[mabbo]

Imagine you're a University that needs to, as quickly as possible, build a system to have streaming video for all your classes. Otherwise, you've got students and parents saying they want their money back because they paid for real classes, with Q&A and a live professor, and not pre-recorded videos.

200 viewers for 2 hours sound about right for a typical large University lecture. Typical students are paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars per lecture. $64 per class would put a dent into the University's budget, but not a huge one. And the fact that you can now scale a class to 1000 to 2000 students simultaneously, well that's cheaper than hiring more professors.

In short, I don't think this is meant to compete with Twitch or Youtube. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a niche it can work within.

(Bias note: I work for a totally unrelated branch of AWS. My thoughts and words are my own and are not representing my employer in any way.)

[gundmc]

My University had GSuite for all students and faculty. Meet supports up to 250 participants for a normal call and Livestream only for up to 100,000 viewers.

I imagine Microsoft has a similar offering for schools that use their products. I don't see a case where it makes sense for schools to be rolling their own livestream platform and paying these fees.

Edit: I'm not positive if the Livestream capabilities are included in the free Education package or just the enterprise package.

[johnbatch]

Microsoft has live events that support 10k participants: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-live-e...

[wrkronmiller]

Interesting point. I'd be surprised if most universities were trying to build out apps for the current quarantine though.

More likely they just email links to Zoom conferences or something to that effect, no?

[asutekku]

That’s how it is handled in most universities in finland as far as i know. Lectures are just zoom meetings and everyone already knows how to use it.

[shams93]

Then there's also online proctoring for test taking for universities as well where you need to stream live test takers to proctors.

[yomly]

What? People go on camera to sit exams so they can be invigilated?

That's so short sighted. Anyone who wanted to cheat could do anything to circumvent that - first comes to mind is plastering the wall with notes...

[grogenaut]

When I did my ham radio test they had me show the camera around the room, desk, wall, ceiling, floor, anything that was easy to glance at. Or better just use my cell phone as a second camera looking at me from the back left.

I do find it funny that people get mad about this "invasion of privacy" except this is exactly what a live in person proctor is looking for.