GEAR REVIEW
LIVING AS ONE STREAMING SERVICE | Timothy J Miller
KEY FEATURES
addition to startup and ongoing costs, there
1.
Switched to the hard copy tape backup
are constant issues with reliability and quality, of the Saturday evening service that was
• Video Doesn’t Lose Quality especially when streaming in large format sizes. delivered remotely or by hand.
• Can Handle Momentary Outages Technical challenges can easily exceed the
• Easy for Volunteers to Use
2.
Switched to the downloaded ProPresenter
copy from Saturday evening service via
capability of a typical volunteer technician.
Dropbox.
Our
church
certainly
encountered
these
3.
Gone live. If all else failed, the local campus
Over the last few years it seems that the ability issues. Streaming is mission-critical to Sunday pastor grabbed a mic and the message
to stream church services has become less of a morning services at Bayside Community. We notes received earlier in the week.
frill and more and more a requirement. Church have been struggling with streaming since members can attend services while away from starting our first satellite campus, and—eight Utilizing a 2-minute delay between when
home. Shut-ins are no longer shut out from campuses and 12,000 weekly participants we received the live feed from the broadcast
participation. Many people attend virtually later—our challenges have only grown. Some campus and the playback provided us with brief
as part of their church selection process and of our portable campuses have been plagued window to troubleshoot or switch to backup.
may ignore churches that fail to offer an online with glitches and drop outs caused by their But we still had occasional image pixilation and
experience. The streamed satellite church internet quality. audio issues. Sometimes a campus internet
model has become a viable and appealing
church planting strategy.
connection would momentarily brown out,
We survived those issues by creating several creating glitches, or even drop out altogether.
redundant layers of backup plans. We kept a constant text channel open between
Streaming has changed how we do church.
campuses to warn each other or cry for help.
If the feed drops out on Sunday morning, we
Of course, streaming has its challenges. In
186
We ended up on backup far too regularly.
have:
February 2020
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