Quite often potential customers do their market and product research and weighing their options for a portable media encoder and streaming solutions and come across 2 products, the Viewcast Go-Stream (and Go-Stream Plus), and the Newtek Tricaster. Both are capable of encoding video/audio and outputting the AV as a live stream however; one is more the dedicated encoder and streaming solution than the other. The question for customers is whether they are looking for a portable media encoder/streaming solution or a portable production suite. Steve from Viewcast took the chance to test both systems side-by-side with the view of looking from a customer's perspective of looking for a streaming media encoder/streaming solution.

"Here is a more detail competitive analysis for NewTek's Tricaster. I was able to spend some time playing with one and here is what I found.

I was impressed at the switching capability of the box. That being said it did have some major issues:

1) - This is a Windows XP box - subject to all the issues that a computer is prone too. It can be used to play games, check email, surf the web ..... etc

2) - The RGB available on the switch is not a RGB input. It is a VGA screen capture done thru the TCP/IP connection.

3) - Control surface (Traditional Switcher Look) is additional cost

4) - Can't stream an audio only connection and a video stream

5) - Can't archive and stream at the same time

6) - Can't setup multiple presets for CDN and Streaming settings

It is a nice inexpensive switcher that has very limited streaming capability. I wouldn't want to base any live production event on the all in one solution. If one component fails your entire production is down. If a customer is looking for a very low cost switcher solution then the TriCaster would be a good solution. If they are looking to for a good streaming solution then the individual components with the proper ViewCast encoder would be my solution of choice."

S.B.
Viewcast Sales Engineer