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Originally Posted by Arkorobotics
A videocast would be nice, therefore you can present things visually.
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Yes, it would be, and we are looking into possibly releasing some features as videos, yet there are several problems with this:
1) Bandwidth
Our server space and bandwidth are primarily donated by
OpenFIRST, as well as several other mirrors, and we average about 10-15MB an episode. With any decent video codec (i.e. h.264), we could easily get up to 200-300MB per episode, depending on length, increasing the bandwidth requirement twenty fold.
2) Location of Hosts and Guests
Right now, we have hosts across the eastern United States. I'm in Florida, Matt's is on Long Island, Joe is in Ohio, John is in Texas, and Karthik is in Ontario, Canada. Furthermore, our guest lineup is just as varied, causing even more problems to get everyone in one location (Note: Championships will most likely change this).
3) Cost
The almighty buck will always create issues. After creating optimal conditions for lighting and camera equipment, and bandwidth on which to transfer the video streams, the price rises for us from almost nothing to several hundred dollars. We would have to have spare cameras to send to guests to gather footage for videos, increasing the cost even more. With podcasting, all a guest needs to be on the show is a microphone, free VoIP software, and preferably a broadband internet connection.