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On Your Way to StardomBroadcast your own shows |
By Ionut Ilascu, Editor, Software Reviews
24th of April 2007, 14:07 GMT
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Television is fascinating. Everybody wants to be on TV, to be seen and appreciated by millions of people. If it weren't for TV there would be no Saturday Night Live show, no Fashion TV or Discovery Channel. Despite its age, television broadcasting is among the most important ways to convey messages to the people.
Internet is also a media power nowadays and its growing popularity has been proven by an increasing number of people that connect and its expansion from the inside world of the apartments into the outside uproar of the streets by means of the Wi-Fi technology.
The two technologies seem to shake hands quite often lately and the result is more and more appealing. Internet TV is the new trend and to be frank it is pretty appealing. All you need is broadband and you can Joost right away, no fees and no strings attached. Or you can watch live shows in different parts of the world by means of TVUPlayer.
And if you are willing to sacrifice your ordinary life in order to be a star, there is nothing simpler (well, first of all people have to like you, but you are a likeable person and there is no way for you to fail) as SayaTV presents you the opportunity of making it to Hi-Life.
SayaTV is a light on resources broadcaster that will put on the web whatever you want to transmit. The equipment necessary for you to turn into a star is a webcam, broadband Internet connection and your personal charm.
The tool is absolutely free and the streamed video works very well. There is no interface to begin
with, so I will proceed directly to the important details. The application's installer is almost 11MB large and installing it is a snap. You are going to need a Windows Media component but don't worry, as the software will automatically install it.
Everything on SayaTV functions based on an account. This can be done in a few easy steps directly from the application as the Sign In dialog is the first one that pops up when launching the program. Follow all the steps for registering an account and creating your channel. Immediately after Sign In the user enters directly into the broadcast settings.
There are three possibilities of disseminating your videos: live (by using a capture device, a webcam in this case), re-runs (by streaming a video file stored on your computer) or from a different web location (URL stream).
Adding a local file to the stream is the easiest way to broadcast over the Internet. All you have to do is add your videos (Windows Media Player format only) and press the broadcast button. The stream will begin its uploading shortly and the user can preview it.
In order to see the videos you are broadcasting you should access the website to the location of your channel and watch your own show. The community can rate it and if you are not the only one admiring the chef d'oeuvre you can talk to them and exchange opinions. Of course, you can choose from the channels available there and rate them while you watch.
Capture device option is for live performances and the settings are not as complicated as you would think. Select the video and audio devices and configure them to get the best quality possible.
After uploading the video do not close SayaTV Broadcaster as the file is not stored on a foreign server and everything remains on the local computer. You should keep it in the system tray so that when your channel is accessed by your "fans" they will be able to watch something.
The process will be eating your resources for as long as you are broadcasting. The second I realized this I hurried to Task Manger to see what resources are involved. I felt nothing on my computer and the peak of memory usage of the process did not reach 9MB while the CPU level was minimum.
As a beta version the application is great. Of course, the broadband connection has its share of the "miracle", but I experienced no instability.
The Good
The bradcaster is absolutely free and you can stream whatever you want, provided that you clearly state in the channel description the content type.
There aren't too many settings to be done and the chat while you watch idea is just great. You can get an immediate feedback from the users.
The Bad
Currently there are very few video formats supported as WMV9 is used to encode the broadcast media, but once the community is full fledged, I guess there will be more to it.
The Truth
Everything is free with SayaTV, from creating a channel to broadcasting your media. There aren't too many features to play with but all the necessary is available.
To make it work with Firefox you need to install a special add-on called IE Tab. The link to downloading it can be found here.
If stardom is not what you are looking for, you can easily change its purpose to a more efficient one like supervising your kids or pets (a user was broadcasting the life in his/her fishbowl).
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
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