It's been a while since we looked at Livestation, a video player that allows you to watch live streams of TV channels, with a heavy emphasis on news programming. While the channel selection was rather limited in February, there are now over a thousand channels to choose form, thanks to user submitted links to channels that stream live TV signals. Most are still news related, but there are also a handful of channels of music and other genres.

Another major change is that Livestation is now cross-platform. There are Windows, Mac, and Linux clients available. The Linux version works best on PCs with NVIDIA graphics cards, while the OS X version should run on any Mac with an Intel processor. The Windows version also no longer requires Silverlight to be installed.

The user interface has also been tweaked, making it simpler to search through the long list of channels or flip between channel presets. If the video window looks small in the screenshot, all you have to do is double click on any video to watch in full screen.

While Hulu, Joost, and other online video sites are focusing on offering video on demand, Livestation provides a decent way to watch live programming. And there are two things that most people would rather watch live than pre-recorded, news and sports. Since there's a lot more money involved in getting broadcast and webcast rights for live sporting events, I doubt we'll be seeing ESPN or similar channels on Livestation any time soon. But if you want to catch the latest BBC, CNN, or Bloomberg news, Livestation's got you covered.

[via MakeUseOf]

Livestation is a new streaming television service from Skinkers, a British startup with support from Microsoft. While the service is still an invite-only beta, the company widened its beta this week with a promise to send out invites to pretty much anybody who signs up for one at the Livestation web site.

So what exactly does Livestation offer? Unlike streaming video services such as Joost and Babelgum, which offer on-demand videos, Livestation serves up live streams from channels you've heard of, like the BBC. While that might sound pretty exciting, keep in mind, the software is in beta and there aren't a ton of content partners just yet. While we often poke fun at Joost for its lack of content, you're much more likely to find something worth watching on Joost than Livestation right now.

Currently Livestation offers up just a handful of television and radio news channels. What you get is based on where you live. For example, if you're in the UK you can watch BBC News 24, but if you're in the US you'll have to make due with the BBC World Service and Channel 4 radio streams, Al-Jazeera in English, and France 24.

But what Livestation lacks in content it makes up for with efficiency. The video quality is fairly decent, and there's virtually no buffering if you've got a high speed internet connection. There are no fancy controls like you find in Joost or Babelgum. Livestation isn't meant to replace your television set. It's just a simple way to watch streaming TV content without a web browser.

If you're a news junkie or if you're interested in checking out the player, you might want to pop on over to the LiveStation web site. If not, you might want to wait until the company signs a few more content deals.

Currently Livestation is available for Windows XP and Vista only, but a mac version is in the works as is support for "other platforms."