Over the course of the last year we’ve seen an explosion of startups looking to take streaming video to the mobile phone. Smartphones with high-speed data plans and video cameras are becoming increasingly commonplace, and many users are eager to turn their phones into handheld recording studios, even at the cost of video quality.
Well-known blogger Robert Scoble, who once said that he would “only use HD camcorders”, has become one of the new services’ most vocal supporters. Last month he predicted that Kyte would eventually overtake the competition, based on its interface and devices that support playback.
What he neglected to analyze was the audio and video quality of each service, which are obviously key components of media streaming. So we’ve decided to put them to the test. We’ve recruited Sarah Austin of Pop17.com, who has helped us record the same interview four times (once with each service). The questions may get a little repetitive, but at least the videos are easy on the eyes.
We’ve done everything we can to make the tests as consistent as possible. Each video was shot using the respective app’s highest quality setting on the same Nokia N95 smartphone. And we’ve used the same location, lighting, and Wi-Fi access point for each test.
Qik
Qik began testing in November 2007 with support for a limited number of Nokia smartphones. In March the site annouced a partnership with popular lifecasting site Justin.TV. The number of phones supported remains limited, but the site has recently announced support for the Windows Mobile platform (though only on a select number of phones so far), and the release of a version for jailbroken (hacked) iPhones. Qik has raised about $4 million in funding.
Video: 
Audio: 
Player:
Kyte
Kyte opened its media distribution channels in April 2007, but it wasn’t until almost a year later that it launched its streaming video service. Kyte has managed to recruit a number of big-name celebrities like 50 Cent, who prominently features the player on his homepage. Of the services tested, Kyte has by far the most funding, having raised a total of over $23 million.
Video:
Audio:
Player:
Flixwagon
Israel-based Flixwagon launched in a limited private alpha in January, and opened its doors to the public earlier this month. Like Qik, the company has also released a version for the iPhone, but it too is for hacked phones only. Flixwagon only has around $1 million in funding, and is reportedly seeking a second round.
Video: 
Audio: 
Player:
Livecast
Livecast (formerly known as ComView) supports Windows Mobile 5/6 and Symbian S60 phones. We began this experiment with the intention of comparing four services, but unfortunately, we couldn’t get Livecast to work. We successfully got the video to upload to the site, but Livecast’s video player is little more than an embedded .mov or .wmv file that never played. We managed to download a video file that worked locally, but that sort of defeats the point, doesn’t it?
Conclusions
We’re going to ignore Livecast for this comparison, because we couldn’t get its player to work at all.
In terms of video quality, Qik and Kyte are clearly a step above FlixWagon, with Kyte barely edging out Qik for the top position. FlixWagon seems to be using more compression on its videos, giving some shots a pixelated look that is especially obvious when there’s movement on camera. Kyte also seems to do this too to a lesser extent, but it’s nowhere near as bad.
Audio is another close call, but we think that Kyte takes the top spot here, too. Qik’s audio comes through clearly, though the volume is a little faint, while Kyte seems to have the ideal mix of loudness and clarity. FlixWagon comes in last – its audio has a very tinny quality that leads to an irritating staticy sound.
Preference in the embeddable players will largely come down to a matter of taste. Qik’s player has the best styling, but it lacks the embedded chat features that are found on Kyte (Qik has a chat button in the player, but it doesn’t seem to do anything). Again, FlixWagon falls short in this area – it’s overly simplistic player is neither stylish nor feature-rich.
What none of these services can offer is native, Apple-approved support for the iPhone, which is easily the most user-friendly smartphone on the market. The first app that can do this (if it’s even possible), will likely become the standard in mobile broadcasting.
I cannot wait until I can use qik on my 3g iPhone. If one of the others gets theirs out first Ill use that though
Thanks for this really useful comparison of services. This is an area I am keen to explore, so very topical for me. Great job.
