Streaming the Inauguration In a School? 201
Anonymous Teacher writes "I work in a small school in Washington and we are trying to prepare a way to watch the inauguration in 20 classrooms over a 1.5 T1. As our bandwidth severely limits the ability to individually stream to these rooms, is there an alternative to presenting it to the students? Are there any sites that offer a downloadable copy of the video quickly after the event that can be hosted locally or is reconfiguring the computers to use a proxy server the best solution?"
VLC? (Score:5, Informative)
Get it to recieve one copy of the stream, and then repeat it over the local network (assuming your local network has the bandwidth).
VLC - VideoLAN Client (Score:4, Informative)
VLC might be an option.
VLC can play back from a file that another process is writing to. So if you can figure out how to write the incoming video stream to a network filesystem, each classroom could use VLC to playback that file and you would only have to worry about a delay buffer of a minute or two to ensure smooth playback.
While I have not tried it myself, VLC is also capable of rebroadcasting video. So if you can view the live stream directly with VLC, you can probably get that copy of VLC to multiplex it out to other VLC clients on other machines.
Broadcast/multicast? (Score:3, Informative)
You shouldn't even need more bandwidth, if your local network is configured properly.
Re:Is this why... (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that they're running off a single T1 would seem to imply that the "Washington" being referred to is Washington State, not D.C. (since the latter is unlikely to have anywhere in it that it's not far easier and more economical to go for DSL or another more modern solution, yet there are many such places in Washington State).
That being the case, some small schools, particularly in eastern parts of the state, may have difficulty getting any sort of television signal. Check out a map, we've got an awful lot of empty space up here.
Re:television (Score:2, Informative)
If you like, I can direct you to schools that can help with your lack of tech knowledge and other schools (or books) to help with your lack of manners.
Re:television (Score:2, Informative)
Of course you'll need to make sure you've got a license to present the broadcast! Oh and if you choose to use a PC relaying a broadcast (from the internet or from a TV signal) then you'll need to purchase "secondary transmission" rights ...
In the US 17USC111 (a)(5) appears to give a publicly funded school a pass on this. But it does say under ibid (a)(2) that you must comply with 17USC110 (2) which at (2)(D)(ii)(I)(aa) [!] requires that any digital copy is deleted before the end of the classroom session. Oh and you'll need to "[provide] notice to students that materials used in connection with the course may be subject to copyright protection".
Sounds like you need a good lawyer. I hope the TV stations band together and sue all the schools! Justice must be done!!
US law: http://www.bitlaw.com/source/17usc/111.html [bitlaw.com]
US law: http://www.bitlaw.com/source/17usc/110.html [bitlaw.com]
Worldwide situations: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/copyrightlaw/copyrightlaw.htm [museum.tv]
UK licensing: http://www.gla.ac.uk/copyright/video.htm [gla.ac.uk]
CNN, VLC (Score:3, Informative)
Watch it on CNN.
Or, download it and UDP stream to your.sub.net.255.