Better options
Please please give us either more widely available transcoding, or an audio only mode across all devices(aka pc&mac)

-
jessieceee commented
There is audio only in the app, which I don’t have on desktop. I have a subscription to my streamer so twitch is making money off me, but what good does it do me as a rural customer if it’s all or nothing? I already quit buying those overpriced bits and junk, why drive more of us away to the detriment of artists?
-
davr66 commented
It costs twitch money to transcode your stream to a lower quality, so they only do it for channels with more viewers where it's cost effective for them. For smaller streamers, they should be lowering the quality of their stream on their end so that they can get more viewers. (He's not "Forced" into 1080p, he could stream at 720p or 540p or lower his bitrate if he really wanted to. It would just lower it for everyone)
-
mike9k1 commented
Seconded! Twitch is increasingly phasing out SD streaming altogether, which is a major concern for most users in the US who have an ISP that meters their bandwidth at 1TB per month or less (ATT, Cox, Comcast, Spectrum (not yet but soon when the 2016 Time Warner Cable merger agreement expires)). That means you can watch less than 72 hours of streams per month if we are forced to stream @ 1080p60. Not that much more @ 720p. It's really pathetic that Amazon/Google/etc are actively punishing regular users for having an ISP that skrews them over. We're getting skewered from both ends!! Almost like the software companies and ISPs partnered up in some implicit agreement....
I used to watch Twitch on a sub-0.5Mb DSL connection (Earthlink FTL)...it was a rough time since anything Google produces (Chrome & Chromecast) will try to force the highest quality ALL THE TIME. Firefox doesn't fair much better anymore...
The Roku Twitch app exhibits the same behavior, forcing the highest quality until it lags out and crashes the stream -- so now I can't watch Twitch AT ALL on my Roku. In fact, if I put it behind a router that will shape the bandwidth to "convince" it to stream in lower quality, it will fail almost immediately: the functionality isn't there, and almost seems to be *purposefully* removed.
Remember when we had that nice "Unofficial Twitch" app on Roku, that actually had BETTER functionality, MORE features, and was FASTER!? Oh, not to mention, THE ABILITY TO SELECT STREAM QUALITY. Pretty darn sad that fan-made software back in 2015 is still superior to the official app today! Thanks for urinating all over that, Amazon!! Now that app just points to your piece of trash because you sent them a Cease and Desist. Real classy.
-
Anonymous commented
Either let us listen to Twitch with no video or stop forcing me to watch in 1080p. One streamer I follow's streams are forced into 1080p half the time, but not all the time. He says there's nothing he can do about it, so could you just fix it Twitch? My internet can't handle it most of the time.