Newbie with illusions of grandeur

[HairyYak]

Hey everyone!
New to the game. My question has to do with live remote video productions.
Just got a 30" dish for mother in law to watch Thai TV. We're apparently locked into Telstar5 and have a Traxis DBS-2500 receiver.
Question: Can I now shoot a live remote, transmit to Telstar 5 and receive it at home? I would then theoretically push it through to a server host and stream my production live on the web.

So that's the general idea. So go ahead everyone tell me how naive or crazy this thought is. I can take it!

 

[brians0105]

Well, technically yes... Not with that equipment, but you could if you had more equipment.

With your setup you are only able to downlink signals. Would would need to either rent a satellite truck or buy some uplink equipment... possibly costing upwards of $100,000.

 

[HairyYak]

Thanks. I've looked up some portable transmitters like a Thrane & Thrane explorer 700 which are somewhat affordable. Are there other costs incurred which are much higher that I'm not taking into account? I was under the impression that regular joes could now do this kind of thing on the cheap (somewhat).

 

[techno935]

Where have you read this? I have not heard such a thing.

 

[brians0105]

I was just looking and the Explorer 700 product you're talking about connects to a BGAN satellite phone network. This is not a ku satellite that you receive signals from... like Telstar 5.

You could get one of those systems your talking about, but that is completely different than downlinking video from satellites such as Telstar 5. I have no experience with they type of system you're talking about.

I do believe that the video quality you might get with one of the systems you're talking about will not be great. It will probably be just like making a videoconference call over the internet.

 

[brians0105]

If you wanted to actually transmit to a satellite like Telstar 5 you would need the following (probably more):

Video/Audio Exciter (for analog)
Video/Audio Encoder (for digital)
Modulator
Upconverter
RF Amplifier
FCC certified dish
Satellite time

Among other things. What am i forgetting?

 

[WildSioux]

All you need is http://us.slingmedia.com/page/home at your mothers house...

...high speed internet at both locations...

...and a router to hook it all up.



I have the Slingbox AV ($179) and can watch satellite, cable, anything...anywhere in the world. I have watched FTA at the coffee shop before. I have even heard of people doing this at 35,000 feet on an airline flight.

 

[mastermesh]

Is there anything like the slingbox that is free, and uses free software? I think I read about something like that a couple of years ago in some tech/industry magazine, but can't remember the details at the moment.

 

[Stefan]

Is there anything like the slingbox that is free, and uses free software? I think I read about something like that a couple of years ago in some tech/industry magazine, but can't remember the details at the moment.

That depends on what you mean. The slingbox is a piece of hardware that captures video and streams it over a network. Obviously hardware is rarely free. However, if you already have a video capture device there are free software packages that can stream over the internet. Even VLC can do this. VLC can also transcode to bitrates that might be more internet freindly. So if you can get video from your capture device into VLC you can then transcode it and stream it over the internet.

 

[HairyYak]

Okay. so what you're saying is...
Going low budget portable to shoot an uplink at Telstar 5 is not feasible.

So then, could I have my laptop out there, get the BGAN transmitter and uplink to Telstar 5 as an internet connection.
Then have it relay that A/V signal back down to mom's dish?

 

[techpuppy]

Okay. so what you're saying is...
Going low budget portable to shoot an uplink at Telstar 5 is not feasible.

So then, could I have my laptop out there, get the BGAN transmitter and uplink to Telstar 5 as an internet connection.
Then have it relay that A/V signal back down to mom's dish?

Not really. The satellite doesn't convert internet traffic into an A/V signal. You could use high speed internet to send your video to an uplink facility. They would take your programming and uplink it to a satellite and that could be received FTA if desired. There is the expense of satellite time and uplink expenses. If your final goal is to webcast your signal, why not just use an internet connection to send your production to company offering video streaming?

 

[brians0105]

One of two options:

1 - if your mother or grandmother has an internet connection, it will be MUCH cheaper and easier to do what techpuppy suggested. you stream a live a/v signal over the internet FREE and the person on the receive end just types in an internet address and watches what you have live on windows media player. very easy setup and virtually free

2 - if you must have your signal on Telstar 5, you will need to hire a company to uplink it to you. you could rent a satellite truck for about $2000/day plus satellite time at lets say $15/minute. Or along the same lines, you could contact a company such as http://www.engftp.com and you send your a/v to him via the internet and then he uplinks it to Telstar 5.

