Yes, viewers are watching the video as it is broadcasted. Transcoding allows you to upstream it in one format, and the viewers to downstream it in a different f

Yes, viewers are watching the video as it is broadcasted. Transcoding allows you to upstream it in one format, and the viewers to downstream it in a different format. This dissociates you from the format expected by the end users. The upstream format can be bad in terms of bandwidth consumption but cheap in terms of hardware requirements. Users can then watch the downstream in a low-bandwidth format which requires heavy duty hardware and software to produce (provided by this service).