Anyone Ever Seen Somethiing Like This?

We're about to put an offer in for a new building for a nightclub and we're looking at alternate methods of increasing revenue above and beyond the regular cover charges, bar snacks, jello shots, etc and were wondering how easy/difficult it would be to actually stream the action going on inside the club live to a users computer once or twice a week (mainly thinking on Friday/Saturday nights) any of you folks ever seen a club doing this before and, how difficult and costly do you think it would be to set something like this up?

Regards,

Lee

You should talk to Jamie Zawinski at DNA Lounge (www.dnalounge.com) in San Francisco. He's been doing this since 2001. He also archives most of the live shows that have appeared at his venue.

He's also an uber tech geek, so all over the club there are old TVs, a dozen computer terminals where one can send emails and IMs and so forth, and a bunch of other pretty cool stuff. Jamie was, along with Mark Andreesen, the principal author of the Netscape browser and the person most responsible for getting the Netscape code released to open source, which later became Mozilla and then Firefox.

Sounds like a good idea, but would there be liability issues? Would you have to put up a big sign at the door saying something "by entering these premises you are agreeing to your likeness and actions being broadcast on the world wide web blah blah blah" ?

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Originally Posted by DrChango

Sounds like a good idea, but would there be liability issues? Would you have to put up a big sign at the door saying something "by entering these premises you are agreeing to your likeness and actions being broadcast on the world wide web blah blah blah" ?

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Yes, I think you'd have to provide adequate disclosure. I am pretty sure that DNA does this. Also, it's not like you're filming an orgy in someone's living room where there's an expectation of privacy... if people are coming to a publicly accessible place where there are signs saying that all the proceedings are taped and made available on the web, I think they're on adequate notice. They do this sort of thing all the time for Hollywood films.

with multiple cameras I'm not sure
you'll have to get software to flip automatically from one camera to another

if you want separate video streams for each camera then each feed will get encoded separately

there are network/IP cameras that can pan/tilt remotely by users but they'll run you $500-$1000 each

Either way you'll probably have to have your own server on premise then pipe the video out via dedicated T1 connection or fiber if your municipality has that near you - last mile fiber - and out to a CDN or some other host or your own server.

You can do pure CDN (content delivery network) where bandwidth is clean.

Or get stream hosting, that does Flash/WIndows media streaming and could give you X concurrent users watching @___Kbps each for $..../month or unlimited.

http://www.egihosting.com/stream_hosting_specials.aspx

I believe StreamingMedia.com recently mentioned someone on 250TB traffic contract getting bandwidth for something like $0.07/GB with a CDN network.

With a CDN you'll probably have to lock yourself in at least a 1yr contract

Leo Laporte who's doing tech podcasts bought a Mac server for around $4-$5k that does the video encoding and then pipes the video out via last mile fiber for $700/month at 9Mbps or 12Mbps symmetrical to a Bitgravity server which then lets everyone watch the live video feed in a embeddable flash player.

Alternatively you could spend $ on the set up and dedicated internet connection then stream to Ustream, Qik, JustinTV etc which are free (with ads)

A club chain called "Bar" already does this in a sense.

They have many locations, like "Bar Baltimore." They do what you want to do, but with a twist. They have a video wall in each club with live feeds of all of the other clubs.

I imagine you could accomplish this easily with a simple webcam script and decent webcams. Lighting may be an issue.

A lot of city governments in tourist destinations set up cam sites with live feeds.

I am not able to post links yet or I'd give you a few examples. Google can also help you there. I would try to figure out what script they are using -- perhaps even right clicking and looking at the source code.

Good luck and for what it's worth, I think you're onto something that nobody else in your city is already doing.

The most important consideration is having prominent signs at all entrances saying that all activities within the club are broadcast to the public.

I just thought of another possibility to expand on your idea...

Offer your feed, for free (or perhaps with a ad fee paid to them) to the local radio station that serves your client base. Have them feature it on their website.

That, of course, will only work if they have a strong web presence. Most of the larger stations do.

I thought of something else before I hit submit -- you could also build that feed into ads you place on local sites. I am thinking a programmer could make it so that the feed is live in the ad when things are pumping and reverting back to a clip of when it's not. Then, when you are open and live, the ad could essentially say "it's crazy here tonight, why are you sitting at home?"