Skinkers LiveStation delivers live TV over P2P

Stephen Withers
Monday, 09 July 2007 03:31

Your IT - Home IT

A UK-based company is set to allow TV stations to simulcast their channels over the Internet without a big investment in servers thanks to peer-to-peer technology developed by Microsoft. The use of P2P means comparisons with Joost are inevitable. The key difference is that LiveStation is intended for live broadcasts, while Joost aims to deliver shows on demand from a large catalogue of content.

LiveStation uses two pieces of technology from Microsoft. Most obvious is the choice of Silverlight as the basis of the client side. Silverlight is most easily described as Microsoft's answer to Adobe's Flash. It is a vehicle for delivering rich interactive applications inside a browser. Like Flash, Silverlight is cross-platform and it works in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Particularly relevant is Silverlight's ability to present high-quality video.

The technology used for P2P distribution also originated at Microsoft, more specifically at Microsoft Research. Skinkers acquired it on a "technology for equity" basis and used it as the basis for what is now known as the Live Delivery Network.

"Current streaming techniques require expensive infrastructure demands to serve relatively small audiences," said Skinkers CEO Matteo Berlucchi. "The start up cost for the narrow audiences is too high, and for the larger audiences the cost becomes prohibitive because of the issues of infrastructure scalability. With Skinkers LiveStation, broadcasters can reach small audiences very cost effectively, but can also scale up to very large audiences for a fraction of the cost while guaranteeing a rich user experience with minimal latency and no buffering."

Sean Alexander, director of video platform for the server and tools division at Microsoft said "By integrating Silverlight with LiveStation, we are enabling high-quality, cost-effective delivery of live video content for a wide range of audiences."

LiveStation is most likely to be used by broadcasters that want to offer existing channels via the Internet. "Imagine the possibilities of being able to allow your audience to 'click' on a TV advert exactly as they do on the web but while watching your existing TV channels," Skinkers officials suggested.

A private beta of LiveStation is underway. A wider beta is scheduled for the (northern) autumn of this year with general release expected in the first half of 2008, according to an interview with Berlucchi published by The Inquirer.