Ustream, Livestream to Power Extensive Live, Interactive Coverage of CES

In a posting on its corporate blog, Tuesday, live Internet broadcast service provider, Ustream, announced that it will be powering several streams of live interactive video coverage of this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

• Starting at 4:15PM Pacific today (Wednesday, January 6th), the company will power live coverage of Sony's CES press conference, in which the CE giant is expected to unveil a range of new products. The Sony coverage will be available here.
• Throughout the week, the company will be powering live coverage from CBS-owned technology news service, CNET. The coverage will include "Buzz Out Loud" (begins 9:00AM Pacific, Wednesday), "CNET Live" (begins 1:00PM Pacific, Thursday), and "Best of CES Finalists" (begins 10:00AM Pacific, Friday). CNET's coverage will be available here.
• The company will also be powering VentureBeat's live coverage of various CES keynotes, including those of Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer (6:30PM Pacific, Wednesday), and Intel CEO, Paul Otellini (4:30PM Pacific, Thursday). VentureBeat's coverage will be available here.
• And finally the company will be powering Leo Laporte's live CES coverage, which includes: live reporting from the show floor and various parties from 1:00PM through 10:00PM Pacific, Thursday, and from 9:00AM Pacific, Friday; the regularly scheduled shows "The Tech Guy," "This Week in Google" and "TWiT," live from the show floor on Saturday; and "The Tech Guy" and other programming live from the show floor on Sunday. Laporte's coverage will be available here.

Interactivity on Ustream-powered live broadcasts is enabled by Ustream's own chat functionality and its recently launched (see the article published on itvt.com, November 2nd) social TV service, Social Stream, which allows Ustream users to send their comments about the video they are watching simultaneously to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and AIM (note: the comments include a link to the video).

In a posting on its blog, meanwhile, rival Livestream--whose platform offers similar interactive/social TV capabilities to Ustream's--announced that it will be powering live CES coverage for Intel and for the blogs, Gizmodo and CrunchGear (note: the latter two will be using Livestream's Livepack offering, which was featured in an article published on itvt.com, September 27th):

• Starting at 7:30AM Pacific, Thursday, Livestream will power live coverage of the launch of Intel's new Core 2010 Processor; and starting at 4:30PM Pacific, Thursday, it will power live coverage of Intel CEO Paul Otellini's keynote. The coverage of the processor launch, as well as coverage of some other Intel CES events, will be available here, and the keynote coverage will be available here.
• CrunchGear and Gizmodo are both planning to provide extensive live coverage of CES: CrunchGear's Livestream-powered coverage will be available here and Gizmodo's here.