I received a beta invitation to Livestation yesterday in my mailbox and first thought it was some kind of spam because I could not remember signing up for the service at all. Apparently though Livestation is a legit service supported by Microsoft to provide the user with live tv and radio streamings. The invitation that I received was for the technical beta of Livestation, if you are interested in participating as well you might fill out the form at the Livestation website, it might take some time before you receive the invitation though.
The requirements for Livestation are Windows XP Service Pack 2 or newer, which includes Windows Vista, and Microsoft Silverlight. A version for Apple Macintosh computers is currently developed. After some serious troubles with getting Microsoft Silverlight to install (it was working in Firefox and prompting me for installation in Internet Explorer all the time) I was able to get a look at the current version of Livestation.
Livestation is currently offering nine TV stations and one Radio station that are streamed live to the users computer. I did experience some connection problems which was very unfortunate but not a huge problem if you consider that this is a beta and not the release version.
The nine TV channels are:
Al Jazeera (English)
BBC World
BBC World Service
Bloomberg Television
Euronews (English)
Euronews (French)
France 24 (English)
France 24 (French)
Sky News
And the single Radio Station is BBC Radio 4. Not all stations are available for all users however. Some stations are only available in certain countries, for example BBC News 24 is only available in the United Kingdom and users from other countries are not seeing that channel at all.
The quality of the stream is extremely nice, much better quality than you can expect from those P2P clients like TVU Player and even Joost. The real drawback currently is the lack of channels but that is understandable if you consider that this is a technical release and not a public release.
Controls are non existing, almost at least and the interface of say Joost is much nicer than that of Livestation. I however prefer the minimalistic approach, I don’t want to write comments or chat with other users while watching TV.
Livestation is very promising and if they manage to convince more TV stations it could be comparable to Zattoo which is already live in several countries. In terms of video quality it exceeds it already.
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Hello,
I also downloaded Livestation onto my computer, and it works.
If one wants to watch more live TV channels, one can also try out Zattoo (www.zattoo.com).
Zattoo is very similar to Livestation: It is free, streams the actual live TV content, and also uses a peer-to-peer system for content distribution. The quality is comparable to Livestation, although it tends to have more artefacts. The user interface is boring though, but in the end what matters is the TV content itself.
I’m on the beta too and it’s quite impressive.
My only disappointment so far is that we don’t get BBC World on Livestation in the US. I hope it’s coming and BBC haven’t signed an exclusive deal with someone like Real Networks which is about the only place to get it now.
BBC America and BBC World are available in the US on cable and satellite systems. For example, Comcast and DIRECTV carry BBC America, Cablevision carries BBC World in the New York area.
At least on these network and areas, Livestation will most likely face some serious legal hurdles, and therefore may not be able to carry these channel in the US at all.
I’m specifically talking about BBC World, not BBC America. I know nothing about what deals go on behind the scenes but I’m skeptical about Cablevision being a problem because BBC World is available as a live stream via Real Networks and I don’t think it’s blocked in Cablevision’s area in New York.
I pay $5.95 per month to get it from Real Networks but I’d much rather use either Windows Media Player or Livestation. Perhaps it’s the deal with Real but then … it’s also available at Jalipo.com at an outrageous price.
According to the Wiki entry, BBC World is available in the US as follows:
1. Selected BBC World bulletins on PBS
2. Discovery Communications since Jan-06
3. Cablevision in New York since Sep-06
4. Verizon FiOS in about 10 states
5. Cox Communications in Northern Virginia
6. Grande Communications in Texas
My guess is that the agreements that BBC World has signed with these US partners are structured such that they prevent anybody else to ALSO retransmit the BBC World signal to Internet users on these networks. But that is just a hunch.
Regardless of the actual agreements that BBC World has with its current broadcast and cable distribution partners in the United States, it would probably need to give a retransmission consent to Livestation if Livestation wanted to stream their signal on the Internet to US users.
Thanks, I guess that answers why it’s so difficult to get BBC World as an internet stream. I suspect that the deal with Real Networks was signed long ago, before the cable carriers so that has managed to survive.
It’s frustrating because those carriers only cover a small part of country. I guess FiOS is becoming more significant but it’s relatively expensive. I can’t imagine anyone signing up for any of those because of BBC World or, not signing up because they can get BBC World online so it’s hard to see what anyone would have to lose if BBC allowed it on Livestation. I guess I’ll have to be content with Real Networks. It works reasonably well.
Al Jazeera is on even fewer US providers so they clearly make it easy for anyone to carry them online.
See also the News section on livestation.com:
http://livestation.com/news/21-pc_magazine_newsfocused_public_beta
where the CEO of Livestation is quoted:
“Carrier agreements within the U.S. prevent LiveStation from broadcasting certain channels to LiveStation users in the states. If a provider like Comcast has an agreement with BBC to carry BCC America, for example, BBC would not want to jeopardize its U.S. agreements.”
Well, if they say so…
tv companies preventing access from certain countries is like blogging but restricting your viewers. it just doesn’t make sense.
channel providers can insert advertising into their streams easily so they can recoup costs of allowing access or profit from providing the stream.
the bbc is the worst offender of this. it’s the C21 guys, if ppl aren’t watching you then you can be assured they’re watching someone else and you are becoming obsolete.
bbc world news
It would be nice if a link to BBC’s live streaming service was included here. I can’t seem to find it