The main reason for doing video through JS in the first place, other than obfuscation, is variable bitrate support. Oddly enough some TVs will support variable bitrate HLS directly, and I believe Apple devices, but not regular browsers. See https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/

> unless you have something to sell

Video hosting and its moderation is not cheap, sadly. Which is why we don't see many competitors.

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a96 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

P2P services proved a long ago that hosting is not a problem. Politics is a problem.

What we don't see is more web video services and services that successfully trick varied content creators to upload regularly to their platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube also must be mentioned here.

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Zopieux 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And by "not many" you really mean zero competitors.

(before you ask: Vimeo is getting sold to an enshitification company)

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axiolite 3 days ago | parent [-]

Those "zero" include: Rumble, Odysee, Dailymotion, Twitch, Facebook watch... etc.

And a decent list here: https://ideaexplainers.com/video-sites-like-youtube/

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pjc50 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Twitch does live streaming but recently severely limited the extent of free hosting for archived content.

Not actually heard of the first two, what's their USP?

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treyd 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Rumble and Odysee and populated with crazy ragebaiting rightwingers, conspiracy theorists, and pseudo-libertarians.

Twitch has the issues the other commenter described, and both Twitch and Facebook are owned by billionaires who are actively collaborating with the current authoritarian regime. Facebook in particular is a risk space for actually exercising free speech and giving coherent critiques of authority.

Dailymotion is... maybe okay? As a company it seems like it's on life support. There's a "missing middle" between the corporate highly produced content that's distributed across all platforms and being a long tail dumping ground. I did find things like university lectures there, but there isn't creators actually trying to produce content for Dailymotion like there is on YouTube.

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axiolite 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Rumble and Odysee and populated with crazy ragebaiting rightwingers, conspiracy theorists, and pseudo-libertarians.

So, just like Youtube, then?

	▲	treyd a day ago \| parent [-]
		Proportionally speaking, there's a much higher concentration.