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Starting an Internet TV Station – What Equipment is Needed?

I get this question I think more than any other question. “What is needed to start my Internet TV Station”?. Of course this can vary greatly from one project to another but in most cases you would be surprised how easy it is to start your own Internet TV station. In most cases nothing is needed except your computer. For the sake of this article however lets ignore the “production” side of things.


 It is generally understood you will be producing video or acquiring the rights to video content for your internet TV channel.

A traditional TV channel has what they call a “video server”. This is where you can house your hundreds of hours of programing and schedule it for broadcasting. This is where your play list is generated and played. The video stream goes out the output of your video server and into an encoder and sent via satellite or high speed private network to your cable operator. Now for a traditional TV channel this is a necessary piece of equipment. The video server is also what would display onscreen graphics like sports scores, stock quotes, and other on screen graphics. This process is what gives a channel its look and feel.

So what does this have to do with Internet TV? Well for one a Internet TV channel can have this built into their site to where the play list is automated using a database and PHP. 



A real TV station is far more demanding than a Internet station. So the process of managing video content and developing your play list can now be done with software built into your Internet TV site. This process is controlled from the admin panel. Your admin panel or your “CMS” is where you can upload and manage your video content. Scheduling videos hours, days, or months in advance to play at specific times or in a specific order. 

The notion that many people have that you need thousands of dollars of equipment is an outdated thought process. Now do not misunderstand me. There are some Internet TV station that need a traditional video server. Especially for those that may be broadcasting sports online and need a real time application to overlay dynamically changing graphics (like sports scores, or stock quotes). In these cases it would be advantageous to invest in such a server. However for the average company broadcasting online such equipment is not needed. 



So what equipment is really absolutely necessary to have your own Internet TV station? Well surprisingly the answer is NOTHING!. Yes everything these days can be controlled using web applications and this is great news for people and companies with much smaller budgets that want to start their own Internet TV station. 

All of our Internet TV packages already come with everything programmed into your Internet TV site and there is no need for additional equipment. Our packages are turn key and come with the TV website (you use your own domain) the admin panel, and the bandwidth needed. Feel free to check out our Channel Manager by clicking here. 

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