Tried to view someones stream today and was totally cockblocked by this popup that wouldn't let me close it unless I logged in via email or facebook.

Mmmnope it was definitely a normal livestream function. If it doesn't happen to you it's likely saving your account info.

Not sure what's going on then.

ahhh the stream must have been on livestream beta

If they plan on moving to that system then they have a lot of work to do, lol.

i duno what their plans are but for now you have a choice

Livestream is better and easier to use. I would recommend it.

What do you find to be better about it, if I may ask?

For me livestream is less taxing than join.me, join.me crashes my laptop every time. I like that also on livestream you can change the quality of the stream if you(the viewer) needs to (when enabled). Not everyone who watches streams has a high end computer..

I prefer it for few reasons:
-Easier to set up
-Better quality
-You don't need to pay to stream

What is with the new livestream UI anyway? Can't even seem to get a list of viewers on your channel/in the chatroom.
Seems like unless you're willing/able to pay for joinme, livestream is the better option.

The UI is just awful in general. I don't know what they were thinking.
Would be nice if there were other better streaming sites. I wonder what happened to justin TV.

What? Since when do Dragons stream? ..or have internet access?

Heheh, you would be surprised... they mix in computers inside their giant hoards of gold!

join.me got worse over the years

twitch tv is alot better than livestream if gaming but requires folks to loging to chat

sadly despite all the cons of livestream, is the only choice now days

Blegh. |C

I always found Join-Me to be better unless you were looking to have audio. The fact that they have a 10 viewer cap now is something I was unaware of. What a bag of dicks. :C

Livestream doesnt require you to use the procaster, do they? If not, the system resource point can be negated by using other capture software for yourself, right?

Either way, if youre going to be streaming and you know there will be lots of people joining (as Im quite certain will happen if you stream) then join.me doesnt even seem like an option. Unless you take donations to afford a monthly subscription...

Also, I use 'Open Broadcast Software' in conjunction with twitch.tv, but then I do all my streaming just of games. Not sure how twitch handles art...

It basically comes down to, "are you willing to pay the fee for Join.me?" Because a 10 viewer cap is silly, but you have to admit Join.me's quality is better, and visual quality counts more than framerate when people are watching you draw, I think. Then there's the audio issue, but do you talk on your streams? Because I find that 99% of the streams I come to that are doing nothing but play music, I mute anyway. I don't mind LS's chatrooms, I've never had trouble with them.

join.me has an android app and Livestream doesn't. :P So I can actually join/chat on my phone.

Also, it does support audio if you pay for pro. It's MUCH cheaper than even the most basic of the Livestream pro options. Even with the reduced framerate, it's much better for art, because you can actually see the damn artwork. LS is too blurry to make things out when someone is sketching/linearting.

If viewers are supplied with popcorn then I'm in!

I prefer Livestream because of the audio function, but I know that not many people do like just listening to music, so it's kinda meh. Plus, you can still have chats with other users even after the streamer has stopped streaming, unlike Joinme which just closes down the chat when the streamer stops.

Then again, most of the streams I had joined earlier was from a friend who was a DJ, so having the audio was something that he needed, so that kinda got me interested in LS anyway.

There's also twitch.tv which may or may not be up your alley. They allow a good variety of things and they have a nice framerate.

In my limited experience I prefer join.me I like that it takes less resources primarily.

I have always preferred Join-Me, as a viewer. There are, apparently, some times that I don't have to log in to watch Livestream, but normally it requires me to, and I've just...not had an interest in creating an account to do that.

As a viewer I prefer join.me, I find the interface much nicer and the quality of the stream higher.

The new Livestream channel setup that requires login for all viewers is annoying. Fortunately, you can still create a new channel that doesn't require login to view. Rather than using the main Livestream page to create an account, go to
https://secure.livestream.com/myacc...../launchchannel
and enter the user/channel details. You'll need the account name, channel name, and password to stream from Procaster or Flash Media Encoder. The URL for your channel name will be livestream.com/channelname.

I know that Livestream garners a lot of complaints because of the resource hog that is Procaster, but it's actually possible to stream using other free software. A few years ago, I used Flash Media Encoder and VH Screen Capture Driver to stream, and I noticed that combo used much less of the CPU than Procaster during streams.
FME doesn't appear to have changed much, but the developers of VHSCD added a watermark in the newer (unpaid) versions. Fortunately, there's another free program called SCFH that handles screen capture and seems to be light-weight based on my testing. Here's a guide for streaming with both Procaster+SCFH and Flash Media Encoder+SCFH:
http://thelivegameshq.com/public/FME.html

I'll look into some of these if I choose livestream in the future. Thanks!

I haven't watched many streams lately, but when I did, join.me was far superior to Livestream. You could ask for donations for an account if you planned to use it much :p

I haven't used it, but what about Justin.TV?

I've not heard about JTV for a good while so I'm unsure if anyone uses it anymore x)

Justin.TV is now a gaming only platform sadly, non-gaming channels get shut down iirc. They joined with Twitch.TV or something because of e-game tournies.
I use livestream for art, Twitch for games. You can dodge using Procaster by using Xsplit but it's a bit fussy. Xsplit is superb for games, I've yet to test it for art, may do that in the future. But atm, 90% of artists resort to livestream because of the viewer thing.