If you’ve been displaced from Mixer, but you can’t stand Twitch, you now have a potential new live streaming platform to call home that isn’t as shady as that Codename – Brime, or other, less scrupulous platforms that shall not be named here. The platform I’m talking about is Trovo, a beta streaming platform that is actually up and running right now.
But before we get into it, we should explain a few key things about Trovo before you decide to take the plunge onto the platform, as these points may be a deciding factor for you.
First, the live streaming platform is still very early in its beta phase. With this in mind, you need to remember things on the platform are very much subject to change.
The next is that Trovo is backed & owned by Tencent, a company founded in Shenzhen, China in 1998. In case you somehow haven’t heard of them, they own Fortnite, Valorant, the Mobile PUBG, and quite a lot of other things.
And now, they’ve dipped their toes into the live streaming industry, with a real platform that is available now, unlike Brime…
Table of Contents
What Features does the live streaming platform Trovo have?
There are a number of features that Trovo offers to make your life a little bit easier. I’ll go in order of most important to least important for both Features it has, and those that I feel that it is missing. Additionally, I will update this article whenever necessary for when they add new features.
Transcoding for Everyone?!
The first, and easily the biggest in my humble opinion, is that the platform seems to be offering Transcoding to everyone, at least so far. I have yet to run into a single stream where it wasn’t available, even 0 viewer streams. This is an incredible feature if it continues to be available for everyone as the platform grows, as this means you can stream as high as a bitrate as you want, assuming you have the upload to handle it, and nobody would miss out and experience buffering; It would simply transcode it down to a lower resolution and bitrate for maximum accessibility, and satisfy your users with the necessary Download rate to view it in the highest settings.
With that being said, as there is no real documentation in place for what kind of bitrate that the ingest servers support, I’m not sure where the limit is, so you’ll need to experiment a bit to figure out what works. The only thing of note about what it potentially supports comes from this Reddit post.
Also, I’m not entirely certain about whether or not this transcoding feature is a permanent thing. There simply is no documentation I could find that stated one way or another. With that said though, with the way it is formatted, It leads me to believe that it very well could be a permanent feature. Let me explain why I think this:
The Structure of Transcoding on Trovo:
- Any stream that is set to 1080p60 or higher will require your audience to sub to you for getting the max quality out of your stream
- This is an incentive for them to actually support you.
The fact that this incentive exists means there is potential to keep the feature available for everyone to encourage subscriptions. They can still view your stream in the lower resolutions available, so don’t worry about that feature locking out potential viewers, so long as your internet upload speed is capable of supporting it.
By the way, the bitrate needed for smooth, High-action, compression-artifact free 1080p60 is 12,000. If transcoding remains available to everyone as the platform grows, then feel free to stream at that.
Discover Tab – Tencent Backed Games get a front-row seat
For those who stream the following games, you guys have a potential front page slot for being discovered.
- Call of Duty Mobile
- PUBG Mobile
- Call of Duty Warzone
- Fortnite
- Valorant
They are organized by the number of viewers on the channel, like others, so no love for those just starting out, but as the platform is still very new, the chance of being discovered is substantially higher than somewhere like Twitch, but it depends really.
For Example, Path of Exile, one of my favorite games, only has four streamers in the category at the time of our browsing.
You can follow Categories
Speaking of categories, like Twitch, you have the ability to follow categories so you don’t need to always search it up. This is definitely a nice to have feature, to be sure, and I’m glad to see it incorporated here.
Your audience can see the channels you follow where panels exist on Twitch
On the bottom of your channel page, there are two Tabs;
- Info
- and Network
If you were to click on “Network”, you would see the channels that the streamer follows, as well as those who you follow. This is a great place for this to be located in my opinion. I do feel there is more to be done in this section, but that is addressed in our article about Trovo’s Planned Features.
Trovo Affiliate Requirements:
Getting to 20 followers is quite literally the only requirement in order to enable the subscription button for your audience. This is such a low barrier to entry I can only expect this to change in the future and is more of an early-adopter benefit.
To Apply for your sub button, you must fill out this form. It could take up to 7 days for approval, as they are currently only manually approved right now. This post will be kept up to date with everything you need to know about it
Affiliate bonuses – What you get:
- Subscription Button for monthly income
- Elixir can be redeemed for stickers
- Subscribers get to enjoy 1080P+ if you make it available
There will be more to come, but as of right now, these are the only things that are being offered at this time.
Mana & Elixir, the Sparks/Embers of a channel
Like Mixer, this platform has its own form of Sparks and Embers, aptly named Mana and Elixir. These can be consumed in nearly identical ways that Mixer had, invoking the power of sticker-Esque super-emotes. Though the choice of “Elixir” as the word that represents the paid currency is kind of iffy, IMO. It is a three-syllable word, and I can’t think of a way to drop any of them for a shorthand variant. “Elix” doesn’t sound right, and “Ixers” doesn’t really step out at me. Maybe “Ixies?”
“Drop your Ixies into the chat! Hype!!” Or something… I don’t know… Just an odd choice, given that “elixirs” in games typically recharges mana, and these clearly don’t do that (yet?).
No Home-page Auto Play feature
For the love of all that is amazing, THANK YOU for this one. Every single time I opened Twitch or Mixer, I was greeted with very loud streams from one of those front-page streamers. Now I get the sweet silence, and time to look around without the bombardment of sonic warfare.
