LiveStation, Microsoft’s P2P TV

Redmond’s Internet television platform is called LiveStation already has a website and will allow, within a few months, of receive live TV channels on TCP / IP protocol .

Microsoft is therefore not thinking as a simple contender to the already crowded IP TV landscape but, unlike Joost, Babelgum and company, will focus its attention on the live content typical of the “one-way boxes” that populate the living rooms and kitchens around the planet. .

The service is not yet accessible to the public, so we will have to wait until October. It is currently underway an invitation-only testing program , as a Windows Live! blog reports. Spaces. Pandemia then makes available a demonstration video of how the platform works.

Developed in collaboration with the English company Skinkers, the LiveStation client will be based on Silverlight technology, the Flash-killer that Microsoft is trying to push on the market as much as possible, which in the event will allow it to be managed in an “easy” and painless way. interfacing with distributed TV (working on the same principle as the P2P BitTorrent network).

Regarding the contents and channels available, there is currently only one channel, even if it is a broadcaster of currently anonymous television content they showed interest in the initiative . Also for this reason, LiveStation is far from being considered a finished product, having at the moment more the characteristics of an experiment than anything else.

It certainly represents Microsoft’s intention to don’t stand by and watch in the revolution of telematic TV-on-demand that is being prepared – a TV that is truly available anywhere and on any technological device or gadget that has the ability to connect to the Network of networks – but rather to lead the bridgehead of the new, promising user-driven content distribution sector.

Alfonso Maruccia