In the past two years it’s become increasingly easier to stream live video across the internet.  Two of the major services are Ustream.tv and Stickam.  Previously both offered about equal quality, about equal bandwidth per user, and about the same functional features (including online recording).  Earlier this year Leo Laporte began a streaming operation using a Tricaster, a T1, and a Stickam account.  This is a live show-almost 8 hours five days a week (with reruns overnight) streaming of the behind the scenes of the creation of his netcasts for TWiT.tv.  After a contract with Stickam, Leo was able to make the video 16:9 output, higher quality, and can stream video right into their servers.  The product he uses is “Flash Media Encoder” which is an optimized version of the encoder you would use for any of the flash streaming services.  Until now this was available to only exclusive partners of these services-but now, UStream.tv allows all of their useres access to this technology.  You download/instal FME (Flash Media Encoder) onto your system (Windows only, Macs can use it only via BootCamp), download the XML configuration from UStream.tv, and go live.  This option gives you FAR better quality.  Again, this is only going to provide higher quality if you have a higher-end live system including a dedicated machine for encoding, a DV, camcorder (no USB webcams (period)), good lighting, good microphone, content worth watching.

You can read more at UStream.tv’s page about this here.  As per the Stickam vs UStream.tv debate-UStream.tv is currently ahead, way ahead (for now).

Links:

UStream.tv

UStream.tv > FME-Help

Stickam

Leo Laporte

Blog

TWiT.tv

Live Show