Livestation opens the floodgate to broadband TV viewing
Livestation, the interactive broadcast platform that delivers high-quality live TV over broadband, opened the floodgates last week when it enabled viewers to add links to their own favourite channels.
Since then viewer-added channels have been added at the rate of 50 a day, and the trend shows no sign of slowing down.
Livestation, which has an official line up of leading global news channels offered in high quality with full interactive links back to the broadcaster's sites, decided to add the new feature in response to viewer demand.
More than 400 channel links to TV, radio and webcam feeds were added by viewers within the first few days. Any publicly-available stream can now be added to the player for personal use only.
Viewers have been using the Livestation website to share, rate and talk about the channels they have added links to. As a result, some of the more popular added channels have been bookmarked more than 30,000 times as other viewers add them to their personal playlists.
According to Livestation's CEO, Matteo Berlucchi, the popularity of the feature indicates the growing demand for live TV over the Internet. He says the new feature is offering a fascinating insight into the potential of that proposition.
"We knew from the feedback we'd received from our Livestation viewers that they wanted more choice. 30,000 bookmarks of the 400 plus viewer-added channels in less than one week has confirmed that demand. As we work in partnership with the broadcasters, we are committed to passing on that information in order to encourage them to join our official line up and meet that viewer demand," he said.
Berlucchi says Livestation's aim is to release the potential of live TV over broadband.
"Some broadcasters have been quick to take up the offer of being on Livestation and have benefited in terms of increased audience and traffic driven back to their sites, others appear more wary and are missing out on what is an exciting opportunity --- it's an opportunity that Livestation is exploring on behalf of both broadcasters and viewers," he said.
Livestation is offering free distribution to the first 20 channels to join its platform and aims to launch publicly in the autumn. However, the player can currently be downloaded from the Livestation site with fresh releases being offered as the product develops. A cross-platform release is being tested by a number of viewers and is due out within days. It will ensure that PC, Mac and Linux users can all benefit from the Livestation viewing experience.