Features in play that I personally dislike
Trovo also has some features that I dislike. Time to get into the Down & Dirty of this new live streaming platform.
Remember, this part is my opinion, you may actually hold a different opinion, and that is fine.
Super Creepy Standard Emotes
I’m not going to lie, the standard emotes are just straight-up creepy. Please redesign these! Everybody I’ve asked about them has stated their shared dislike for them. If I’m being blunt though, they just plain suck, and nobody really wants to use them.
There are a few that are ok, like the worm/tongue emotes, and that clapping emote is great as like a “All set with this” emote, but fails to portray “clapping”.
The ROFL one though, that is straight terrifying. You may want to revisit that one, Trovo Team!
Announces in chat when you join a channel
Look, sometimes I just want to sneak into a channel, and y’know, just see what they have to offer. I like to give things a trial run before jumping headfirst into the fray. Well, On Trovo, It announces in chat whenever users join a channel. I… don’t like this feature, because it puts me on the spot when I just want to enjoy the show.
Not to mention, it could probably be used as a spamming method, where a user hits back and forward on a browser. That’s not cool.
But apparently, they know this, so they are granting your viewers the opportunity to enable “Lurking mode”, rather than giving the control to the streamers. This is a very well thought out feature, as giving the audience control over their experience is gratifying.
Though, streamer’s can still change this to Off, or to show only to themselves and mods in the settings. It’s your channel, run it how you like. I’m just glad they plan to make it an option to not be included as a viewer. Big Thumbs up here!
What features are currently missing from Trovo?
As this live streaming platform is officially still in beta, support for third-party integrations is admittedly fairly sparse. For example, the highly popular Streamlabs does not currently support the service as a means of portraying follow alerts. This is extremely unfortunate, as that is one of the most popular services in use by streamers, and will no doubt turn many away for this one fact. With that being said, the platform does support API integrations, but I suspect it may be a while until Streamlabs does support the platform.
Additionally, it is missing some other Key features that should be very high priority for them to implement:
No Two-Factor Authentication Support
This is a Very-High Priority feature these days, as nefarious actors are always active these days. Digital account security is extremely important, especially when it comes to monetizable accounts. Luckily, they are working on implementing this feature, if we understand their list here correctly.
“Streamer Authentication and payout System.”
Unable to Raid or Host other streamers yet
Worry not though, this is most certainly a planned feature, but again, the platform is still in beta, and there are arguably more important features that need to be added first.
No official Documentation FAQ / Blog / Resources currently in place
As of right now, the only source of information that I’ve found to contain any development notes comes from the subreddit. By the way, there are also no established community rules. That needs to be changed ASAP before it becomes a plague of “I’m live! Come Watch!”. No offense guys, but that message is the quickest way to make me scroll down.
Self Advertisement by way of a custom Flare on a community Reddit like this is the way to go. Create engage-able content? Great! I’ll come check you out to see more of your engage-able content.
Anyways, that’s off topic.
Even if they set up a subdomain, like “faq.trovo.live”, or “blog.trovo.live”, using an official channel is key to establishing user trust in a brand.
Get on it, guys!
Third-Party Support is nearly non-existent
This is kind of big for a large number of established streamers. Currently, programs like Streamlabs and Streamelements are unable to track follows, subs, Elixer dropping, etc and show that animated overlay alert system. Additionally, things like the on screen chat is unavailable, and even StreamAvatars is left behind without a paddle.
Now this is something that will eventually be resolved, but it’s on the Third party devs to actually enable support for the platform with it’s API. Once it does, I feel the platform will gain a lot more traction.
On the subject of branding, There is no “branding assets” page
As a writer, using a logo of a person or company within the content I create comes with some rules that stem from Copyright law. I’d like to have a TOS to read, as well as Branding use documentation of what I can and cannot do with branded assets, so I can knowingly follow the rules and maintain a healthy relationship. Y’know, the boring stuff.
But hey, this boring stuff exists to protect the creators from getting walked all over, so I’m all for it.
Final thoughts – This has the potential to spur innovation
There are a number of things that Trovo does right. I love the placement of followers and those you follow in a “Network” tab. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this implemented in Twitch, as it just makes a ton of intuitive sense.
Twitch has been shuffling its layout around a lot, and every time it happens, waves of complaints usually follow. In the wise words of my Creative Writing professor in college, “Keep it simple, stupid”. Sometimes, we just want an intuitive design that we can pick up quickly. So far, Trovo has managed to impress me in it’s early stages.
I’ll be following the development of this platform closely, but if I were you, and I have only averaged 1-3 viewers for a long period of time, I’d recommend making the switch. The early bird gets the worm, as well as all the benefits that come with early adoption. You really have nothing to lose in this case if your intent is to grow.
Those who have established an audience, though, I can’t really recommend starting up on this new live streaming platform just yet. At least until it becomes more mature. There simply isn’t enough public knowledge to generate any significant amount of growth yet, for good reason. It is still in beta, with many core features missing.
But it has potential.
I’m excited to see where it goes!
Oh, and to the Trovo Dev team, if you stumble upon this post, feel free to contact me about stuff pertaining to the platform. 🙂