the regular video box, along with something that Youtube is referring to as “live comments”, basically a chat module. I’ve heard that the chat wasn’t really up to par, and that the video was somewhat laggy, though I’ve heard great things about it as well.

I was unable to watch one of the live shows, but I able to talk with Joe Landor about his experience with the new service. He said that on his 20 mbp/s internet connection, the video wasn’t laggy at all, and that the chat looked fine, though no one seemed to be talking while he was on. He said that the quality was pretty good, definitely much better than we have come to expect from sites like Ustream or BlogTv, though they were probably using hd cams.

Overall, this seems like a good enough test run for hopefully great service, and I am definitely excited for whats to come.