The Meeting House - Live by Satellite

So it FINALLY happened...

After at least 4 years of talking about it...

The result of hundreds of hours of technology investigation...

and years of learning how to produce video and audio...

and dozens of volunteers who give their time every week...

and hours of hardware configurations...

and numerous iterations of a custom-designed, web-based timing application...

and staff and volunteers withstanding the constant nagging by one "time nazi" (me)...

We finally did it...

The Meeting House broadcast our service LIVE to one of our regional sites yesterday (Brampton). Well, we started broadcasting 3 weeks ago, but it was all behind the scenes - just testing and watching... not actually using the signal in Brampton.

Yesterday was truly history-in-the-making for us. We are now on a rollout schedule over the next couple of months to bring all of our "Regional Sites" online live with the teaching. We are using Bell ExpressVu satellite to send our service out, instead of using DVDs on a week-delay basis.

This is a significant step in many ways. It aligns our sites from a timing perspective. That has huge ramifications that are too numerous to go into. It also allows us to plant sites ANYWHERE in the world.

The technology behind it really isn't that challenging. We had some fibre optic and other gear installed that carries our video and audio signal to Bell. We've been doing the video and audio for several years already - just recording and burning to DVD. So nothing different on our end. The challenging part is from a programming perspective. It means every site has to follow a countdown clock "to the second" in order to be aligned and ready for that live signal halfway through the service, without creating distracting delays and interruptions. To be seamless, it has to be down to the second! That has been the toughest part of it all... and the reason we've been working at it for so long.

Look out world - here we come!