At the recent SatCon (News - Alert) show in New York, I had a chance to catch up with Mike Savello, VP of sales, LiveU and he showed off the company’s new LU40i, which is part of the new LU40 series of products. A complement to the LU60 which the company considers their flagship product , this smaller but complementary unit is less expensive and replaces the LU30.

This standard definition FireWire enabled unit is good for junior reporters who may be for example following primary candidates throughout the country. In such a scenario, a one-man team could keep the costs down and the news organization is still able to be seemingly everywhere at once.

The LU60 is leased at $2,500 per month including a transmitter, extra battery pack, backpack and Verizon LTE (News - Alert)/4G card. The LU40i costs $1,500 per month and in either case the stream can be pushed out from the cloud via Windows Media for example. There is support for four connections such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile (News - Alert), WiFi and a LAN. One point he made is upload speeds are comparatively very strong on T-Mobile if you have a strong signal.

Another point is the device is self-throttling; hopefully ensuring aggressive wireless carriers won’t cut your signal or throttle you themselves.

The company’s expansion plans include the enterprise where they hope to bring their technology into marketing departments. An example of a successful campaign  is by customer Honest Tea who had a “take a tea, leave a dollar” campaign in 12 cities throughout the country. The idea was to use the honor system, while being able to track which city was the most honest. According to Honest Tea, 87 percent of Americans were honest. The winner city was Chicago with a score of 99 followed by Boston 97, Seattle 97, Dallas 97, Atlanta 96, Philadelphia 96, Cincinnati 95, San Francisco 93, Miami 92, Washington, 91, Los Angeles 88, and New York brought up the rear with an 86.

I’m going to have to keep an eye on my wallet next time I head to Manhattan.