Last week I had the pleasure of catching up with Matteo Berlucchi from Skinkers where we talked about their innovative technology and their relationship with Microsoft. We also captured a live demo of their LiveStation product that I discussed last week.
These guys area great example of how Microsoft can and does work with small, innovative software companies and the video is longer than usual (17 mins) as Matteo and I discuss that as well as talking about their company, the product and our propensity to buy lots of gadgets!
Don't forget to sign up for the beta and put my name in the "where you heard from field" to faster access!
Interesting interview, beyond the technology and the nature of the relationship with MSFT.
Livestation , I had never heard of this product before today but after an email from a friend about it
I have signed up and put in your name as a recommendation thanks :)
This sounds really interesting. I wonder how Livestation will work compared to Joost. I'll sign up and try it out.
Well hopefully it isnt as processor killing and jumpy as joost is i tried joost once and abandoned it...
I've so been praying for pc based tv over the internet... I dont have cable and at work sometimes i wanna watch some tv when things are slow, yet cant .... maybe livestation will change things?
I hope they can pool on the xblvm networks and get fox/nbc and the other big stations to allow the rebroadcast i mean their still getting the commercial time.
How does this compare to Zattoo (www.zattoo.com)? They too offer live television on the computer, so it looks very similar.
Hey guys,
Thanks for the excitement
I'd like to add a couple of important comments though:
1. While Microsoft has a minority stake in Skinkers (the company developing LiveStation), this project is very much our own initiative. We are developing the platform on technology originally developed by Microsoft Research in Cambridge but now it's fair to say that we are going forward with our own engineers (with the occasional phone-call to the MS researchers for hard-to-find answers!).
2. Unlike what some people are saying, we are definitely NOT TAKING ON Joost! We love Joost and think it's a great idea, but we are trying to do something different and complementary: we are trying to get live television on the computer. We believe that the user experience with streaming so far has never been really good enough. We hope to move the user experience a step forward and maybe to the point where people will look at LiveStation and think "Wow, I can ACTUALLY watch this and keep it on my computer".
Thanks again for the support and interest but please don't go around shouting "Microsoft is taking on Joost". The correct slogan should be "Skinkers is trying to get TV working on the computer!" and I can assure you, it is fun but very hard!
All the best.
LiveStation team
Livestation , from Microsoft Research, streams live TV over P2P using Silverlight to play the media on
LiveStation is Microsoft's offering for Live broadcasting over the Internet This is the information broadcast...
Wow, you do a short Partner-TV video and the world goes mad!! The guys at Skinkers are no doubt excited
How lng from sinning up does it usually take to get an invite?
not totally sure Connor as the guys are inundated at the moment. make sure you put my name in the request field...may help!
As the engineer for a small eSports broadcaster, we were currently looking for a cost effective solution to get higher quality streams out to our end users. This looks to be an awesome product. I hope to be speaking to them shortly (October is way too long guys!)
For me, live staion is hard to reach the technology success as TVKoo, a Chinese P2P live streaming solution. There are hundreds channels on TVKoo, with millions of users since last year.
By streaming meter, you will find TVkoo has the best bandwidth saving - up to 1000 times less bandwidth while more than 50000 globle users online simultaneously.
By the why, i can't imagine how livestaion can do such an experiement in UK or USA, with so many piracy alike content to keep users watching for years.