“What none of these services can offer is native, Apple-approved support for the iPhone, which is easily the most user-friendly smartphone on the market. The first app that can do this (if it’s even possible), will likely become the standard in mobile broadcasting.”
That is absurd. Not every mobile mortal would carry an iPhone. Let’s not get carried over.
yawn…
Most overhyped internet companies since friendster and second life.
On Qik’s homepage, they have announced the following:
Qik Announces iPhone Support
DescriptionAdding to our 30 supported devices, Qik is now announcing support for the iPhone, bringing the full Qik experience to legions of iPhone fans the world over.
Not sure how this addresses your thoughts on a ‘native’ iPhone app.
I’m a Qik user, though I’m in the Kyte mobile beta program too, just haven’t given it enough time yet. I just noticed today that Qik added a ‘Groups’ feature, which I have been asking for. This is huge. It means you can stream videos to a select group of approved people (some interesting business ideas around this), instead of just the Public or Private (just you) option.
Hi,
I wish you would have taken the time to properly analyse this area of mobile video and examine the many established, but un-hyped, companies, especially those that are already providing services to broadcasters.
I can’t remember right now all of the ones I’ve previously been aware of, but they include cellcast.tv, the company behind sumo.tv, and Forbidden technologies who’s products are based on their Forscene platform (forlive).
Both companies have been doing “Live from mobile” for at least 3 years, if not 6, and are capable of producing from mobile to broadcast in a single work-flow.
It would be more helpful if potential users were provided with all the options, especially the ones with their own mature technologies.
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
I have tried all services and I’ll answer any of your questions here or via email- Sarah@pop17.com
Sarah, Thanks for the comparison.
Video and audio quality being comparable, the user adoption will depend on ease of use and the community.
What is your perception of the value of the community for these, as Qik seems to have a good community and lot of community centric features like Privacy and Groups. Also do you find any one company being more responsive to user feedback to adapt to their base?
Come on…be honest…video quality sucks.
Please show me one person who has watched one of these videos for longer than 30 seconds..
So what would people really need these for..? http://blabtech.blogspot.com
Although the Qik iPhone version is not really official it works pretty well for me and gives satisfactory results up until now . see for yourself http://qik.com/ourielohayon
Nice post and very useful comparison of services! Keep up great work.
i have a sony ericssion and i’m using molv.com, so far its been smooth.
“What none of these services can offer is native, Apple-approved support for the iPhone, which is easily the most user-friendly smartphone on the market. The first app that can do this (if it’s even possible), will likely become the standard in mobile broadcasting.”
Huh? Kyte has Kyte Producer as a native app, and the website fully supports mobile Safari! What more do you need?
You can’t stream video from Kyte Producer.
Why do you need a producer tool to watch streaming video? As mentioned, Kyte has iPhone Safari support. You can simply stream the videos from where they are originating rather than launch a whole new application. Isn’t that even better than making the consumer jump through the hoops of launching an app to watch video?
Jim, I want to create video from the iPhone, not just watch it.
Well, if you want to produce video on the iPhone, you have an issue with Apple, not Flixwagon, Kyte, or the others.
Thanks for the comparison. Live streaming on Symbian platform is pretty straight forward and I see lot of new services popping up. Check out also ubcam.com, molv.com, zaplive.tv and bambuser.
yes – and on zaplive.tv you get the whole set (camcorder, webcam, mobile) with just 1 account.
Some person named Jackie is writing me angry emails claiming that I am not honest:
“I think it would look a lot better for you if you came out and
disclosed that you are paid by Flixwagon to use their product
exclusively. Did you disclose this to TechCrunch before your testing?
If not, you have seriously jeopardized their credibility and yours. It
will damage you – and Flixwagon – hugely if this fact emerges from
someone other than yourself. I have been approached by several people
who are poised to slam you on this score and it is going to look very
bad that you have not been open and honest about the nature of your
relationship with Flixwagon.”
