[kzahel]

I agree with you that WebRTC is the obvious choice when it becomes available. It's simply too hard to get people to install a client. For users to install a client, the uses for it must be compelling enough to go through the trouble of installing an application. Dropbox is one example of how people will install software because the product offers something useful enough.

It seems like live streaming client programs simply don't have the critical mass of content available to force people to go to the trouble of installing specialized software.

The web is going to be a very exciting place indeed, once the webRTCPeerConnection.createDataChannel actually works and we can use application logic to send arbitrary payloads to peers over the internet.

[mtgx]

Can someone create a WebRTC web app in this way, so one person can broadcast to millions through P2P technology? Or would the browser vendors need to make certain API's available before they can do that?

[kzahel]

Once arbitrary data can be sent through peer connections via a browser javascript application, then there is no reason why the BitTorrent Live protocol (or some other similar P2P streaming protocol) could not work over WebRTC.

One difficulty I see is actually getting the binary data into a <video> element. It would be in theory possible to write to the file in the HTML5 FileSystem API and point the video element to it, but that would require transmitting the stream in a way that is ameliorable to seeming like a static video on disk.

[doublec]

Possibly the MediaSource api, which allows writing to media elements: http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/media-source/m...

[ihsw]

It may be necessary to paint it via canvas, however that opens up a can of worms that completely bypasses the video element.