[psion]

A simple problem with adopting P2P streaming of videos is more in a logistical sphere than a technical. Often in a YouTube video and Twitch stream, there is a sponsor who is paying money for these videos. And these videos need to have some form of analytics or telemetry to see just how many people are watching. If I host the video and you host the video and Bob hosts the video, how am I going to get the view details so that I can calculate the CPM and get paid by my sponsor? The other logistical problem is that these instances just aren't where the viewers are. YouTube is a giant behemoth because they built a place where people can upload their own videos and viewers have a centralized place to watch them. It became so much simplier to tell someone to search a channel on YT than to give them a web address, install a new client (if necessary), and then pray that there are enough seeders so the viewer can watch. And to do that for all twenty (more or less) channels I subscribe to on YT? No thanks. One more logistical problem is more on the technical end of things, but it's still a problem. Let's say that we do make a good go of P2P streaming. By it's own nature, you need to store videos on the device to watch. My FireTV Stick doesn't have that much disk space. And the processor on many streaming devices aren't exactly all that powerful, so running a node in the background isn't in the cards for these devices. One could argue that we could just have a small NAS on our network that could do all the heavy lifting and just send the videos to the streaming device, but have you ever told someone who isn't technically minded that they need to do that to watch your cooking videos? I work in tech sales, and it's a nightmare to tell some people that they need to install software to setup their printers. I'm not going to tell them to set up and additional device for their streaming.

My two cents.