Live Streaming Video broadcasts of Aggie Sporting Events (for members only)

[jagowar]

If/When we move to a new server one of the things we are planning on doing is moving to a windows server enviornment. One of the advantages of this is windows server 2003 supports streaming live video (in the server os). Ive been working on getting a tuner setup working on my home computer and finally tonight I was able to successfully get it working to a test server I have at my work.

So this ultimately means if we want we can provide a feed for anybody to view (so if you are stuck at work w/o a tv, or out of town, etc for any a&m sporting event). It would only be events that are already going to be on TV (I have all the networks, espn, fssw avaliable to me). Eventually I would like to get a second person setup with a tv tuner (who is in houston or dallas) so if something isnt broadcast here we could still show the event. Specifically the basktball games we missed in the B/CS area because kcen bought the rights and many of the games were during the week and didnt show them because they had nbc primetime programming to show (this could be a huge sell for the b/cs people if we were able to do this and there is a similar situation like what happened in the b/cs,waco area with the basketball games)

Anyways what are people's opinion on this? (and it would ONLY be for subscribers). there are some legality issues (but its the same as hosting the videos we have of the various games) so this is no more illegal than that. just means we will have to keep the fact that we can broadcast live video on the down low and not advertise the hell out of it.

[The Massacre]

definitely. that would be awesome.

[Pflugerville Ag]

Sounds cool to me.

[Pflugerville Ag]

Make it available to members only and you would probably increase the cash flow to this site tremendously. Just need a good way to advertise it.

[jagowar]

yeah that is/was the plan (make it the same sub level as the magazine subscriptions).... Fan Sub or higher with a year of service.

But the video is actually very good.... im testing (i would post the link but since my test server is on campus you have to be on campus to see it as the firewall is blocking the server from getting out... this wont be a problem on the new aggiefans server). It will be a requirement that you have broadband internet though (something that can download atleast 40k/sec... this can be reduced though but it also worsens the quality)

[jagowar]

I moved this so everybody could see it and added 2 options for non subscribers...

the poll should be faily obvious, subscribers have 2 options and non subscribers have 2 options. for the non subscribers would you be more willing to pay for a subscription if we were to offer such a service.

Also here is a sample I recorded earlier (right now this is what the streaming video would look like... im still tweaking it some though)

http://www.aggiefans.com/test.wmv (higher resolution but lower bitrate)
or
http://www.aggiefans.com/test1.wmv (lower resolution but higher bitrate)
you will most likely need to upgrade your media player to see the file as I am using an advanced compression scheme to help out the quality a bit. Windows Media Player 11 beta has the support builtin. I forgot to mention on the sample there is no audio yet, im only interested in getting the video part of it going right now.

[MarylandAG]

Damn good idea for us out of staters. I'm sure lots of people from out of state would be interested. I sure as hell would be.

[addsae]

My brother is being based in Washington (the State) and he hates that he cannot see alot of the games this would be perfect for him

[jagowar]

well get him registered here.... not sure on the finances but we are pretty close to being able to afford that new server and thats all we really need to get things going (that and a couple of tuner cards)

[Pumchavas28]

Man that would be awesome..... I know when I was deployed me & some other Ags that were over there hated that we couldn't watch the guys Basketball team.... this will be awesome for them too.....

[jagowar]

Ok well pass this on to your friends and lets do it this way. have everybody who would be interested (thats not already a member).... have to be atleast fan subscription for 1 yr.

If you arent at that level and are interested in upping/subscribing your membership for access, send me a pm

http://aggiefans.com/forums/private.php?do=newpm&u=126

and i will add you to a mailing list and when we get such a service running I will let people know. i also just verified the hosting company will let us do the hosting which was the last hurdle so as soon as we get the new server we should be good to go. Also the count lets us know how many "extra" people we need to signup in order to have enough $ to get the new server. Vly is off on his honeymoon now (he should be back faily soon) so he can work out exactly how much we need but im going to guess we will need 10 or so people. If we get more people to donate at the higher levels we wont need 10. The total cost is going to be a little over $150 per month so it gives you an idea of what its going to cost.

[The Massacre]

how do you check and see when your membership expires? is it in the user cp?

[The Massacre]

nm. i found it.

[jagowar]

we do have a problem still with the subs not auto renewing... me and vly are going to upgrade vbulletin to the newest one pretty soon so hopefully that will fix the issue. but if your subscription has expired and you are on teh monly plan (which auto renews) it just might take a few days to actually do it (since right now its dependent on us manually reactivating your subscription)... just an fyi.

[The Massacre]

jag, do the yearly subscriptions auto-renew or not?

[jagowar]

no yearly subs do not autorenew.... only the monthly ones do. but you will get an email that is automated telling you your yearly sub is almost over before it runs out.

[The Massacre]

good deal. just wanted to make sure i would get a reminder.

[NPLAggie07]

That would be awesome...well worth the money.