Hi,

I work as an I.T. tech for a School District and I am trying to put together a media play-out server for the high school. Here is what I am looking for the software to do:

1. It will need to be Windows XP compatible
2. Easy for ‘non-technical’ persons to use
3. Easy to install and setup
4. Affordable
5. Easy to maintain
6. Broadcast over our local (high school only) TV network

Here is what we want to do with it:
1. Make our own Local (high school only) commercials for local events such as sports games, school plays, ASB assemblies… etc
2. Run local (high school only) news broadcast in conjunction with on-going commercials that would be continually repeated throughout the day.
3. Have the ability to ‘cut in’ for any special announcements if and when needed.
4. Most of the commercials would be simple “Power Point” type announcements for things like “Today’s lunch Menu” as an example.

I'm pretty sure we have all the hardware we need already. (Dell workstation, 160gig HD, 3 gig ram, Nvidia Qudro FX video card with 256 mgs ram and on-board sound). Am I missing something else that I don't have listed here?

I've been reading about this software and wanted to get some input before we purchased anything. Any help would be wonderful and thank you.

You are describing the whole basic functions of a TV studio and like to have all this in just one easy-to-use software package...

This is far more than ProgDVB can provide.

- There is no playback scheduler inside nor available.
- There is no function for temporarily overriding a file playback for 'cutting in' anything.
- There is no tool inside, for converting .pps or similar to video (streams).
- No video editing or producing tool of any kind included.

Some of that intended functionality might perhaps be achieved by use of command line controls, from outside of ProgDVB. Feel free to try out, either within the given limitations of the free version, or with the Pro trial. Broadcasting through your network would also require the commercial version of the media server module, but you may want to test the free version of it in unicast carefully before.

ProgDVB was made just for watching, recording and playback of digital TV and radio, locally or streaming out through a network. The optional analogue module is meant to get access to the analogue part of some (computer based) combo tuners, which come with a A/D (MPEG2 style) converter stage. Though, that's not meant to be used as an IP video server, due to quite poor compression efficiency of such devices.

Finally, we would not discuss any other software here.