LiveStation live web TV trial starts

WEB-BASED live broadcast TV service LiveStation is opening up a bit, coming out of pilot stage to begin a broad technical trial to chime with the start of the IBC conference in Amsterdam today.

Regular readers probably won't remember, this being the age of ephemera and real-time-motion attention spans, but The INQUIRER carried an excellent story recently about LiveStation owner Skinkers, an oddly-named company which uses peer-to-peer technology first developed by Microsoft Research in Cambridge and employs the same firm's Silverlight plug-in. Microsoft retains a small stake in Skinkers.

The idea is that you get real telly via a broadband link and a full service is planned for next year. Nice. However, the vagaries of the UK TV licensing system will doubtless mean the BBC being blocked for British citizens travelling abroad. µ