When this email hit my inbox from Livestream I had to give it a second look. The headline, “Livestream Launches Free iPhone Service, Delivers ‘One Click’ Live Streaming to the IPhone”. This one I had to see.

Streaming video to the web has been around for a few years, first an expensive task, but now free with ad support. The process: you run your audio and video through an encoder, send it up to a streaming server and down to all of the web users in the universe.

I’m here to tell you all of that has changed. With as little as an internet connected laptop, a camera and microphone, you can now stream not only online but to the 6.4 million Iphone users out there. See I told you, this was special.

Here’s how it works. Follow the link to the company’s website www.livestream.com/procaster, the new Procaster software greets you to download. Not only for PC, but Mac as well. (Good thing because I recently switched, but that’s another story). A simple sign-up and download, and as advertised, your are streaming. The streaming menu gives you a setup option to stream to Iphone, as well as an embed option to place the streaming content on your website, blog or even social media page.

When you sign up with Livestream your user name also serves as your Livestream channel, available to view on Livestream online network, or with a $350 monthly fee seen only privately and without ads served from Livestream servers.

I think this is pretty significant and here’s why. As we move into the continuous news cycle, serving multiple platforms, we will find that not every story deserves a live truck. And lets face it most stations don’t have enough live trucks and staff to stream multiple locations throughout the day. Until now.

Livestream’s announcement states “Livestream is the first to offer a turn-key streaming service that uses the new H.264 HTTP live streaming functionality included in the native QuickTime player that Apple has pre-installed on the iPhone. This means that Livestream producers do not need to obtain iPhone App Store approval to launch their own iPhone live streaming channel, nor do their viewers need to install any application. Streams are viewed using the iPhone’s Safari browser.

“A key breakthrough is that the service doesn’t require any proprietary player or application to be installed on the iPhone. Producers are free to integrate the iPhone live stream with their own website, iPhone portal or iPhone application using the API provided” explained Livestream CEO and co-founder Max Haot.

With this new development from Livestream, one multimedia journalist can setup and stream any story from the field, online and onto Iphone and Itouch mobile devices instantly.

I checked it out and it works. I used my webcam from my Mac Book Pro, launched Livestream Pro, clicked one button and I was streaming. Then to my Iphone I pulled up the Livestream Iphone website iphone.livestream.com and there it was, the same streaming video that I was seeing on my desktop. Awesome!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.