Beyond the fact that people are uploading a lot of video content to YouTube, Vimeo and all the other video streaming services, another big trend that is still only just starting to take off is live streaming of video. One of the major live streaming services is Livestream and the company has just made streaming video to its service a lot easier, albeit quite a lot more expensive with the introduction of the Livestream Broadcaster.

The Livestream Broadcaster is a compact – 122x75x32mm (WxDxH) – bright red box with a small blue OLED display, some status lights and a couple of buttons on the front. Actually, one of the buttons is actually a small joystick for changing the settings via the display. It can be powered either by an external power adapter, or via three AA batteries. Without batteries the Livestream Broadcaster weighs in at 142g, but chuck in a set of batteries and that weight goes up to 221g.

Around the back of the Livestream Broadcaster is an HDMI port, a 3.5mm line-input jack, a USB port, a power connector, a 10/100Mbit Ethernet port and a power switch. The bottom houses a tripod mount and the Livestream Broadcaster is supplied with a cold (hot)shoe adapter that can be attached here. The USB port can be combined with a range of yet unannounced 3G and 4G modems, but there's also built in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, presumably supporting speeds of up to 150Mbps.



The neat thing with the Livestream Broadcaster is that it allows you to stream video without a PC, but it has a few limitations. For one, the HDMI port is limited to 1080i, 720p and 480i video and Livestream has not supplied any data as to which frame rates are supported. It will encode video in H.264 with AAC audio, but the highest resolution supported is 720p at 2.3Mbps. This should be plenty for most users of a device like this, but keep in mind that it also only works with the Livestream service.

The Livestream Broadcaster is expected to start shipping before the 31 of May in the US and Europe with no word on availability in other parts of the world. Livestream is asking for US$495 (S$620) for a unit which is about as much as your average consumer camcorder costs, although this does include three months access to Livestream's premium service. That said, there aren't many competing solutions in the market and the only one we're aware of, Teradek's Cube, starts at over twice the price if you want HDMI input.

via [ vr-zone ]

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