Posts Tagged ‘boxee. roku’

Livestation for dummies

Posted on February 3rd 2011 by


It just occurred to me that some of the cool features available on the Livestation service may not be self evident. So, here’s a brief list of cool and useful tools for you to enjoy Livestation to its full potential.

On the desktop

Livestation Desktop Player (Win)

As we started our life as a desktop only service, it shouldn’t be surprising that that’s where we pack the most features. First of all, download the free player from here (Win/Mac and Linux)

  1. Multi View: watch 2 channels at once. Go Pro (see later) to get as many channels on screen as your bandwidth allows you to.
  2. Alway on top: keep the player running in a corner of your screen while working, updating facebook, etc. This option is in the Options menu
  3. Chat: select the channel you want, press the down arrow in the top right of the screen to open the bottom panel and click on the Chat tab to enter the room of that channel. Go PRO and choose any room regardless of what channel you are watching.
  4. Tweet-what-you-are-watching (TWYAW): open the bottom panel and select Twitter; enter your user/pass and read the tweets you follow while watching. Click the Grab button to take a screen grab of what you are watching, add your comments and #tags and press send to TWYAW in one second. Surely the fastest way to post a picture from live TV to Twitter we’ve seen around!
  5. Desktop Alerts: we’ve wired most of the channels to their own Twitter feeds for breaking news. Tick the box next to the channel name in the bottom panel on the My Channels tab to receive desktop alerts as they are pushed out.
  6. Viewer Added Channels: our viewers have added thousands of open streams from around the net for you to enjoy. Search the Livestation directory on the Search tab in the bottom panel to find webcams, radio, TV and more from all over the world.
  7. Go Pro! We have created a special version of the player with some extra cool and useful stuff such as NO ADS (as you pay for it!), Unlimited Multi View, Tethered Chat (see above), Unlimited upgrades. More on Pro here and it’s only $19.99 for life). This is the must have for any news buff by the way.

On the web

Our web offering is pretty rich too. Here are some of the main ways to enjoy Livestation in the browser.

  1. Watch on your PC: open your browser (any) and go to our website. Choose the channel you want to watch and press play. We integrate the latest tweets from most of our partner channels so that you can get an idea of the latest news covered by each of the channels.
  2. Watch on your iPad: we have created an optimised version of the site for iPad users (HTML5 for the tech.nically versed). Once again, just open your Safari browser and go to www.livestation.com and press play. Works on WiFi and 3G (watch your mobile bill if you stay on for many hours per day!).
  3. Premium Channels (if you purchase a premium channel it will also be available on the desktop player the next time you log in): these are either channels which are not available for free (example CNBC) or high quality versions of free channels (example Al Jazeera). These are paid with a low monthly subscription which you can cancel whenever you like. Here’s an example.
  4. YouTube headlines and Tweets: for most channels we carry the latest 4 videos posted on YouTube and the latest Tweets to give you a snapshot of what that channel has been covering in the last hour or so. These are avaiable below the video area on each channel page.

On mobile


If you are on the move, we have a few options for you to be able to catch up with your favourite channels.

  1. iPhone/iPod: go http://m.livestation.com to access our iPhone optimised version of the service. If you have a Premium channel subscription you can also sign in to access it on the phone. Streaming is optmised for mobile. Give it a go.
  2. Android: same story as above: go to http://m.livestation.com and click on what you want to watch. Easy.
  3. Blackberry: we do support Blackberry but Blackberry doesn’t support us :-) What it means is that the live streaming kind of works depending on how good your connection is. We have pretty good results on WiFi but 3G is very unpredictable. Try it and see if it works for you. Same address http://m.livestation.com
  4. Apps: we have also developed a few cool live streaming apps for some of our partners (we were the first in the world to live stream on iPhone by the way and here’s the proof!). We have apps for Al Jazeera Arabic, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Mubasher, Al Arabiya, BBC World News, CNBC all available on the App Store.

Other ways to watch

Here’s a selection of other places or platforms where you can watch Livestation.

  1. Playstation 3: open the PS3 browser and go to ps3.livestation.com. That’s it.
  2. Boxee (both the PC app and their D-Link box): search for the Livestation App in their directory. Install it and watch!
  3. Roku: coming!
  4. Dailymotion: go to www.dailymotion.com/livestation to access most of our channels. Good back up in case we are slammed under heavy traffic.
  5. Al Jazeera: if you are only interested in watching Al Jazeera, you can go to their site and watch their channel there (it’s our streaming anyway – same for their facebook and YouTube channels). Here’s the link.

This pretty much sums it up. If you are still confused, we suggest you stick to traditional TV or get in touch with our support team.

Happy watching!

Matteo