The demonstration of Microsoft’s LiveStation last week shone the spotlight back on the live P2P television market. Whilst P2P on-demand video participants such as Joost and Bablegum gain the most attention in the broader market, the live television streaming market (ie: not on demand like Joost, not user generated cam sites such as Ustream) has continued to thrive in relative obscurity. Here’s a quick look at some of the bigger players.
The newest competitor and still in private beta testing. Built on Silverlight, LiveStation has the ability of becoming a serious player due to its backing by Microsoft. See our previous coverage for a demonstration.
TVU Networks would be the most well known provider in this space. Copyright issues aside, there lineup of live channels is fairly solid with a range of US based content, although like most in this space, you’ll get better value from it if you speak Mandarin. I’ve used TVU previously, and again with my testing for this post; both times picture quality was flaky; audio is fine but it’s difficult to watch. It’s a service that would probably work better with a high speed internet connect, one quicker than my 2mb cable.
Sopcast is a very similar offering to TVU Networks but with a less polished interface. Looks aren’t everything as in my tests the picture quality from Sopcast was of a higher quality than TVU, although still not perfect. A somewhat different range of channels, for example Channel Ten Australia is available and quite watchable, although there would appear to be not quite so many US channels.
Zattoo could quite easily become the leader in this space if it wasn’t currently restricted to Switzerland and the UK, and then only by invite in those countries. The channel lineup on Zattoo is excellent, and unlike many others it’s all broadcast legally as well. Reviews for Zatto elsewhere would indicate that the viewing quality is first rate. If anyone knows how to view Zattoo outside of these countries, let us know.
PPLive comes in an English version, but that’s about the extent of English on the service. A fairly extensive range of Chinese programs. Streaming quality was pretty good for me in testing, even if I had no idea what anyone was saying.
PPMate, like PPLive and a number of other platforms (we won’t cover them all) is Chinese based and doesn’t include English content. Lots of Chinese content though and stream quality was good.
There are others. StreamStar has a reasonable list.
Web TV
An alternative to Live P2P television programs is Web TV. Many providers stream live content online now, however quality, both in terms of content and quality of the picture itself can be hit or miss as programs are not streamed by a P2P network but directly. All of these stations can be viewed for free and without special program aside from the video codec support (Real, QT, WM). WWiTV is the oldest and best portal online for those looking for web TV. For unique content, ManiaTV would be one of the largest web only live TV stations.
The Mac problem
Not one live P2P television program I tested offered a Mac version, although they did work well under Parallels. There’s not a lot of legitimate money in the space due to the copyright issues involved so don’t expect to find a lot of Mac clients any time soon.
Overall
Live P2P television services do provide an alternative to on demand services such as Joost. Live P2P television lets you watch channels you may otherwise never have access to; the value provided is similar to the value many, many people get by downloading American television shows from Bit Torrent instead of waiting 6-12 months to watch them locally. It’s another nail in the coffin for geospecific broadcasting; when more and more people bypass traditional broadcast models, the old location based television model will eventually fail and we’ll all get to watch programs at close to the same time worldwide.
P2P TV will be a very successful business model. The first movers will be very successful but the second mover will also get a piece of the pie.
Will Google will make tons of $$$ on ads ? This is very exciting. Like I said everyone will and should get a piece of the pie.
How will GoogleTube compete with those P2P TV ?
Should they compete ?
There is no default reason why P2P TV will be a successful business model. I predict that the third mover will be the most successful, and the tenth mover will also get a piece of the pie.
Google already makes tons of $$$ on ads ! I find this as exciting as anything else, definitely not “very” exciting. Only those with decent, usable, and useful products/services should get a piece of the pie. No one should, and few will.
I’d like to try zattoo out as well…looks pretty interesting. I’m interested in seeing more euro channels since the coverage here is limited. Anyone know if it’s possible to get sky news (uk) via some online service?
tvu the most well known provider…? apart from being terrible grammar, that’s just nonsense.
