Live Events Revolutionizes Live Content on iPhone; Now Anyone Can Broadcast to the iPhone
Orb Networks today announced the availability of Orb Live Events, a customizable iPhone application that enables any content owner to broadcast their live content on these popular handsets. Live Events provides content owners with a proven iPhone player, already approved and available in Apple’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. In contrast to using other solutions, which can cost millions and take months to implement, a content provider or broadcaster can get up and running in as little 24 hours with the Orb solution. 
For content owners, broadcasting live content to mobile devices can pose a number of technical challenges, including those around network bandwidth, inconsistent formats, and distributing the mobile application to the handset. There are even more formidable challenges building a reliable, high quality streaming media experience on the iPhone. And since Apple must approve all new software applications in the App Store, developers often find it difficult to coordinate their product launch with acceptance in the App Store. Orb Live Events is the fastest and most flexible solution for the iPhone / touch platform. The application delivers high-quality live streaming over 3G, WiFi, and Edge, and has already been approved for distribution in Apple’s App Store, making it readily available to millions of iPhone users. For the broadcaster, the process usually takes less than a day. The first live broadcast using the Orb Live Events technology was a broadcast of the NBA All-Star Weekend.
“Up to now, getting live content onto an iPhone or touch was extremely painful – there were just too many moving parts for the broadcaster to justify the effort,” said Joe Costello, CEO of Orb Networks. “Orb Live Events simplifies all that. The iPhone app has been extensively tested, is approved and available today in the App Store, and is fully skin-able, giving the content owner the ability to integrate their mobile broadcast seamlessly into the overall marketing plan for the programming. And the formatting work required by the broadcaster is minimal – for many, it’s as short as an hour. Live Events is the fastest way to get live content to the iPhone, but it can also be customized to meet the needs of content owners who want more.”
For broadcasters and content owners who have bigger ideas, Orb Live Events can easily be customized for branding, promotions, or advertising. In addition, it can handle multiple streams from the CDN provider, offering a more dynamic, user-controlled viewing experience than watching the event on TV. And Orb can create proprietary iPhone applications for the content owner who wants their own branded application in the Apple App Store.
The generic Orb Live Events application is available today in Apple’s App Store. It displays a list of upcoming live shows (with the approval of the content owner). Live webcam feeds are listed temporarily and provide a demonstration the quality of the live video stream for those that want to try it, or are waiting for their favorite live broadcast.
