Live Planet, Inc.​, creator of next-generation media technologies, today announced the full-system release of its game-changing, end-to-end virtual reality (VR) video solution, the Live Planet VR System. In development over the last three years, the system is a powerful, fully-integrated solution for creating immersive video experiences, enabling anyone to easily and quickly capture and distribute dramatically better stereoscopic VR video easier than any other method. This complete system includes the full integration of best-of-breed VR camera, cloud and applications, delivering VR video live or recorded to all VR headsets and 360° platforms (e.g., Samsung Gear VR, Oculus, Google Daydream, YouTube, etc.).

Live Planet's VR System enables anyone to easily and quickly unleash their vision for immersive video experiences and define new categories of VR application, expanding the visual mediums within and beyond television and film. The system makes it simple, practical, and affordable to create and deliver stereoscopic VR and 360° video. Creators can:

• CAPTURE​ picture-perfect, real-time automatically-stitched stereoscopic footage optimized for comfortable viewing for livestream or later use with the Live Planet VR Camera.
• STORE​ and manage their uploaded VR video easily and affordably from anywhere with the Live Planet VR Cloud.
• DELIVER ​on-demand VR video and live VRcasts to audiences publicly or privately, even over mobile networks, to both Live Planet VR apps and social platforms.

"The vision of "Live Planet VR" is as the name suggests: to allow instantaneous immersion in the experiences that catalogue being human," said Halsey Minor, founder and CEO of Live Planet. "VR video is more than just a new medium and those who have tried VR instinctively know something extraordinary is afoot --- the capacity to share our lives, the arts, sports, celebrations and tragedies in profound new ways that are not mediated by others but directly experienced. Where the power of television leaves off, VR begins. Until now, creating VR video has been hindered by poor quality and insane complexity. Live Planet has put the industry's best VR experience in the hands of mere mortals, enabling the innovation and growth the industry has so far lacked. Just as pundits have written off VR for its experiential issues and complexity, along comes the Live Planet VR System to change the game."

While VR point solutions --- including various headsets and cameras --- have been around for the last few years, VR video has yet to take off as a medium because no one has focused on solving the full range of production and distribution challenges. As a result, it has been very difficult to easily, quickly, reliably, and affordably produce VR video experiences at scale, in particular for live distribution. Technical hurdles the Live Planet VR System has now overcome include:

1. Capturing footage at the highest possible visual quality, stereoscopically, and in a manner consistent with the natural characteristics of human vision, providing a comfortable experience with no dizziness or nausea so viewers may dwell in content experiences for long periods of time.
2. Generating automatic, perfectly-stitched footage in real time on the capture device, critical for live applications.
3. Delivering all footage, whether live or recorded, reliably and of the highest quality over dynamic network conditions --- including mobile networks --- to the myriad VR and 360° platforms, each of which has its own specifications.

Live Planet has invested in addressing these technological hurdles, creating innovations that handle them "under the hood", enabling the VR video industry to move forward with push-button simple solutions.

Live Planet uses the ​NVIDIA Jetson TX2​ supercomputer on a module to stitch together 16 different image sensors to output 4K video at 30 frames per second --- all inside the camera,saving creators days and dollars​ in post production time and expense. With its camera and cloud in beta with VR enthusiasts over the last year, the VR System now enables creators and application developers to "share their world," from transporting audiences to the stage with their favorite band, witnessing a Hail Mary from the 50 yard line, or attending Tim Cook's next Apple WWDC keynote --- the creative potential of the VR video medium is now available to anyone.

"VR provides a unique opportunity to tell immersive stories, but creating and editing high-quality scenes comes with its own set of challenges," said David Weinstein, Director of VR at NVIDIA. "With the NVIDIA Jetson TX2, Live Planet simplifies the process with a system that provides stunning immersive environments, delivering a VR experience like no other."

The Live Planet VR System is available for purchase at ​www.liveplanet.net​ for $9,950 USD. The purchase price includes the stereoscopic VR camera, $1,000 credit toward VR Cloud storage and delivery services (additional services are priced a la carte), a premium monopod, app licenses, platinum support, and a custom camera case.

About Live Planet, Inc.

Live Planet, Inc. develops infrastructural technologies to transform the world of video toward a more compelling, controllable future for consumer and business applications everywhere. The company was founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur Halsey Minor, a technology visionary behind notable successes including CNET, Uphold, Salesforce, Google Voice, OpenDNS and Vignette. Live Planet's initiatives include:

• The Live Planet VR System:​ the end-to-end solution for easily creating and delivering live and recorded picture-perfect stereoscopic VR video programming and applications. For more information on the Live Planet VR System, please visithttps://www.liveplanet.net​. Creative professionals and innovators seeking to shape the future of immersive media may join our partners program by contactinginfo@liveplanet.net​.
• The VideoCoin Network:​ video infrastructure for the blockchain-enabled internet delivering decentralized video encoding, storage, and content distribution. For more information, visit ​https://videocoin.io​.