I stream with Flixwagon because they support my mobile livecast. I have to pay the bills and don’t see anything wrong with using their service for pay. If they were actually bad I wouldn’t use them. FW is great! I love their team and their excellent customer support. They are willing to take calls from me at any time and always help out. I could not be more appreciative.
Jackie, why don’t you go write all the lifecasters at blog.tv and ustream.tv who are getting paid too and tell them the same thing you told me?
While you are at it why don’t you write me more emails about how I also have support from Rocketboom and Mogulus? Production help is different than sponsorship, but they both cost money.
Jackie writes, “It is obviously an editorial oversight that TechCrunch has not
disclosed this information, either. You should warn them about this,
as someone else might point it out and make them look very bad indeed for not being open.”
Jackie, we streamed these to Nik’s account so why would TC need to write a disclosure about me? I think you need to take a chill pill.
The best part about Flixwagon isn’t their video quality it’s their chat and flixee widget.
I’d like to see Robert Scoble comment on this.
@Jackie (see comment above)
We asked Sarah to do the videos because she happened to be at the office and our initial test subject (our dog) refused to sit still and answer questions. Sarah had nothing to do with the selection of the apps that were tested, nor did she have any impact on the review.
Amen on the chill pill.
Wow 20+ articles on Techcrunch without iPhone? Must be world record.
I am NOT paid by Qik or Kyte or any other company other than those that sponsor my show. I choose what I use based on what I think is the best out there at the time. I don’t mind that people do such deals (making money with online media is very difficult) but I am troubled by the lack of disclosure. That’s a sponsorship and should be disclosed openly to your viewers/readers.
Jason: Kyte’s producer DOES let you stream live video. I’ll be doing that on FastCompany.tv soon.
I’m pretty sure you can’t do video with the version that is available through the App store. Are you using a jailbroken version?
Sorry Jason. It is late in the evening and I was confused. The Kyte Producer is what I use on my laptop. Yeah, the iPhone doesn’t do video or streaming at this point. It’ll be interesting to see how companies get it to work (if they can at all without hacking it in a way that’ll keep normal people from doing it).
Thanks for this article Jason. I tried Livecaster. It sucked. I’m currently testing all three other services and while I’m in the early testing phase I’m liking Qik the best for it’s ease of use, community, the new groups feature as Jeff Crites points out and it’s ability to send alerts and syndicate the live stream and recorded media to Twitter, Pownce, mobuzz.tv, Blogger, Seesmic, Moulus, Justin.tv and YouTube. That’s a lot of integration.
Not sure why there’s a problem with Sarah. Not like she did a blatant endorsement for Flixwagon in the videos. Plus it scored the lowest in your review.
P.S. “pixeley” = pixelated
Heh, thanks Larry. Changed it.
Hey Robert, I heard a rumor that you were being paid by Qik. Though, I didn’t make an accusation. Do you do any consulting?
I’m working toward getting Flixwagon to sponsor my show at the moment and I have been very open about telling people why I use their service. I’m helping Flixwagon consulting, development and getting them connected. They do have a lot to offer and I wouldn’t work with them unless I thought they had great potential.
I really like Kyte. In fact, I’m going to get an account with them so I can stream there too. They obviously have the best video quality and I find it interesting how their chat goes over the video so you can chat and watch video on one screen.
Let me be clearer. I have NEVER been paid by Qike or Kyte.tv. I do NOT do consulting. I have no investments in the companies I cover, write about, or video. The only companies that pay me are clearly disclosed as sponsors. So far that’s Seagate and SAP.
I am not tossing myself in this for any other reason than that I’ve gone down this road with Robert before (re: FriendFeed), and it it was a mistake.
Robert uses things, and if its good they stay around for him, if they’re not, they go by the wayside.
Doing something like this jeopardizes credibility with future sponsors and supporters…the people who you are trying to connect a service with.
