How much money is LiveU’s 4G LTE-equipped LU70 backpack worth? At least $27 million, according to the company’s latest funding round.

The portable video uplink company has become the go-to for companies looking to uplink HD video while on the field. Broadcasters as big as BBC News and NBC already rely on the technology, and it’s that reliance that’s fueling LiveU’s growth.

Joining the funding this time around is Lightspeed Venture Partners, which joins existing backers Canaan Partners, Carmel Ventures and Pitango Venture Capital.

As LiveU CEO Samuel Wasserman notes in the release announcing the news, the funding will be vital as LiveU moves further towards being more of an end-to-end solution for broadcasters. With the cash, the company plans to both increase its service portfolio and expand its office footprint.

Founded in 2006, Live U has to date raised roughly $50 million. IT’s headquartered in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Photo: CrunchGear via LiveU

SendtoNews has procured $3 million in seed funding to launch its sports video network.

The company strives to establish “the continent’s first expansive sports video distribution network for the digital age.” Its platform is a central hub for multimedia sports content to be gathered and distributed. SendtoNews has partnered with sports organizations, like Major League Soccer, America’s Cup Sailing, and multiple hockey leagues.

Traditional and digital media organizations that participate in the network can syndicate content in the library to supplement their own broadcasts. This could open up valuable advertising opportunities for brands, teams, and agencies that are trying to reach sports fans.

The company is based in Victoria, Canada, with offices in Vancouver, Toronto, New York, and San Francisco. The investment came from a group of British-Columbian investors, the founders of RevenueWire.

Ustream wants to make everyone into a broadcaster, and to do that it’s tapping into the social network that everyone’s already using: Facebook.

Today the company is launching Broadcast for Friends (BFF), an iPhone app that allows Ustream users to broadcast directly to their Facebook friends.

While Ustream already offers an app for both Android and iOS, its latest one goes a bit further by integrating directly into the Facebook Timeline. This means there’s no need to log in: Users just give the app permission to connect to their Facebook accounts and they’re ready to start broadcasting.

Ustream marketing VP David Thompson gave VentureBeat a demo of the app earlier today, and the first thing users will notice about it is just how simple the whole process is. Setting up a stream took less than 30 seconds, and the video quality was clear and smooth.

On the Facebook end, BFF allows users to comment on videos, which broadcasters can see in real time. Thompson calls this “social broadcasting”, and it adds a nice level of live feedback to the whole experience.

With the app, Ustream hopes users will broadcast events as personal as their kids’ first steps to those as public as concerts and sporting events. One of the app’s best features is that it will automatically upload users’ finished broadcasts to their timelines, which saves them the trouble of uploading them to external services like YouTube.

But here’s the big question: Why didn’t Ustream just add the Facebook functionality to its current app?

As it turns out, the original Ustream app was born out of requests from Ustream’s professional broadcasters, who wanted to take the Ustream experience mobile. Which means that while the app is ideal for professionals,  it’s a tad too complicated and feature-heavy for the sort of mass audience Ustream is targeting with BFF.

“We wanted it to be the most simple user experience possible,” Thompson said.

Right now BFF  is only available for iOS, though Thompson says it’s a smart assumption that an Android version will be available down the line.

Ustream has also created a demo video to showcase BFF’s key features.

If you vote up the stream, the broadcaster will stay on the air. If you don’t like what you see, you can click the thumbs down button and vote them off the broadcast. After they are voted off, the site moves on to the next broadcaster in queue. If you continue to cheer users on, they get access to additional minutes of air time.

As you perform better, you get points that give you access to more features and you get faster access to air time as a broadcaster. You can broadcast video from any mobile device, like an iPhone or an Android phone. You have to connect with a real identity, which should discourage users from broadcasting poor content like pornography, the company’s founder Adi Sideman said

“YouNow is live broadcast meets social gaming,” Sideman said. “Anyone can broadcast from anywhere using any mobile device.”

YouNow makes money by selling virtual goods like “green screens” for broadcasters, which give them different backgrounds. Viewers can buy virtual goods like roses to throw to the screen as they cheer on broadcasters.The company also partners with other sites like MP3.com, which can use the site to find aspiring musicians. Those sites don’t have live broadcasting components and look to sites like YouNow to fill that niche, Sideman said.

YouNow was founded in May earlier this year and has raised $1 million. The company is based in New York, N.Y. The company is launching a “music” channel for potential musicians and a “talk” channel for other kinds of broadcasts.