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....tworks.com
There are three big players here: pplive, ppstream, and uusee. PPmate (not shown on the alexa) is also way down.
heddy
I said well known, not trafficked, and simply if you check the English speaking coverage of the space you’ll see TVU come up time and time again. The sites you cite all have the bulk of their traffic coming out of China, not the US where this publication is based and for all intents and purposes is the default market I would be referring to in anything I write (although mostly, unless noted you can extend that to the UK and Australia as well…I’m not in the US).
TVUNetworks is quite good. I first found it to watch the World Cup at work and have enjoyed it’s frequent releases which have continued to improve the product. It’s poor quality, and sometimes the channels disappear which is annoying, but it is free and works as described. The latest versions have had no choppiness and gives priority to the audio which is important if you’re watching something and don’t want to miss what was said. You can often go with out a frame or two, but choppy audio kills ya.
Mmm i think that the older service is PPlive and Sopcast: some times ago i use this in order to watch live event about sports and works very good.
The future is the P2P tv or the IPTV ?
What do you think about the quality of those two http://smcmobile.ro/livestream.php and fightersoft.ro ?
Adrian
there were probably half a dozen I looked at but didn’t include (mostly because being in Chinese or in one case Korean I had no idea what I was looking at), to be honest I didn’t see this one (fightersoft.ro goes to smcmobile.ro). Downloaded the client and I couldn’t get the live TV option to work, not sure why. The sample on site stream though looked good.
Zattoo recently launched in Denmark too and the viewing quality is actually pretty good. I believe they will soon open up in several other european countries as well.
I use Zatoo over here in Denmark. It’s doing deals with TV stations and somehow there are laws in certain countries like there is in Denmark forbidding Zattoo to broadcast different channels than cable and such companies provide. Well I don’t know the exact laws, but anyways Zattoo is doing legit p2p streaming.
I first heard about pplive nearly two years ago. It’s great but I’d like more and better than that. What’s cool also with sopcast, is that anyone can start broadcasting such a p2p live channel.
I believe http://selfcast.com is using RawFlow and that is providing a user-generate live p2p solution. So it’s like ustream but with live p2p, thus an unlimited amount of users.
What I’d like is an open live p2p solution that can be embedded in the browser, that provides different bandwidths and makes sure people don’t connect to better bandwidth quality than they can upload themselves. I have 24mbit/s download and 2mbit/s upload, I’d like a service that let people like me with such good upload connection to be able to stream over 1mbit/s DVD quality live p2p video.
I also watch Zattoo here in Spain and it includes the 6 most important spanish TV channels or so. Just go to the site and download the software. The quality is pretty good.
Tv On Internet is the next trend people are investing… I am interested in all venture aroung TV on Internet. Cheers Armand Rousso
I’ve used SOPcast, TVU an Zattoo from the UK and seen things improve quite a lot over the last year.
I watched the cricket world cup from uni with TVU or SOPcast and depending on the stream the picture ranged from just better than youtube to xvid encoded hdtv. There a a 6Mb stream of one match that was awesome (legalities are a different matter).
Zattoo I’ve only had a for a few weeks and the picture quality seams just a little worse than Joost which is pretty good being as it is live. I only seem to be able to get BBC and Frence content though from the UK.
A good UK proxy would be the way to try it out from somewhere outside the catchment area. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.
-Tim
I don’t like watch tv online. It’s boring.
One you missed is NeoKast who are live streaming the Pitchfork Music Festival live from Chicago this weekend via p2p multicast (Windows Only at the moment)
http://www.neokastblog.com/200.....-festival/
Bob Cringely wrote an article on these guys a few months back .
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu.....01831.html
Zattoo streams the normal local TV stations, but these TV stations pay fees for movies based on their viewership and country. So these TV stations can only broadcast their program locally (cause they only pay for that), therefore unfortunately the same applies to Zattoo, cause their are bound by the same restrictions. I’m a Swiss living in the USA, so I was all worked up about the posibility to watch Swiss TV here, but unfortunately that is not gonna happen. Not sure why I would wanna watch Swiss TV in Switzerland over Zattoo if I can just watch it on my normal TV…
ppstream.com PPStream是一套完整的基于P2P技术的流媒体超大规模应用解决方案，包括流媒体编码、发布、广播、播放和超大规模用户直播 。
How about Live streaming applications for mobile phones? The only end user software that I’ve come across is Vimio
http://thinkabdul.com/2006/11/.....-ericsson/
Not much details on the official vimio.com site either?
