Comment Sorenson Streaming Solution (Score 2) 300
The most economical and flexible hardware solution is a dual processor G4 combined with a DV camera. Accompany this by Sorenson Broadcaster and Sorenson Video 2.1 Developer addition and you have an extremely powerful and cheap streaming server. This will work for multicast streaming, if you want to use other methods, combine it with a QTSS running under Linux or OS X Server running as a reflector. The developer edition of Sorenson Video is important to provide Altivec and multiple processor support. Additionally, your investment in this equipment will make it easy to move to MPEG4 (not MS-MPEG4) when Sorenson releases their software codec. Sorenson recently demoed their beta MPEG4 at the Macworld Expo. Yes, you will be initially investing in a more proprietary solution to begin with, but at least it will be expandable to more open standards later on, less than one could say for solutions from Real and MS.
Graham