Do you need to webcast a meeting, event or anything else live to the internet?  Have you tried seeing how much people charge to do this?  From production to distribution, it can cost your company well over $15K to webcast a meeting or event to an internet audience.

Most of your cost will come in at the production level.  Getting your equipment (camera’s, lights, switchers, etc).   I found this really great product at NAB  2007 from NewTek called TriCaster that may bring your costs way down if you purchase and reuse for many events.   Basically, Tricaster is a production studio in a box. 

TriCaster & Pro allows you to connect up to 3 cameras, a VCR, a laptop and edit all of those live as the event is happening.  It then allows you to switch between sources, watch the program monitor, add lower 3rd text so that your program  looks “network quality”.  

What’s impressive is that you also get a Windows Media Encoder so that you can stream that live feed out to the Internet.   That’s pretty cool.   And you get all this for $7K.  That’s right!  $7K.  Just add the cameras (which you can rent for under $250 each) and send the feed to your host for streaming.

NewTek has 3 products:
1 - TriCaster
2 - TriCaster Pro
3 - TriCaster Studio

For the exact differences between each, check out: http://www.newtek.com/tricaster/compare.php

TriCaster Studio is it’s newest member of their product line and allows 16:9 aspect ratio recording, has 6 camera inputs (versus 3 for the other 2), more XLR mic inputs and allows for virtual sets and for keying a person live!  That’s right, you can now create your own weather channel in your garage!

We are looking at using TriCaster for webcasting meetings to our vendors, trade partners and even to our internal team members.   Doing this, versus having people fly all over, will help cut cost down.

TriCaster goes for $5K
TriCaster Pro goes for $7K
TriCaster Studio goes for $10K

Check out http://www.newtek.com/tricaster for more information.
Check out my article on webcasting as well for more information.

Chau!