Joey, the speed needed is already available... we've had equipment for years that can send high quality video to hundreds of people at once. This new router isn't changing the game on that front.
The bottleneck has always been the first link in the streaming chain... the poolroom's computer and internet connection. The stream can start out crippled right from the outset... and once it starts out at low quality, it doesn't matter how quickly it can be pushed to the hundreds of viewers out there. The low quality stream is uploaded to a streaming server, which then copies it to the rest of the world. It becomes a case of garbage-in-garbage-out.
Reasons the stream isn't so hot right from the outset:
- The upload of the pool room's ISP is capped at a very low level. This is probably the most common problem. Typical ISP business practice is to make your upload speed about 1/6th of your download speed. If you don't like it... you can pay twice as much for some 'business plan' and get it up to 1/3rd of your download speed. Due to poor regulatory practices in the USA, there's less broadband competition and penetration than there ought to be, so the prices are big and the variety is small. There's a nice article on this here, if you're bored enough: http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news...most-of-usa-lacks-100mbps-net-connections.ars
- Weak camera can only capture at low resolution
- Video camera can capture at high resolution, but a low end computer has trouble compressing the video on the fly and sending it to the streaming server. Compressing video is pretty serious math for your processor to handle.
- Inexperienced broadcaster has bad settings
...and if all these other things are overcome, only then will the streaming service provider be able to get a nice video out to viewers IF they're willing to pony up 90k for these spanky routers.
Bottom line: We can read the numbers on the balls if the guy running the pool hall has 50-100 extra bucks a month he isn't using, and he has a good tech guy handling the equipment and purchasing decisions (including which streaming service to use). Once your connection is good enough to stream at good quality to just ONE guy... it's good enough to stream to hundreds of guys. But getting to that just-one-guy point is surprisingly pricey in our country.
The bottleneck has always been the first link in the streaming chain... the poolroom's computer and internet connection. The stream can start out crippled right from the outset... and once it starts out at low quality, it doesn't matter how quickly it can be pushed to the hundreds of viewers out there. The low quality stream is uploaded to a streaming server, which then copies it to the rest of the world. It becomes a case of garbage-in-garbage-out.
Reasons the stream isn't so hot right from the outset:
- The upload of the pool room's ISP is capped at a very low level. This is probably the most common problem. Typical ISP business practice is to make your upload speed about 1/6th of your download speed. If you don't like it... you can pay twice as much for some 'business plan' and get it up to 1/3rd of your download speed. Due to poor regulatory practices in the USA, there's less broadband competition and penetration than there ought to be, so the prices are big and the variety is small. There's a nice article on this here, if you're bored enough: http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news...most-of-usa-lacks-100mbps-net-connections.ars
- Weak camera can only capture at low resolution
- Video camera can capture at high resolution, but a low end computer has trouble compressing the video on the fly and sending it to the streaming server. Compressing video is pretty serious math for your processor to handle.
- Inexperienced broadcaster has bad settings
...and if all these other things are overcome, only then will the streaming service provider be able to get a nice video out to viewers IF they're willing to pony up 90k for these spanky routers.
Bottom line: We can read the numbers on the balls if the guy running the pool hall has 50-100 extra bucks a month he isn't using, and he has a good tech guy handling the equipment and purchasing decisions (including which streaming service to use). Once your connection is good enough to stream at good quality to just ONE guy... it's good enough to stream to hundreds of guys. But getting to that just-one-guy point is surprisingly pricey in our country.
