Xserve streaming to how many people

[djsound]

Sorry for my lack of knowledge but I do not know anything about this...I am trying to stream a video live on the internet to as many people as possible..

If i was to buy a Xserve for my server and stream from my macbook pro.....how many people would I be able to stream live to? Do you guys know?

thanks.

 

[corbywan]

That totally depends on (1) how much bandwidth you have from the server to the internet, and (2) how high a quality of a video stream you want to deliver. The higher the quality the fewer people you can stream to. Also, technically, if you are doing this off of your home cable/DSL line, it most likely violates the user agreement with your ISP seeing as most of them do not allow residential customers to run any kind of public (or private) server off of their line.

And you wouldn't necessarily need an XServe. Any Mac (or Linux box I believe) with the free QuickTime Streaming Server can do the same thing. Takes a little extra setup, but it isn't too bad. Also, and it's been a while so forgive me if this is totally out of date, but I think the people who make RealPlayer make a free/open source media server called Helix that lets you serve RealMedia streams.

 

[djsound]

hmm interesting.. Ya I only have a cable modem at home..normal one...maybe it wouldnt work. What I would be showing is totally non-profit...never would have though the internet provider would care...but im not surprised. I guess maybe if i plan on showng it to thousands of people I should look into hiring a 3rd party server?

 

[evil_santa]

try http://www.ustream.tv/
or http://www.mogulus.com/

both use flash to encode and deliver using a flash stream, i dont think there is a limit on the number of viewers who can connect, you can only use material you own the copyright for to broadcast and it has to be non commercial

 

[djsound]

Evil-santa thanks very much for your help. I will check that out for sure. Ya it's totally non-commercial. I was initially going to try and do it with that h264 or whatever but I guess that would use up to much bandwidth?

edit - I just checked out those sites...the problem is I want the video I do live to be embedded on my site...and I dont think I can embed that flash on my site...Also the quality is pretty poor..I will look into it further though and if I find anything I'll report back =)

 

[evil_santa]

you can embed the ustream in to a web page , facebook myspace etc. yes it low quality , ,but it is free, your alternative is to rent a server like this http://www.uk2.net/servers/

 

[CanadaRAM]

Your home cable contract probably forbids you from running a server, expect to be shut down pretty quickly by Shaw once you start pushing out multi-GB of streaming data.

 

[djsound]

So they would shut me down because I would be using to much bandwidth? How would I do this the legit way? Do they have a plan where I can pay more to do this or something? There must be some legal way of doing it..

 

[CanadaRAM]

There is a business account you can get for about $130 a month as opposed to the residential $40 per month.

I think you'll find the residential plan prohibits servers. Also, you can't get a fixed IP address on the residential, it is an extra cost option on the business account.

Unless you absolutely need live streaming, recoding the streams and then putting them onto an outside service is by far the better way to go. A commercial hosting service will have solid hardware, and much better connections to the Internet than your home does.