QuickTime Broadcaster Available

firegate writes "A lot of people have been thrilled since the release of Apple's Open Source Darwin Streaming Server. Unfortunately, to stream live video, you previously had to buy a product called Sorenson Broadcaster (Win/Mac). Apple has now released a tool called QuickTime Broadcaster which accomplishes the same task, except this product is free. From what I understand, this application is a scaled-down version of Sorenson's Broadcaster. Apple has only released a Mac OS X version of the program for now, so I guess that we PC guys will need to keep buying the Sorenson product for now. Hopefully, Apple will realize how profitable a Windows or Linux version could be."

Comments

Apple doesn't care how profitable

[EnVisiCrypt]

Apple doesn't care how profitable something could be on Windows and Linux.

They're not trying to have the enormous grasp of three platforms. They are perfectly content to maintain their loyal following, and hopefully steal mindshare and eventually market share from the other two. They don't give a good god damn about whether a windows user would like it, because frankly, they don't want to have software on Windows beyond what is absolutely necessary (read: quicktime).

As a newly appointed Mac user, I couldn't be happier with that strategy.

Besides, how could it be profitable if they give it away for free?

Re:Apple doesn't care how profitable

[JabberWokky]

Apple has this serious hang-up with free software--they want to control everything on their platform. There's no good reason for all this proprietary Sorensen nonsense.

What does Sorensen have to do with Apple?

--
Evan "Microsoft wants to control everything. There's no good reason for all this DVD regioning nonsense".

Profitable...

[dogzilla]

I'm sure Apple realizes how profitable a Windows/Linux version would be....for PC manufactures and Microsoft.

I don't understand why everyone feels that it's Apple's job to transfer its competitive advantages to every other operating system people want to use. If you really feel that QT Broadcaster is valuable and useful - why not consider buying a Mac? OSX is unix-based, the hardware is pretty good, the price delta is pretty small, and you can even run Linux on the hardware. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

10 steps to live web streaming

[bfrog]

1) download and install Streaming Server and Broadcaster
2) start Streaming Server
3) start Broadcaster and point it at Streaming Server
4) start Movie Player and enter the URL of your Streaming Server
5) if video doesn't stream, plug in camera and repeat step 4
6) save movie to iDisk, in the Movies directory
7) log into homepage.mac.com
8) create account
9) create new movie page, select background, and select saved movie from iDisk
10) there is no step 10.

Profitable to be mac only - real world example

[Fished]

Currently, my church is almost entirely a PC shop (although I have snuck a mac os X server in.) However, the availability of tools like iMovie is making it increasingly atractive to move to Mac. One thing we've long wanted to do was real time web casting of our service ... well, guess what - if we can get the software free for the mac, and the mac has built-in firewire, and everything works out of the box for the mac, we'll buy a mac to do it.

And, unlike OS9, Mac OS X is really superior to Windows. Once Macs get in the door, they stand a real chance of taking over. So, where's the profit in giving away Windows software again?

Re:5 steps to live web streaming

[jeffehobbs]

Why do you need steps 6 through 10? I don't think there's any advantage to hosting the .sdp file on homepage.mac.com, as it's just a pointer to the stream coming out of your machine anyway, right...?

~jeff

selling the xserve

[tomdarch]

They will certainly keep it Mac only (at least for a while) in order to sell xserves. An xserve with free streaming software will be competetive with a WinTel box plus expensive streaming software. Thus more xserve sales.