Make any sense? It's kind of confusing now that I read it back.

 

[HairyYak]

Thanks evryone it's starting to make sense to me. I think I'm confusing satelite purposes. The underscore from my initial post is being in remote locations with no access to the internet.
So if I've gathered correctly. I DO need the satellite conection for the internet part but then from there i just do as has been suggested... just push through free to a host vie the web to do the streaming. No MotherINLaw's dish required!

Did that make any sense?

 

[updatelee]

Im not sure if you relaize this but, remember you also will need to buy space from globecase for this, and thats not cheap. a company I work for has a channel with btv on starchoice's bird, I think last I heard it was $10,000/m for the casual user that wants to get tv to his mom, there has got to be a cheaper method, take a look into amateur radio tv transmission.

 

[zazu]

Hyak-i am a bit confused myself at what your end goal is, plain out, is it for you to be able to watch your Mother in-law' TV fta sat setup on your laptop in remote locations,, and when you say remote? where are you talking about specifically,??(are you talking about traveling?/) because Cingular now has the fastest GSM/GPRS based interent service in the country..Verizon has more area coverage at moment but they top out at 700kbs,,Cingular has a bursts speeds of 1.2megs but is never lower than verzions fastest 700kbs,, and if you are not in a Cingluar "3g speed" area you still get thier Verizon type speed service which they do have same coverage everywhere like verizon... so i have to agree ,, low cost equip {slingbox , or DVB PCI card } at your mother in-laws , with her having some sort of broadband internet service, and you having some sort of cellular based internet service on a laptop ..if that is your goal?? again, what specifically is your goal??

 

[HairyYak]

My Bad. I needed to be clearer (darn newbies). Forget the mother in law part.
My goal.
:to shoot videos (such as weddings and such) in remote places (mainly beaches throughout the Hawaiian Islands) with the capability of have a live video stream for anyone who would want to watch my clients videos live on the net anywhere in the world.

 

[WildSioux]

My Bad. I needed to be clearer (darn newbies). Forget the mother in law part.
My goal.
:to shoot videos (such as weddings and such) in remote places (mainly beaches throughout the Hawaiian Islands) with the capability of have a live video stream for anyone who would want to watch my clients videos live on the net anywhere in the world.

Hmmm, I am not sure how you would be able to do this at remote locations with the Slingbox that I recommended. If you were at a place (i.e. hotel, etc...) with free wi-fi it could work if you were close enough to pick that up. Or, you could get a cell phone or even a satellite phone that is capable of a high speed internet connection you could do that anywhere.

I am not sure how much those services are for cell phone or satellite phones with internet service. But you would just hook up the phone to the slingbox via the ethernet port. And then hook up your audio/video feed either through one video recorder or through the video component(s) that have multiple feeds to it.

Your mother and other clients would still have to have high speed internet service at their homes, or place to get that feed. This is still relatively cheap ($45-70+/month) compared to the $1000-10,000+/month for the satellite options in this thread.

The only downside to this is that only one person at a time can connect to the slingbox remotely. And that person would have to have a computer with internet service to be able to watch. If more than one person needed to watch, then you would have to purchase more than one slingbox and hook it up which may be a problem as you would then need two or more cell/satellite phones with service (one per slingbox) to hook up. There is a way to watch it on a tv without a computer (which is what I am looking into for my parents to watch), but I don't know how to do that yet.

The more I type about this, the more I see it may be a problem with the issues I touched on above (internet service, cell/satellite service, number of slingbos) required vs. # of users needing to watch, etc...). I don't know, it may or may not work. Sorry, a good idea in my head turned into issues that I see with it

 

[Inno]

I'm not sure what the availability is in Hawaii but what you probably need is some sort of 2 way satellite internet system. The problem with those being the time/inconvenience of setting up and pointing the system wherever you go. For receiving a satellite signal you don't need to be nearly as accurate as you do when you're sending.............In other words, a portable system may not be as reliable as you need it to be or as convenient if you're moving it around a lot. Once you did get it set up though, it would be just like having a semi-high speed connection and you could stream video etc. as you wished. Your clients could simply log in to your web site and view the video you are uplinking............I'm no internet wizard so I'm not sure what you'd need on that side of it, but a 2 way satellite internet system could potentially work for what you want to do.