Video over the internet

Video over the internet here refers to transferring video signals from video ports (VGA or DVI) over the internet, not from ethernet ports of computers.  Epiphan has products doing just that, but the broadcaster costs $1,600.  The broadcaster essentially functions as a computer doing all the computation to convert the video signal to network packets.

The same function can be achieved by using Epiphan's $300 VGA2USB and a tiny PC.  This is a particularly suitable option when a computer is needed to do data processing and transferring in addition to video signals.  This also allows full control of the frame rate of the video.  Video signal may be needed only under circumstances triggered by certain events.  All the intelligence can be built into the application running on the tiny PC.  This reduces the cost of the hardware to less than $600 and minimizes the waste of network bandwidth.