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April 16, 2007

Live from your Laptop: Ustream.tv

These days anyone who wants have a "live Internet TV show" can have one...for free!

Anyone with a laptop (with a webcam) can visit Ustream.tv and in less than five minutes get setup with your own channel, your own chat room and be live on the Internet.

And if you have a few friends on twitter, it is pretty easy to get a group of people to watch your premiere episode.

Once you go live, you can chat with your viewers via your own online chat room.

This feels like a throwback to the days of CuSeeMe...

And the total cost for this is zero. At least for now.

And there's more. Ustream.tv has introduced "eSeats" where you can establish a price per ticket and charge people to view your broadcasts. This means that Ustream.tv might be a platform to consider when producing fee-based video webinars and this is a feature which does help differentiate UStream.tv from a site like Stickam.

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Posted by jeff on April 16, 2007 09:20 AM | Permalink

Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos

Comments

Ustream? shhiiit, idoITdigital.com has been live for 2 years. Too bad I have nothing interesting going on to host a show.

Posted by: Clintus at April 20, 2007 01:13 PM

If you don't mind having a more limited audience and happen to have a multicast enabled Internet2 ( http://internet2.edu/ ) connection available, you can create your own live Internet TV show.

Just grab a copy of VLC ( http://videolan.org ), a computer with a camera, fill out the streaming wizard ( https://gustv.gac.edu/howto.php ) and off you go. Your live video or rebroadcast can be streamed at full resolution to as many viewers as you like and only require the bandwidth of a single stream. All for free. Well, maybe for the cost of tuition :)

Too bad the rest of the internet is not multicast enabled or this could really be fun.

Posted by: Dan at April 16, 2007 11:03 PM

Chris, I agree about twitter. A real-time information source integrated into the alpha-geek Internet community can change the dynamics of a lot of things.

Posted by: Jeff Pulver at April 16, 2007 12:19 PM

I should note that I'm an investor in Ustream, so I'm not a disinterested party!

Posted by: Chris Yeh at April 16, 2007 11:35 AM

Jeff,

It's been pretty fascinating to see just how important Twitter is in the growth of Ustream. I suspect that one of the reasons that Ustream is taking off is because Twitter now offers a way to know when something interesting is going on in real time.

Previously, something like Digg could only tell you that someone felt a stream was interesting--it works for YouTube clips, but not for live. I'll be interested to see if the Diggs of the world go real-time, or if new players emerge.

Posted by: Chris Yeh at April 16, 2007 11:34 AM