Not everybody will have an iphone in the future. Its called market competition. Go to http://www.goth...te.blogspot.com for more news
Looks like one more coming up to this list.
http://molv.com
Technical comment regarding the comparison, that I think is somewhat wrong(!!!):
You could clearly see the video shot on the Flixwagon video shot is much closer to the subject than Qik and Kyte. The surrounding are mostly white and compress better hence video quality of the picture will be better in this framing with all services.
Another point not mentioned, I do know that both Qik and Flixwagon have quality settings – and I believe Qik goes up to 640×480 – what were the setting in each broadcast? how “live” was the broadcast? ignoring this is simply rating the default selection of each provider…
Ben
All videos were shot from the same place. Flixwagon has a different zoom setting apparently.
Just a quick note about audio volume: we don’t max the volume in the Qik player by default. I don’t know if it was noticed or not that it can be increased, but this is intentional
I like to think of it as annoyance-reduction.
Also, chat is live inside the player on Qik.com now, and should be live in the embedded players by this weekend.
Thanks for the review!
cheers,
Michael
How many people would pay to use any of these services?
Neat tech.
No business.
nice comparison, but too simple, i’m afraid. i’m missing a more real-live set of tests using 3G using an adequate “no-delay” / medium resolution setting, which is more likely to be the normal setting for live-streaming, when someone is out and about. also i’m missing the technical details for each test, like resolution, bandwith used, delay, framerate, etc.
Flixwagon quility sucks ass!
Its relatively simple to add iPhone support, use QuickTime codec with hint-tracks and you are all set on the encoding side with open source Darwin streaming server on the backend side.
”
Expect some delay because of encoding, but you can always put the onus saying “It’s iPhones fault and not ours
-ANurag
I’m partial to Qik. I just see their service as more approachable for the average web user. I also think that they are addressing many of the points Scoble raised in his Kyte v. Qik post very quickly and well. If they can get an Apple approved iPhone app out soon and can scale gracefully, I think this could easily be another YouTube or Twitter-esque success story.
OK. No.
@sarah, I think you’re missing the entire point of this. You have a post now where you’re reporting on the Wii Fit Girl, and pointing out that Nintendo immediately denied connection to it. They didn’t deny connection because of the woman’s ass; they denied connection because not disclosing a business relationship like the one alledged there is damaging to their brand.
Meanwhile, you’re videoblogging this on Flixwagon without disclosing your own paid relationship with them. Social media thrives on transparency (cf Robert Scoble and his full disclosures) and eats people who do not engage in full disclosure for lunch.
Perhaps instead of telling people to chill out, you should step back and figure out what has people’s panties in a wad here.
@Jason: Either a) You knew about Sarah’s relationship with Flixwagon and didn’t bother to write in a disclosure that would have avoided this brewhaha happening on TechCrunch’s doorstep, or b) she didn’t tell you, which is worse. TC has a tremendous amount of credibility, but it needs to be protected, and one of the ways to do that is by adhering to some basic standards.
yeah, this isn’t a brewhaha. we didn’t know about sarah’s sponsorship but it wouldn’t matter anyway. All we did was point a camera at her and ask her what her name and favorite website was.
Hi everyone – Just to clarify:
Kyte Mobile Producer for S60 – Live streaming and record & upload for s60 3rd edition phones (N95, etc.). In private beta now, GA in a few weeks. Sign up here: http://www.kyte.com/beta
Kyte Mobile Producer for iPhone – Available free in the iTunes App Store now. Pictures only since the iPhone doesn’t yet officially support video. When it does support video so will we. Check out a video demo: http://www.kyte...yte_iphone_app/
Our current mobile offerings are listed here:
http://www.kyte.../pg/kyte_mobile
Best,
Gannon
Flixwagon, I wonder they couldn’t come up with a better name.
And the logo. ZOMG, I just cant figure it out.
The quality definitely sucks ass.
Qik rocks
I’m with Alex and the others who say that Flixwagon sucks, in comparison with the other providers.