-Vishal
Myp2p indexes a whole lot of live sports over live streaming p2p networks and provides a scedule this site blows the whole notion of regional restrictions and blackouts for live sport out of the water .
http://www.myp2p.eu/
Sounds pretty interesting. I just wish I could send it to my T.V.
-Chris
http://www.nerdcouncil.com
Actually Zattoo is available now for everyone in Switzerland, Denmark, UK and Spain. No invite only anymore. They are still negotiating with the tv-authorities in other European countries and probably will be available soon in many parts of Europe. I had a 30 day trial version of the Swiss version (I am not living in Switzerland) and picture quality was really good. If they soon get the legal things and agreements done then Zattoo definitely will become the big player on the P2P TV market.
They should add somekind of automatic program guide system so it would turn off when there is copyrighted film or sports content which the national TV station has not licenced for outside of that country, and then they should let the stream work as long as the content is identified as ownership of the TV Station or within licencing that does not restrict to the specific country.
tvtv.fr provides this online program guide system, they should just combine that database with data about which programs would be OK and which wouldn’t for international streaming.
I personally don’t believe any of these services could stay around much longer. Who gave them the permission the broadcasts anyways? First time I found out there is such thing as Internet TV was when I came across this one: http://www.streamtofile.com I still don’t believe any of these services could become big…
Zattoo works well in Spain no need invite only download for your platform Windows, Linux and watch TV LIVE
Ximo
Zattoo works well in Spain like ximo88 says, and definitely has a MAC client!
I for one don’t believe that Live P2P Television is where it could be, it still needs more work, but at least it’s getting there. Hopefully we’ll see some major upgrades sometime soon.
Zattoo is the worst of the bunch. In terms of system I’d say you missed out on TVAnts, which yes are illegal. For the web ones there’s still http://www.freetube.us.tc http://www.icravetv.com http://www.videedoo.org
I’m trying to get an invite for the new system by stanford, it’s really really private beta. I saw the page but I can’t remember the name (which would be the first step to getting an invite lol)
Vakaka,the Chinese Joost,
http://digg.com/tech_news/From.....nese_Joost
Vakaka website:http://www.vakaka.com
Zattoo works perfectly in Denmark too, they even have a Danish version of the website and the application. I can watch Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and German channels.
TV on internet….this is very interesting concept.
Zattoo isn’t as good as it was some months ago, and it’s not invite only. At least I remember that I simply downloaded and registered from their site.
The most disappointing thing is that it has the same problem as Satellite TV: if you want to watch Formula One/Football or some new movie, you can’t see them because of the usual TV-rights stuff.
Imvite has thousands of online television stations, as well as videos, video channels, radio, and games.
Jon
P.S. I’m their new blogger.
Imvite has thousands of online television stations, as well as videos, video channels, radio, and games.
Jon
P.S. I’m their new blogger.
The real issue is not “The Mac problem” but “The firewall/proxy problem”.
I don’t see people; using internet TV more than teresterial TV for a long time
I’m a big fan of on-demand…Though I think Joost needs to add another level. Right now it is organized by channel, but there should be a sub-category organizing by show. Right now it is overwhelming if there is any volume of shows in a channel.
More web TV channels http://www.lordoftv.com
Zattoo doesn’t work only in Switzerland and UK. Actually, you can also use it in Spain and watch the most important Spanish TV channels over the Internet.
http://www.AllP2PTV.com provides the schedule of program in the p2p tv players(pplive, ppstream, sopcast, tvuplayer, ppmate, tv ants).
なんとしてでも、地球を死の惑星にはしたくない。未来に向かって、
地球上のすべての生物との共存をめざし、むしろこれからが、
人類のほんとうの“あけぼの”なのかもしれないとも思うのです。
Hi all!!! My danish girlfriend is here in Italy with me and when she stays home alone she’s boring and she’d love to watch danish tv, like TV2 Dr1Dr2 etc, can someone tell me where and how can I watch these channels?? PLEASE ANSWER!!!
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