• Kyte Now Offering Broadcast-Quality Live Video Streaming Backpack

    Erick Schonfeld

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

    Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

    Live video streaming on the web is becoming more and more popular, and for news organizations and brands who don’t want to shell out thousands of dollars a day for a satellite truck there is another option. At SXSW, Kyte is going to release a new product called Kyte LivePro Unwired with Spin magazine.

    LivePro is a computer in a backpack connected to six data cards all uploading live video at the same time, balancing the load across three different carriers (Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon). It is made by LiveU and Kyte will be reselling it to its larger customers. (LiveStream uses the same technology in its Livepack).

    Kyte CEO Daniel Graf came by my office the other day to show me the technology (see video below). It is incredible that a backpack can now replace a satellite truck. You won’t get HD quality, but you can get broadcast-TV quality, and it is certainly better than uploading video from your mobile phone, which Kyte also allows. He says that typical livestreaming rates with the backpack are 700 kilobits to 1 megabit per second.

    Some customers using Kyte’s online video platform include Fox News, MTV, and Calvin Klein. Graf says Kyte is now streaming 100 million videos a month across its network, up from 50 million last summer.

    Company: Kyte
    Website: kyte.com
    Launch Date: December 1, 2006
    Funding: $23.4M

    Kyte is the online and mobile video platform for media and entertainment. The Kyte Platform combines the real-time, interactive and community building capabilities of the social web with the analytics, control, and monetization features of professional video platforms, enabling companies to converge online and mobile audiences, build community, and monetize.

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    Company: Livestream
    Website: livestream.com
    Launch Date: May 1, 2007
    Funding: $12.7M

    Livestream’s mission is to connect people and live events. Livestream offers event owners a complete set of hardware and software tools to share their events with a growing community online. More than 30 million viewers each month watch thousands of live events from customers including The New York Times, Facebook, ESPN, SpaceX and Warner Bros. Records. Founded in 2007, Livestream is headquartered in New York with offices in Los Angeles, Ukraine and India. http://www.livestream.com.

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