Start Your Own Internet TV Show

For now, select “Broadcast a Live Event.” Another display will appear that asks you set your audio and video devices. If you are using the Quickcam Pro, both the audio and video will be coming from the same device. If you are using a different type of setup, select the appropriate camera and microphone and then click next.

If you are broadcasting from a home PC, on the next screen you will want to “pull from the encoder.” Selecting ‘pull from the encoder’ means that when a client requests the live broadcast feed, they will begin pulling the data from your computer. The only time you would want to use a push method is if you are pushing to a Windows media server and this is probably not the case. Selecting ‘push to a server’ means that the broadcast will be sent to a remote Windows media server that will serve the broadcast to clients. Imagine having a PC setup in a boardroom on the West Coast. Using a push method, the broadcast could be sent to the company’s server on the East Coast that lives behind a firewall. Employees would connect to the fire-walled server and receive the feed from within the company Intranet.

On the next screen you have to select the port that clients will use to access your live broadcast. You can easily select “Find a free port” and the operating system will find an available port. If you know the exact port you wish to use, enter it. Below you will see two different URL’s for accessing the feed. One is the address to connect via the Internet. The other is the address for users within the local area network to view the feed.

Important note: If you are using a router for your home network, the Internet address that you see will be the IP address that your router assigned your computer. It will probably be something like http://192.168.0.1:3100. This isn’t the IP address that people outside of your network can use to see your feed. An easy way to find out your IP address is to visit http://whatismyipaddress.com. Replace the IP address assigned by your router with this IP address. Be sure to include the port number at the end of your actual IP address separated with a colon. In addition, you will need to go into your router’s configuration and open up access to the port that you are using to broadcast your event. Most routers have an option for port forwarding or setting up applications. Follow your router’s directions for opening up ports for computers outside the network to access.