Broadcasting Live feeds during competitions

[82's BBQ]

What are everyone's thoughts/concerns about broadcasting a live feed of your cooksite during competitions? We are thinking of using Ustream.tv to give friends and family a chance to witness a competition that they would otherwise not be able to do. The video feed WOULD NOT show other cook sites and would probably put some kind of notice of broadcasting at our site. The plan would be to only stream during the "interesting" parts of the competition like prep and turn-in.

[thinbluebbq]

I like it. I am a podcaster and this year I will be producing episodes from the contests we compete in. I think it will be fun. If you choose to do it, be sure to send me the link.

[Fornia]

Great idea... I've been in the works on doing this for our team for the last few months. Hope to go live at a comp in June/July.

Setting up the ustream account is easy....got our team set up with its own 'channel' as well. The thing I'm looking into now is....whether or not ustream is the way to go.

[82's BBQ]

Fornia, Ustream seemed to be the most economical way to go, free is always a plus. I am hoping to get a local Verizon store to sponsor a hotspot so it limits our usage.

[MikeMSD]

We were thinking about doing it this year, but it came down to the cost of the bandwidth. If we could get one of the cell companies to sponsor us a hotspot for a weekend, it would work. It might not be so bad though if it were only at main times of the contest though. It's the 24/7 bandwidth that puts everything over the cap.

[82's BBQ]

No luck on us getting a cell phone sponsor. It looks like I will be broadcasting from my cellphone, until they get pissed about how much data I am using. My unlimited plan rolled over.

[Bentley]

Pelletheads.com did a live webcam feed from the Royal last year and will again this year.

We used blogtv.com for the broadcast and rented the hotspot from this company...daypasswireless.com. Sprint worked very well from our space 071 in North Lot and has no data limits. We also only broadcast prep, selection of turn ins and a few other times. left it pointed at the site most of the other time.

We will be doing it again this year I think.

[MikeMSD]

...rented the hotspot from this company...daypasswireless.com. Sprint worked very well from our space 071 in North Lot and has no data limits...

That's perfect! I've been looking for someone I could just do day rentals on the card. Didn't make sense to pay $50 for a month when I only needed 3 days.

[SmokinGuitarPlayer]

Jason, we used U-stream for the live webcasts we did ... the free version has lower bandwith / fidelity etc. but still works pretty good.
FB/SGP

[ParkAvenue_2]

We did a live broadcast from the American Royal back in 2010, and used Ustream to do it.

We basically just left the feed live most of the weekend, and had friends and relatives in other states that tuned in from time to time.

Based on our experience with Ustream from 2 years ago, there really was no point in trying to broadcast audio, might as well just turn it off. The video feed was choppy at times, but not too bad.

[82's BBQ]

Thinbluebbq- you can follow it through our website, www.82sbbq.com

[82's BBQ]

I think we will give it a shot at our upcoming competition May 18-19. You can view it on our website, www.82sbbq.com. I think it will give you a notification as to when we are live, if not we will post on our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/82s-BBQ-Crew/201245906624608, when we are.

[sweetracks]

Google+ has also launched On Air hangouts which allows you to broadcast to YouTube or record right on Google+. I plan to around with it a bit. Thanks for bringing all this up!