Review: ViewCast Niagara GoStream
After you’ve got your profiles set up, you can assign profiles to the A, B, and C preset buttons on the front of the unit (Figure 4). This is very handy, as it allows simplified operation of the GoStream. To start a stream using these buttons, push the preset button for the profile you want to use, and then push the red stream button. To stop the GoStream, just push the blue stop button.
Figure 4 (below). After you’ve got your profiles set up, you can assign profiles to the A, B, and C preset buttons on the front of the unit.
System administration options are set on the configuration screens. One of the ways in which GoStream differentiates itself from the competition is that it’s built with the SysAdmin in mind. There’s a full set of alarm conditions that can be set. When an alarm is triggered the unit can dis-play text on the front screen, light up an alarm indicator, and even send email alerts (see Figure 5). You can also configure the GoStream to close a contact when an alarm is triggered, which could be used to trigger any number of other devices in a broadcast operations center. There’s also a system configuration settings page that allows you to configure the email alerts, mail server, idle screen information, and a temperature monitor.
Figure 5 (below). The GoStream System Administration panel features full set of alarm conditions that can be set. When an alarm is triggered the unit can display text on the front screen, light up an alarm indicator, and even send email alerts.
In Practice
I took the GoStream to a recent webcast to see how it would hold up in the real world. The small footprint was a dream. I often have six to eight desktop machines stacked up, and I’d much rather stack these units up. They’re compact and easy to monitor, and the integrated professional A/V connectors mean no dongles or adapters to worry about. The audio level meters, alarm light, and LCD screen on the front give you all the visual feedback you need to make sure your broad-cast is running smoothly. In this case, we had serious network problems, and the GoStream let us know immediately.
Configuring the GoStream through a browser is straightforward, and I love the preset buttons on the front of the unit. If a unit suffers a catastrophic failure, just crank up the same preset on an-other unit, and you’re back online in a matter of seconds (assuming you’re doing push encoding). I found it a bit frustrating that I couldn’t customize the encoding settings for the Real and Win-dows Media formats, though. I like to tweak my settings, and there’s no simple way to do it via the user interface. Sure, I could export my favorite profiles from my laptop across the network, and then figure out where to put them so that the GoStream magically finds them, but if you’re going to go through all the trouble of implementing the encoder SDK, wouldn’t it make sense to also allow folks to customize encoding presets?
The other small complaint I have is the user interface. The GoStream was obviously designed by engineers, and the UI has suffered accordingly. Don’t get me wrong—you can do anything you need to do using the UI, but it’s not necessarily intuitive, and it certainly leaves a bit to be de-sired as far as look and feel. These guys should get together with the folks behind the Raycaster, who managed to turn the Windows Media Encoder SDK into a thing of beauty.
Overall Impressions
The GoStream is a slick little unit, and it’s sure to turn heads. Setup is simple and operation couldn’t be easier. I have a number of small user interface complaints, but these are probably due to the fact that I have pretty strong opinions about how things should work.
My one concern is that it seems somewhat underpowered for types of encoding that are becom-ing commonplace now, namely very high-bit rate and HD encoding. The unit cruises along en-coding a single bit rate at 320x240, but if you start stacking up your profiles or encoding larger screen sizes, CPU usage gets a little high for my liking. Looking under the hood revealed a Celeron processor, which isn’t my first choice for encoding applications.
Speaking with ViewCast, I discovered that the Celeron was originally the fastest processor com-patible with the motherboard required for this form factor. However, this is no longer the case, and a version based on the Mobile Pentium 4 chip is in development. According to ViewCast, early indications are that it offers twice the performance, which should be more than enough for any webcast applications in the near future. By the time this article is published, the P4-M ver-sion should be available as the GoStream Plus.
If you’re looking for a compact, portable, reliable webcasting unit, you should seriously consider the GoStream. It’s tough enough to take whatever you can throw at it, and very attractive at a suggested price point of $4,995.