I think Microsoft’s television strategy is pretty clear: throw as many ideas and products out there as you can and see what sticks. With MSN TV, Mediaroom, Windows Media Centre, and a number of other products, you’d think Microsoft would be content to improve what they already have. But no, today they announced LiveStation, a P2P live television broadcasting application built using Silverlight.

The project is a joint venture between Microsoft Research and UK-based Skinkers. Don Dodge has more on the technology behind LiveStation:

LiveStation is built on two research technologies, Pastry and SplitStream, from Microsoft’s Cambridge Research Lab. Pastry is a type of P2P system called a ‘distributed hash table,’ which makes it easier for computers to find and store information, and to organize themselves for collaborative tasks. Splitstream is an application built on top of Pastry which allows real-time streams such as live video to be robustly distributed peer-to-peer.

TechCrunch wrote about LiveStation today too:

And while it is certainly an excellent demonstration of the flexibility of Silverlight, its not even close to being productized and launched. For now, consider it little more than a pretty video.

True enough. You can watch that video here. LiveStation is currently in closed beta. I entered my email at the beta site, so hopefully I’ll get an invite soon.

For more on this story, check out TechMeme.

UPDATE: Long Zheng makes the very good point that
LiveStation isn’t really a Microsoft product.

I went to launch Windows Media Encoder earlier today, and accidently clicked on “Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition” instead. Instead of the application opening, I was presented with this error message:

Didn’t see that coming! I am a digital pack rat, so I still have the setup file - I downloaded it on October 3rd, 2006. I remember installing Studio Edition and having a quick look around, but I promptly forgot all about it.

Until today, that is.

So off to the Windows Media Encoder downloads page I go. Turns out the Studio Edition beta is history:

Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition Beta 1 is no longer available. Please visit the Windows Media Software Products Vendor page to learn about third-party products that provide advanced Windows Media Video encoding.

A quick search revealed no further information. I have no idea when the download disappeared.

Does anyone know what happened to Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition? My guess is that it was discontinued in favor of the Expression Media Encoder, but I am not sure. At least the latter product has a shorter name!

Leave me a comment if you have any details, thanks!

Microsoft released a Windows Media Services (WMS) package for Windows Server 2008 June CTP this week. Bill Staples, who runs the Web Server engineering teams at Microsoft, says the package is now supported on the Web SKU, though the download page says some features (such as the WMS Cache/Proxy plug-in) are not supported.

From the download page:

Use this release of Windows Media Services to test a Windows Media server running the Windows Server 2008 (June CTP) operating system in a test environment. Microsoft Windows Media Services is an industrial-strength platform for streaming live or on-demand audio and video content over the Internet or an intranet.

Here is the WMS package download, and more information on the June CTP.

Very late last night Microsoft announced the managed beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG). It’s an example of the renewed Software+Services focus of Windows Live. According to Brandon LeBlanc at the Windows Experience Blog, WLPG “includes all of the features of Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista” while also adding some new functionality and integrating with Windows Live services.

If it really does include all of the features of the previous app, then that means it should support the HD Photo (formerly known as Windows Media Photo) format. If that’s true, then WLPG might be the first widespread bit of software to include support for the fledgling photo format. Version 3 of the .NET Framework includes support for HD Photo, but it will take applications for support to really take off. As WLPG will run on both Windows Vista and Windows XP, it could go a long way to promoting HD Photo as a format.

Too bad the beta is closed - I’d love to try it out! In the meantime, check out the screenshots and other information Brandon posted.