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Overview
If you're interested in sharing your game experience outside the boundaries of your home, broadcasting is a great medium to stream your gameplay, LIVE and be able to get instant feedback from internet viewers. Before you start your streaming set-up, these are some factors to consider...
Bandwidth & PC specs
Broadcasting has a few requirements regarding your internet connection. Downloading speed is important if you plan on playing multiplayer or co-op online. If your internet connection isn't fast enough while you play then you won't be able to host a decent quality stream. You'll only be streaming a laggy game! Another ability you will have is to watch streams during your own casting (e.g. you can watch yourself play as you're playing).
If you're good on download speed, you have to also check that you have a significant upload speed. You should figure out how fast your connection is (both download and upload speed) by running a speed test here. A high upload speed is needed so that your broadcast can be sent to the streaming site and distributed to viewers. I would recommend having at least a 2mb uploading speed for a lag-free stream, but you might be able to get by with 1.2mb for an upload speed.
Computer specs are pretty important since your PC needs the processing power to run the software encoding (Flash Media Encoder in this case), which can slow down your computer if you don't have a decent enough rigg. I don't know the minimum specs to run a live stream, but with my setup it's been running very smoothly. So if your PC setup is comparable to mine or even a bit less then you should be in business!
I've listed the specs that would have an impact on your broadcasting experience.
My own set up is as follows:
- Processor: Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield Quad Core 2.66 GHz (OC'd to 3.0 GHz)
- Memory: Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Intel P55 Micro ATX
- Video Card: ATI Radeon 5850
- Cooler: Thermaltake SpinQ, six heatpipes
- OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Broadcast type & Budget
There are multiple variants of each broadcast set-up, and the set-up you want to choose depends on what exactly you want to broadcast: PC games, consoles, handhelds. While this is specific to casting video games, you can pretty much cast anything that you do on a PC (e.g. drawing, word processing, your Skype video chat, your own webcam view, etc)
- PC, Handheld (PSP) Software set-up
PC games & handhelds such as the PSP can be broadcasted with just software (excluding the actual PC & handheld themselves). All the software you need can pretty much be downloaded free, so this is a super low cost option compared to console broadcasting. You can be up and running within minutes!
- Console Capture Card set-up
Clear undistorted console broadcasting (PS3, Xbox360, Wii, etc) requires a capture card to broadcast, so you'll need to spend some money not only on the card but the cables & splitters to hook up everything. There are USB capture devices (e.g. Dazzle), and there are hardware cards (e.g. Black Magic Intensity) that plug into a PCI slot on your motherboard. USB or PCI types depend on your budget, your pc hardware specs and whether or not real time capture is an important aspect for you. You can expect a capture card to cost anywhere from $50-200. Dazzles can range from 50-100, while the Black Magic Intensity pro is at the $200 mark. A good midrange card is the Avermedia PCI card, but do some research on the type you want.
Deciding between a USB or PCI slot card
USB capture devices do not stream in real time as there's a delay with what you see on your PC screen with the actual gameplay you see on your console. This delay happens because It takes time for your CPU to process the information from the USB input from your capture device to output the display onto your screen (not to mention your CPU is busy processing the rest of your PC's background processes). It's a pretty significant delay (a couple of seconds) it would be hard to play off your PC monitor over your TV. With a PCI capture card, it plugs into your motherboard and the processing is taken care of by the capture card's own dedicated hardware processing. You can play straight off your PC monitor if you wanted (which I do occasionally) because there's virtually no delay whatsoever.
Streaming Websites
These are a few webstreaming sites that are around:
 
I'll be honest, I've never tried any other streaming site because Justin.tv was the first site I tried and I've been satisfied with the service. I felt no need to try any others but you can definitely experiment with each site and which interface you like better! However, since I've only been broadcasting Justin.tv the following guides are more specific to a Justin.tv set up, but I am sure a majority of settings ( ~80% of all the settings if not more) can be applied to other streaming websites as well.
Start Broadcasting!
Hope that gives you a good overview of what you should think about before you start broadcasting. See which one you want to start with first: PC or Console broadcasting, I have both guides below! (Guides are still being worked on. As I finish them I will be updating this page with the links!)
- PC Broadcasting
- Handheld (PSP) (Not Started)
- Console streaming (In Progress)
- Wii settings (Not Started)
- 360 settings (Not Started)
- PS3 settings (Not Started)
- Misc. Components
Comprehensive Usage Guides for the following Components
- Flash Media Encoder (Not Started)
- VH Screen Capture (Not Started)
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