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Poll of answers to the question: what is your go-to device for live streaming?
In a quick poll I did on LinkedIn, I asked the very basic question “What your go-to device was for live web streaming?” If you’re in the professional event streaming business or thinking of breaking into the profession you may have been overwhelmed by the myriad of choices and options in the marketplace when it comes to a live streaming encoder or production device. There are more do-it-yourself options than you can count and increasingly more turn-key solutions from vendors both new and old.
Some have asked why the poll was limited to so few options. The simple answer is that’s all the options LinkIn provides on its polling widget, so the last option was used as a catch-all. Interesting to note that a LOT of people — over a third of the respondents use something other than what you may consider mainstream. These are systems from Paladdin, Streambox, High End, ViewCast, and others.
Not surprising that TriCaster use is at 13%. Dr. Cleve Sandy calls the TriCaster the “Rolls Royce” of streaming media equipment. That in many ways is true, but as you can see from the poll, not everyone drives a Rolls. The one surprising figure here is the 7% Livestream encoder use. Now this isn’t their software, but the streaming appliances they have only had on the market for only a few years. The fact they have half the market share as pioneer NewTek is very interesting. I must honesty say I haven’t seen any of Livestream’s appliances in the wild, but clearly there are a number of people using them.
If this poll was conducted several years ago, the number of respondents using Flash Media Live Encoder (FMLE) would likely be much higher. FMLE has really fallen out of favor among professionals. One likely cause has been stagnant development of late. While there were some unverifiable praise for version 4 of FMLE while it was in beta, that product has yet to see light of day. Also, with constant development to Wirecast and lower cost alternatives like vMix, ffMPEG, VLC, mxlight, etc., FMLE becomes an increasingly less attractive option.
One thing is certain, there are many different approaches to live streaming and many different solutions to suit varying budgets. Absent from the poll were mobile devices. iOS and Android devices have been able to stream to Ustream and Livestream for some time, and many new apps are hitting the market that can generate RTMP, RTSP, and other protocol streams. While no one mentioned mobiles apps like GoCoder for the Wowza platform, this I’m certain will be a growing method of live content acquisition, encoding, and transmission. The smart phone should not be overlooked for its convenience, high quality camera, and built-in path to the Internet.
Note: the red bar in the graphic depicts our selection because while we use all of the above, we’re primarily a NewTek TriCaster shop. If you would like to participate in the poll look for the live video streaming group.
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