Livestation launches beta of TV streaming service

Livestation is a new streaming television service from Skinkers, a British startup with support from Microsoft. While the service is still an invite-only beta, the company widened its beta this week with a promise to send out invites to pretty much anybody who signs up for one at the Livestation web site.

So what exactly does Livestation offer? Unlike streaming video services such as Joost and Babelgum, which offer on-demand videos, Livestation serves up live streams from channels you've heard of, like the BBC. While that might sound pretty exciting, keep in mind, the software is in beta and there aren't a ton of content partners just yet. While we often poke fun at Joost for its lack of content, you're much more likely to find something worth watching on Joost than Livestation right now.

Currently Livestation offers up just a handful of television and radio news channels. What you get is based on where you live. For example, if you're in the UK you can watch BBC News 24, but if you're in the US you'll have to make due with the BBC World Service and Channel 4 radio streams, Al-Jazeera in English, and France 24.

But what Livestation lacks in content it makes up for with efficiency. The video quality is fairly decent, and there's virtually no buffering if you've got a high speed internet connection. There are no fancy controls like you find in Joost or Babelgum. Livestation isn't meant to replace your television set. It's just a simple way to watch streaming TV content without a web browser.

If you're a news junkie or if you're interested in checking out the player, you might want to pop on over to the LiveStation web site. If not, you might want to wait until the company signs a few more content deals.

Currently Livestation is available for Windows XP and Vista only, but a mac version is in the works as is support for "other platforms."

Tags: livestation, online-video, streaming-video, television