Exciting to watch? Can you make your own?

If you have been fed up with what ordinary TV can offer you and are considering making a reality show or an entertainment program of some kind, keep reading, because I'm going to provide you with a few tips on how to do that. It basically boils down the three following components: laptop, camera, web connection.

First the camera. If your using an Apple laptop, make sure you have a camera with DV (Direct Input) output and you'll also need a FireWire DV cable. This makes your life a lot easier and greatly improves quality! But you can also use generic webcams with Macs with the help of a program called macam. Macam allows you to use a number of different webcams with only on setback. You can't switch to outdoor mode with most of the cameras, which means that most of them will record just plain white picture in the outdoor light. But to really get a good picture, you must buy the Logiteck QuickCam® Vision Pro, a Mac-only webcam with superior quality. It's predecessor Logiteck QuickCam® Pro 9000 is also good and compatible with Windows.

But when using Windows it's a lot easier - all the major camera providers support the Windows OS without any noticeable problems. There still are a few kinks with Vista, but they will be ironed out in time. I already mentioned a webcam worthy of your attention. There are others, but I don't really like them: one's not too good with colors, the other can't handle dark rooms etc. But I generally prefer cameras over webcams.

What else to check on a camera? Well, the following features should be on every camera: it can work as a PC-camera over a USB or FireWire DV connection, the camera has a good optical zoom (it's difficult to get a good picture with dynamic zoom and if you were to send it over the Internet, it's going to be even worse), the camera's recording format is set on 4:3 and it must have some kind of color enhancement software. Our team uses (for testing purposes) a Samsung VP-MX10 camera. It's an outstanding camera, but still a bit weak with colors.

Now on to the web connection. There are many ways to connect your laptop the Internet. If the venue has a LAN network then all you have to do is plug in. If possible you can also use a WiFi connection. The pro of wireless Internet is the ability to move around, but the major con is that it might not be as stable as a wired connection. The third considerable way to connect is 3G. Most civilized places have 3G coverage nowadays and it's stable enough if you don't move around too much. If your using phone-tethering to tap into the 3G network I suggest you use a USB cable instead of Bluetooth to connect your computer and phone (no real difference, but it's safer). It's better to use a mobile modem (provided by most mobile operators).

The computer is just as important. Make sure that the batteries are fully loaded before broadcasting (also find out how long can your computer run on battery power) or find an electrical socket, but that decreases your ability to move around. You can also use extra batteries which can be plugged in on the fly. Our team uses APC batteries. Be sure to adjust your computer's settings as it would be bad if the computer went on stand by or shut down its harddrives during broadcasting. Yaika! uses the latest Flash technology, which is supported by all the major webbrowsers.

Now you just have to press record and point your camera towards the action :)