Jan Ozer has put together this fantastic overview of what he refers to as "Streaming Appliances" for under $10K. I prefer to call them turnkey solutions. Regardless of what you call them, the bottom line is you have some fantastic choice avialable, all with four or more SDI inputs, ISO recording, live streaing and all the other features you need to create a broadcast quality production. You'll find solutions here from NewTek, vMix & AJA, Telestream & Matrox and others.

Streaming Media by Jan Ozer

Choosing a Streaming Appliance

So, you’ve decided to buy a streaming appliance for live event production. Your must-have features include at least four HD-SDI inputs, plus other network inputs, live streaming to one or more services, ISO recording, and basic production features such as switching, titling, transitions, social media integration and the like. Your budget for the appliance itself is $10,000, and you’re wondering what your options are. As with all things streaming, there’s never been a better time to choose a streaming appliance, and your legitimate choices are much more extensive than they were even 2 or 3 years ago. Of course, with freedom of choice comes confusion. No worries, though; we’re here to help. In this article, we’ll start with a high-level history of the live streaming appliance market, then identify the factors you should consider when making your buying decision.

What’s Past is Prologue

Ten years ago, the obvious choice for a live streaming appliance was whichever TriCaster you could afford. NewTek largely founded this market and still has the lion’s share, particularly at the high end. Early on, NewTek achieved its well-deserved success largely because its competition on the assemble-it-yourself side consisted of underpowered computers and an immature market for peripherals such as capture cards and video mixing software. The only way to create a production-quality live streaming appliance was to build it from scratch, and at that time, even the early TriCasters needed a separate box for streaming encoding. read more...