About

Since 1995, EarthChannel® has been facilitating cost-effective global communication through streaming media. Streaming now provides artists, businesses, governments, and organizations the ability to EarthCast® high-quality audio/video with outreach and freedom previously unavailable.

Why Stream Media?

Streaming Provides Greater Community Access To Your Media

  • If your municipality does not have its own Cable TV channel, streaming video provides the only practical means to share your media.
  • Even if your community has its own Cable TV channel(s), Cable TV
    provides access to fewer households today than ever before.
  • Many homes now have Satellite TV and thus no longer have access to your PEG channel(s).
  • Office buildings rarely have Cable TV installed, virtually eliminating the entire business community.
  • With the advent of Digital Broadcast TV, some households will choose to receive their television via over-the-air transmissions, preventing cable PEG reception.
  • Cable viewers are limited to watching public programming when it is aired.
  • With streaming video, viewers can access any program on-demand, at their leisure.
  • The number of Internet-connected households exceeds that of any single cable system.

Community Participation

  • Streaming media provides the ideal technology to help foster Open
    Government and enhanced transparency. Today, more than ever, citizens appreciate their representatives making the governing process more easily available. They show that appreciation with their votes and support.
  • Streaming video provides your community with a convenient and easy way to participate in local government from the comfort of their home or office.
  • Streaming Media Is Green! Rather than traveling across town to attend a council or board meeting, constituents and stakeholders can more efficiently stay abreast of current issues and developments. In today’s busy environment, ease-of-access and efficiency directly translate into greater participation.
  • Many politicians and representatives take advantage of streaming media to connect with their constituency. Some create short video segments to make the community aware of their effects and place links on their website. Others have used streaming video to have virtual town hall meetings on a regular basis. By sending questions and feedback via email or fax, citizens have the opportunity to connect directly with their representatives.

Why Outsource Streaming Media?

Challenges And Costs
Streaming media technology can be confusing and challenging to even the best IT departments. There are very few training resources that adequately detail the processes, protocols, and techniques to successful stream video.

In addition to the mysteries of encoding video/audio for streaming and dealing with the intricacies of streaming servers, media distribution to outside viewers provides a daunting challenge.

Municipalities and school boards all have a limited connection speed to the Internet. Each person viewing a streaming video presentation consumes some portion of that Internet bandwidth. The larger the connection, the more viewers can be accommodated. Some jurisdictions have a T1 connection (1.54Mbps) to the Internet, providing staff web access and email. With a T1 connection ($500-800/mo) dedicated only to streaming video, fewer than 10 simultaneous viewers of streaming video can be accommodated. An Internet connection capable of providing streaming media to only 200-300 simultaneous viewers can easily cost
over $20,000/yr, even though the connection might only be fully used a few times over that time period!

Consequently, most find that outsourcing to a streaming organization with very large bandwidth capacity such as EarthChannel translates to dramatic cost savings. EarthChannel’s streaming servers are connected to the Internet via multiple 1Gbps connections, each capable of serving over 5,000 simultaneous viewers, with a combined capacity of well over 50,000 viewers at any given instance.

While a few organizations do have the expertise and bandwidth to provide streaming media in-house, they cannot offer the advanced features mentioned above that viewers find extremely helpful today.