Justin.tv
Justin.tv was a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt in 2007 to allow anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts were called "channels", like those on YouTube, and users were encouraged to broadcast a wide variety of user-generated live video content, called "broadcasts".
Available in
Various
August 5, 2014
Twitch Interactive (called Justin.tv, Inc until February 2014)[1]
Optional
March 19, 2007
Defunct
The company was an Internet startup based in San Francisco, California, with seed funding from Paul Graham of seed capital firm Y Combinator[2] and Series A funding with Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Associates.[3]
The original Justin.tv was a single channel featuring founder Justin Kan, who broadcast his life 24/7 and popularized the term lifecasting. In 2007, Justin Kan stopped broadcasting and Justin.tv relaunched into its later form as a network of thousands of channels.[4]
Users were permitted to broadcast to an unlimited number of people for free, and watching broadcasts did not require user registration. Broadcasts that were considered to contain potentially offensive content were available only to registered users over the age of 18. Broadcasts containing defamation, pornography or copyright violations, or encouraging criminal conduct, were prohibited by Justin.tv's terms of service.[5]
Justin.tv moved its gaming section to a new site called Twitch.tv in June 2011,[6] and the parent company of Twitch.tv and Justin.tv rebranded as Twitch Interactive in February 2014.[1] The Justin.tv services and brand were officially shut down in August 2014 so that the company could focus on Twitch, which was then acquired by Amazon later that month.[7][8][9]
Technology[edit]
Justin.tv's broadcasting and viewing was based on Adobe Flash. Users could broadcast directly from the site, with Justin.tv using Flash to auto-detect and stream from an attached webcam. Justin.tv also supported broadcasting using other third-party software, most notably QuickTime Broadcaster, Camtwist, D3DGear Broadcaster, Flash Media Encoder, Wirecast, Open Broadcaster Software, FFSplit Broadcaster, XSplit Broadcaster and VLC, to allow broadcasters to add effects or stream higher quality video.[24][25]
Justin.tv had no default video quality setting; instead, it set bitrate on a case-by-case basis by testing the broadcaster's available bandwidth. The broadcaster could also manually adjust the bitrate before going live. While broadcasting from the browser, the maximum quality settings were 1,000 kbps for video and 44 kHz for audio. In comparison, YouTube High Quality video at the time was 400–500 kbps, and YouTube 720p high definition video is approximately 2,000 kbps.[26][27] The 1,000 kbps limit could be exceeded by using alternate broadcasting methods, such as Flash Media Encoder and Quicktime Broadcaster, and 720p video in H.264 had been broadcast by some users.
Following the Justin.tv re-design in July 2009, the default channel video size changed from a standard aspect ratio of 468 × 353 pixels to a widescreen 630 × 353 pixels.
Content accessibility[edit]
Like YouTube and other static video sites, Justin.tv allowed each channel to be accompanied with an HTML snippet, which allows users to embed video onto pages outside the Justin.tv site.[28] Another snippet is given to embed the associated chatbox as well, thus allowing users to recreate the basic Justin.tv functionality on another page. Broadcasters have the option of disabling embedding for their specific channel.
Following the release of the API in August 2009, Justin.tv released Flash SWF files that allows developers to include Justin.tv video in Flash projects.[29]