Jim Connolly
Cool services… do these companies have plans to get into mobile video chat?
http://www.read...ex.php?RTA=web2
Check bambuser.com another example of the service in the same field.
Thanks for the comparison guys, very helpful for those of us that come to TC for exactly these kinds of articles. Even better to see Sarah and Robert being so open and transparent. Will be sure to follow both your blogs more closely…
@ Jackie: Did you manage to take that chill pill? Just the one…
Thanks for the comparison. I have been using Qik for live streaming press conferences for some time now. Great service, great quality – like early YouTube videos. Will check ou Kyte and probably get a second Nokia to stream in parallel.
None of these work with any HTC windows mobile devices!!, so I was curious about comvu which was mentioned as non-working. Tried it on my sprint mogul and it worked perfect, in less than a min i was streaming live! It took me a while to figure out that it even has GPS features so when u check my live page it will show the google maps with gps from my phone.
Cons- no flash
live page sometimes crashes on firefox but works gr8 in ie7
Let me see if I can show a live test subject, so that I can show my stream
here is a stream http://www.live...m/live/?sameerb
see also http://www.zaplive.tv and here is a list of the supported devices http://www.zaplive.tv/mobile
Mobile livecasting is not hot now.
Whooaa…what a tringular-patterned competition we got there. I think I’ll be supporting Kyte.
Jason—Sorry you had problems with WMV / QT players, not sure what’s going on, other reviewers have gotten up and running in a snap.
WSJ’s Jeremy Wagstaff says: “…Livecast’s product works better. I stumbled and struggled with [other providers], whereas Livecast worked the first time. Downloading and installing the software is straightforward (it works with most Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 camera phones). Livecast itself is easy — just a press of a button, really.”
Masters in Media’s Robin Good says: “…a live video streaming application that enables every single mobile phone, PDA, smartphone, UMPC computer to do much of what [other providers] does and more. I honestly could not my believe my eyes as after only a few minutes I was able to download, install and immediately video stream live from the newly discovered Livecast application.”
Additionally, Livecast has won many industry’s top awards — NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge Grand-Prize, Mobile Monday Global Peer Award, etc.
So, with all that said…If you’d like to test run Livecast too, I’d be happy to get you on track.
Dr. Who—Appreciate your comments that Livecast worked perfectly for you, and yes, we’ll be supporting both Silverlight and Flash in our upcoming community portal – ready for Beijing Olympics (mid-August). You also commented on HTC, we support over 25 models of HTC alone, and then hundreds of other Symbian, Windows Mobile devices, plus Mac, PCs, UMPCs, MIDs.
GPS tracking was also mentioned –- when you use Livecast on a phone or other mobile device with a GPS receiver, it automatically embeds the exact location frame-by-frame in the video stream. Viewers can see exactly what’s happening, and where on a map (“cookie crumb” trail shows the full route you’ve traveled.)
The full community version with dynamic mapping will be available shortly in Silverlight and Flash (works with all browsers). Anyone interested in LBS, here’s a screencast of a GPS demo: WMV link (mms://wms0010.livecast.com/dflt/livecast-gps.wmv) or a FLASH link (http://www.live...st-gps-flv.html). Streaming live phone-to-phone is already available from Livecast, plus lots more exciting innovations coming next month, stay tuned.
(Note – we recently changed to “Livecast” from “ComVu”, in case there’s any confusion – so used Livecast in quotes above.)
I use Livecast for several years now using Nokia and HTC phones. Always work, excellent service. First company to stream and still best by far.
Reviewer must have bone to pick – not fair article at all.
Han
I am glad we are not mentioned much in the mangle of confusion above. Ubcam is a small company based in Ireland, all self funded and I bet €10,000 our system has made more money than Kyte, Qik and FW put together.
I sometimes get lost in trying to understand where people make money and the reasoning in all the hard work – I say fair dues to those mentioned and I wish them all the best.
So give it up for the Irish in the room.
nice
hello