Independent Webcast Provider's Review
January 10, 2017

Independent Webcast Provider's Review

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Streaming Manager (Ustream Pro Broadcast)

Modules Used

  • Ustream eCDN (IBM Cloud Video Enterprise Content Delivery Network)

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Video (including Ustream)

We committed to Ustream for a 3 month period due to three specific events we were webcasting for three different clients. The first needed live broadcast and then VOD for an external customer update, the second just VOD for a product update, and the third an internal live broadcast to thousands of employees. There were a few issues with implementing the player appropriately to the different microsite environments, and some additional investigation and coding were required to ensure the functionality needed was retained in the different environments.
The broadcast solution gives excellent video quality, but the implementation requires some focused work. It isn't as simple as it should be and the embed codes normally need tweaking to work properly on the websites. If you have the time to implement and work through iterations and testing, it's a great solution. If you need something to implement last minute, it's risky.
We're an independent live events company, and we use Ustream to broadcast our client's internal and external communications, product launches, and any other live event where the highest quality video and cloud multi-bitrate transcoding for global delivery is needed. As a company we use many different webcast platforms, but we are impressed time and again by the image quality delivered to the viewer by Ustream.
  • Good quality multi-bitrate transcoding in the cloud
  • The customer service and technical support is quick and efficient
  • Competitive cost-effective solution
  • We have encountered VOD playback issues
  • Analytics are fine, but not presented brilliantly
  • Support could be extended to be more accessible to customers outside US
Ustream is one of many webcast platforms that we use to provide our service to clients - ensuring that a cost-effective and high quality solution is paramount to our business.
Each project we deliver is different - different region, different language, different audience, different content and different requirements. Each time we select Ustream it is because we think Ustream delivers the best looking live stream from our elemental encoder.
Ustream is well suited to any event which demands the highest quality passthrough or transcoded video image broadcast.

Larger events with more viewers can be expensive using Ustream, and so clients often look to lower cost per viewer or bundled/no viewer limits solutions.