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Streaming to the Apple iPhone, Part 2

Dec 8, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

In last month's edition of Final Cut Pro Insider, we looked at the technical details behind Apple's HTTP Live Streaming to the Apple iPhone. As promised, here are four case studies of companies streaming to the iPhone. Three use HTTP Live Streaming, and one uses technology provided by its online video provider (OVP).

Livestation

Livestation is a London-based aggregator of live news channels—including Al Jazeera, CNBC, BBC, and Bloomberg—which it delivers over multiple platforms, including PCs and iPhones. I spoke with CEO Matteo Berlucchi about the company's recently introduced HTTP streaming service for iPhones.

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Apple's announcement was bad news for Berlucchi because his company was one of the few that had figured out a way to stream live to the iPhone. Specifically, his company had been streaming BBC, Al Jazeera, and UEFA soccer games to the iPhone using a proxy-based proprietary technology that fooled the iPhone into thinking that the video it was playing was stored on the hard drive.

While Apple's announcement leveled the technology playing field, Berlucchi took a positive long-term view.

"Apple's technology simplified our life and lowered our costs in the short- and long-term," he says. "Every time you write software, you have to maintain and upgrade it as Apple introduces new devices or upgrades their operating systems. All these costs are gone, so we can focus on our core business, which is finding new content and new subscribers."

Looking forward, Berlucchi says he hopes that BlackBerry and Google's Android OS will adopt the same technology, which will make it even easier for content producers and aggregators like his company.

From a technology perspective, Livestation developed its own blade server-based capture and encoding solution to produce all streaming files, including those transmitted to the iPhone. Livestation uses the Wowza Media Server Pro Advanced server to manage the streaming process out to the content delivery networks that actually deliver the streams. Berlucchi says that so far, Wowza has been ideal for a small company like Livestation. Livestation is distributing a single static stream while awaiting Apple's approval of its new iPhone applications, which will adaptively distribute three streams at 80kbps, 160kbps, and 320kbps, all at 480x320 resolution and 25fps.

Though HTTP Live Streaming eliminated the need to design a custom iPhone application, Livestation plans to continue offering one in the App store. "We will charge for our services in the browser," Berlucchi says, "but the App Store gives another point of sale. It's part of our sales strategy."

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