Check out this article about Northland Church in Florida.
Here is the site of the original article.
http://facilities.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=117852
Streambox Brings Bidirectional Video Worship to Northland, A Church Distributed
High Quality Video and Audio Transport Enhance Multi-Site Services and Special Events
DMN Newswire--2007-3-22--Northland, A Church Distributed — a network of five interactive churches based in the Central Florida region — is now using the Streambox® SBT3-7400 and SBT3-7100 video transport systems to enhance its worship services and encourage interaction between its 7,000 members spread across the church’s five sites.
“We have a strong multisite focus at Northland. It’s very important to us that our congregations in this city and beyond can be connected in worship at the same time,” said Sean Borowski, Northland’s video director. “Our Streambox systems enable us to share high-quality live video and audio content with our entire congregation regardless of location. The quality has been so good that our members have been surprised to learn that they’re watching live services and not pre-taped programming.”
Supplied by Media Visions, a Streambox reseller, the SBT3-7400 and SBT3-7100 systems enable Northland to stream up to six channels of audio and one channel of video from its full video production facility to and from smaller flight packs at its other campuses. The full duplex SBT3-7400 video transport system is installed at Northland’s main campus in Longwood, Fla., while the SBT3-7100 system is moved between campuses as required by the schedule of services. Using these two systems, Northland provides real-time bidirectional streaming of sermons and songs by “distributing” different parts of each service throughout its sites. These capabilities are key components to providing an interactive worship experience for the expanding congregation.
“One of the greatest strengths of the Streambox systems has been the flexibility of the inputs and outputs. We’re not just bound to a two-channel mix. We’ve been able to reconfigure the systems quickly and easily for use at different sites and for different purposes,” said Borowski. “The only limit to the Streambox solution so far is our own pipeline. We’re currently operating on 3 Mbps T1 bands, yet even with that limited bandwidth, the video quality is astonishing. In a few months we’ll transition to a MetroLAN service, and we’re really looking forward to making full use of Streambox’s real-time capabilities at that point.”
The SBT3-7100 and SBT3-7400 systems are true 24/7 plug-and-connect, real-time video transport solutions that deliver stunning full-motion, full-frame interlaced broadcast video and audio over IP-based networks. The core feature of the SBT3-7400 system is its full-duplex mode, which enables each unit to operate as an encoder and a decoder at the same time. The solution facilitates simultaneous transmission and receiving, making it ideal for bidirectional video worship. Each system is based on the Streambox® ACT-L3™ technology which excels over low bandwidth connections while providing unrivaled video quality.
“Based on the successes we’ve had with this technology, Northland recently elected to standardize on Streambox as our streaming solution for new facilities, including our new 3,500-seat sanctuary, which will be completed mid-2007,” added Borowski. “Our experience in working with Streambox has been wonderful. Their systems are extremely robust, resilient to dropped frames, and compress to an extremely low bit rate — all of which are absolutely crucial to our success in best serving our members and facilitating bidirectional worship. Our number one concern was dropped frames which could distract from the congregation’s personal worship experience, especially when the video is output on a 20-foot theater-style screen. Without a question Streambox has come through with flying colors.”
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About Streambox, Inc.
Streambox manufactures a complete line of video transport and news gathering solutions used by broadcasters, government agencies, and enterprises worldwide. The company provides best-of-class encoding, decoding, and transmission over IP and satellite networks for all real-time and store and forward applications.
Streambox® ACT-L3™ video transport solutions have been specifically developed to meet the performance, compression, and quality requirements of our diverse customers. The robust family of ACT-L3 solutions provides unrivaled video quality at low data rates. Streambox’s innovative error correction and bandwidth shaping technologies enable users to manage, control, and mitigate packet loss and correct irregularities inherent in video delivery over satellite and IP/T1/E1 networks. Learn more at www.streambox.com.
Cool so now you don't even need a live element! SWEET (hehe) my only question is if that can be used at a portable campus...it would be sweet if it could be BUT we've never had internet access at any of our sites so far let alone that speed....buzzkill, i know...any thoughts on this?
-jeff
Posted by: Jeff Boriss | March 26, 2007 at 10:16 PM
Yeah, you would definately need serious T1 or higher access.
They actually send the click track through the lines to all campuses, so all the bands are in sync at all times. Plus they can actually suppliment some newer sites by sending vocal or instrumental parts from the main campus through the lines and supplement the mix at offsites.
Posted by: Bill Carroll | March 27, 2007 at 08:08 AM
you're freking kidding me...now that is amazing! wow...
-jeff
Posted by: Jeff Boriss | March 27, 2007 at 01:50 PM