video streaming project

I posted awhile back but then got so busy with 18 hour days that half the project didn't really get built out but I've had some good fun testing this stuff.

What I am doing is using a Pelican 1610 case with laptop and everything else including a Telus 1x EVDO Rev A modem to stream live video back to the station from events or severe weather incidents in ontario using Wirecast in flash mode as thats the only way this one TV station can receive and then also FTP the broadcast quality video back as well using crossFTP which is easy.

The "computer" that I drop into the pelican case is my newer laptop which is an Asus G50v, fairly high end gaming laptop and I run Wirecast in flash mode, encoding to H264 I believe and it uses nearly 95% CPU.

The modem/network allows for up to 800k upload but quite often the limit is 550k but I find if I set the software to limit at 300k the video is very smooth, delay is as low as 4 seconds and I've used the live kit for a couple of major events/incidents and it works well, the video is still not perfectly smooth though and there is the 4 second delay and that's not good enough for engineering.

It was pointed out to me that if they want to put a reporter in front of the camera and so a Q and A then 4 seconds is way too long.

So we need near real time and preferably as smooth video as possible and that brings me to my next idea/project.

I am thinking about building a desktop PC but instead of a case we use the pelican case as the "case", drill it out and mount fans, plate with BNC, XLR, firewire connectors and a 120 volt power plug and the inside would be an PC with all the usual components, the case is huge so motherboard and power supply and stuff can go in and then a panel can go ontop where I could place a keyboard and I suppose mount a small display screen on the inside of the lid and from what I understand I can do way better in the RAM, CPU, Graphics department this way than any laptop can do and that's the only reason I am thinking out loud about this project idea.

I work in news and believe it or not have never built a desktop before and only used laptops, from low to mid to high end but only laptops so I'll have a bit to learn here not to mention somehow find the time workshop space and round up the parts without making 15 trips to the stores.

Or should I simply stick to working on getting this to work on the laptop better?

I know someone might say "buy a mac", but I looked at the specs and they are not that much higher than this Asus laptop that I have.

any thoughts?

mark