Live Internet Television

Digital Media Wire has published interesting numbers for live viewing of the inauguration at Ustream’s site and via iPhones:

Ustream, the provider of an interactive video broadcasting platform, announced on Tuesday that it served some 3.8 million streams today, including a live feed of the inauguration that was viewable via the company’s new iPhone application. The company said it counted 400,000 concurrent users watching inauguration events during the speech and swearing in, including “tens of thousands” on their iPhones.

And that’s just Ustream. CNN reports 21.3 Million streams, with 1.3 concurrent. How many of these millions were satisfied with their experience we can’t know.  As  I posted yesterday, there was a lot of frustration and disappointment making itself felt on Twitter by people who had interrupted streaming and problems watching online. And the Washington Post also feels it was not a success.

With millions tuning in from their PCs to watch President Obama’s Inauguration speech, it was one of the biggest tests yet for live video streaming. But live streaming failed. CNN.com kept bumping viewers into virtual waiting rooms. This happened to me in the middle of Obama’s speech. I had to keep hitting refresh, but missed half the speech. The stream on Hulu was even worse, with the video frozen and the audio coming in and out. And forget about Ustream. I couldn’t even get any audio. This seemed to be the general experience out there, based on other reports.

Amidst all this frustration, it’s encouraging to note so many were onboard with online viewing at the outset. The online-live experience will improve.