In the field of 360-degree cameras there’s a variety of options available for filmmakers, both professional and amateur. At the lower end there’s devices like Samsung Gear 360, 360fly and the Ricoh Theta S which all retail for under £500 GBP. Then at the top of the scale you’ve got the Nokia OZO which will set you back £60,000. So there’s plenty of space in the middle for other innovative camera solutions like the GoPro multi rigs. New to the marketplace is Reality Lab Networks, which has announced the opening of pre-orders for its live-streaming camera, Live Planet.

The Live Planet camera features 16, 18-megapixel lenses with high dynamic range and low-light performance, to stitch together 4K resolution images. Aside from being able to record 4K quality content on of the cameras main selling points is its ability to live-stream content which is dynamically encoded for delivery based on viewers’ virtual reality (VR) platforms and available bandwidth.

Halsey Minor, who founded and built CNET Networks is the CEO and founder of Reality Lab Networks, and leads Reality Lab’s development of the Live Planet system.

“For less than five thousand dollars, content producers can now capture perfect stereoscopic VR and 360 content for live-streaming to anyone on any platform in the world,” said Halsey Minor, CEO and founder of Reality Lab Networks. “Today, creators know it’s nearly impossible to create and stream high-quality VR and 360 video to large audiences and to all platforms. We are building the technology and cloud infrastructure that makes this exciting new immersive, user-controlled medium possible. We are putting the necessary tools in the hands of all creators around the globe, enabling this transformative medium to become real.”

The Live Planet system contains three components: the device itself; a cloud-based software suite for managing, transcoding and optimizing delivery to all VR and 360-degree video platforms, and client software for all platforms that work with the Live Planet cloud to deliver optimized VR and 360-degree video content.

For those interested five hundred Live Planet cameras are now available at a special introductory pre-sale rate of $4,995 USD (MSRP: $9,995) at liveplanet.net, with an expected shipping date of Q4 2016.

For all the latest news and announcements, keep reading VRFocus.

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