So if our plans for 2021 and PeerTube's v4 don't match your priorities, that's completely OK, but we won't do more nor go faster. Remember that you are free to fork PeerTube to lead it in another direction, or to contribute by coding plugins and issues (<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://docs.joinpeertube.org/contribute-getting-started">get started on contributing here</a>).
So we need your help to share the roadmap around you, and get the word out about PeerTube. Feel free to share this project in your blogs, vlogs, podcasts: some of you have already done so, and it helps us a lot (plus it really warms our free-software-lovers' hearts)!
So we plan to take some time from this third stage of development to create such a web interface and put it online. Of course, this code will be free so that others can publish their PeerTube search page with their own choice of instances to index.
There already exists free/libre software that enables you to do this. But with PeerTube, you can link your instance (your video website) to Zaïd's PeerTube instance (where he hosts videos of the lectures for his people's university), to Catherin's (who hosts her webmedia videos) or even to Solar's PeerTube instance (who manages a vloggers collective).
There is nothing to do: your web browser does it automatically. If you are on a mobile phone or if your network does not allow it (router, firewall, etc.), this function is disabled and switches back to an "old-style" video broadcast 😉.
Streamers will also have the option to enable "permanent live". It will work more like Twitch does: your permanent live URL and video container will correspond to a single RTMP key. You can go live and stop it whenever you want, the live will be broadcast on the same URL. This setting does not allow saving a video for replay, though.
There's a complete <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://instances.joinpeertube.org">list of instances here</a>, and a list of those that are <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="/instances">open to registration here</a>.
Subtitles support is well under way, and we should have a first version available soon. When this work is finished, we will develop the advanced search.
Such customization will have a direct impact on search, and on search results. Moreover we plan to extend the search scope to playlists so they can be displayed in search results. We also plan to improve search result pages with a more ubiquitous sorting/filter system and a better interface.