Posted by Andrew Mason of churchcrunch.com

We recently got to sit down with UpperRoom Technologies, talking about an exciting new partnership they’ve established with Vimeo & Roku.

Essentially, churches can now get their Vimeo content into homes everywhere using the Roku player.

…And the best part is?  It’s darn cheap.

$39 a month will allow you to stream your churches content (sermons, small group or volunteer instructional vids, etc) into homes everywhere.

Read an excerpt from their press release after the jump:

With a channel on the Roku, your church could reach over 1 million current Roku owners, plus the hordes of new owners that will be unwrapping theirs this December 25th.

To most small to medium churches, a channel on an Internet TV box may seem more dream than reality due to the time and price involved, but a new product by the Christian development company UpperRoom Technologies may make that reality a little more reasonable. UpperRoom, in partnership with online video host Vimeo.com, released a channel for their sermon console Media Fusion. For the easy to swallow price of $29/month, plus an equally low $10/month subscription to Vimeo Plus, any church can put their church videos on their website with Media Fusion.

Media Fusion is available at startthefusion.com. You can find out more about UpperRoom Technologies at uroomtech.com.”

Get started with your own Roku Player – $59.99 with 30-Day Money Back Guarantee

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To read more about the Roku Channel and how it helps put your church into living rooms around the world read the article in Christian Video Magazine.

To find out more about the Roku itself watch a great interview with the Roku CEO Anthony Wood.

What’s the kicker? Each and every Media Fusion subscriber hosted through Vimeo is also included in the Media Fusion channel on the Roku device, essentially giving a Roku channel to any church that wants one for $39/month.

Get started with your own Roku box and see how Media Fusion and Roku can help you bring Church Home!

We are, of course, referring to launching a channel on the Roku device, the Internet TV box that Mashable.com named one of the top 10 gadgets of 2010 (which is saying a lot considering competitors such as the Xbox 360 Kinect, Apple’s iPad and iPhone 4, and a slew of new digital cameras, smart phones, and flatscreen televisions.)

With a channel on the Roku, your church could reach over 1 million current Roku owners, plus the hordes of new owners that will be unwrapping theirs this December 25th.

To most small to medium churches, a channel on an Internet TV box may seem more dream than reality due to the time and price involved, but a new product by the Christian development company UpperRoom Technologies may make that reality a little more reasonable.

UpperRoom, in partnership with online video host Vimeo.com, released a channel for their sermon console Media Fusion. For the easy to swallow price of $29/month, plus an equally low $5/month subscription to Vimeo Plus, any church can put their church videos on their website with Media Fusion.

What’s the kicker? Each and every Media Fusion subscriber hosted through Vimeo is also included in the Media Fusion channel on the Roku device, essentially giving a Roku channel to any church that wants one for $34/month.

UpperRoom first decided to pursue a Roku channel for Media Fusion after Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas approached them about a custom channel for their archived lessons. Senior Pastor Randy Frazee and Teaching Pastor Max Lucado saw the advantages of using internet TV over the traditional DVD delivery system for neighborhood groups and multi-site campuses.

Media Fusion is available at startthefusion.com. You can find out more about UpperRoom Technologies at uroomtech.com.

Well, we’ve now taken it one step further…. Media Fusion now has it’s own Roku channel! (If you are a current Media Fusion subscriber and have video sermons in your account, you are already listed in the Roku channel that will be available in the channel store starting Mid-November. Currently only subscribers who host their video with vimeo are able to be included)

What is Roku you may ask?  Well, the Roku set-top box is a way to bring digital content into a living room (Or Neighborhood Church!) over the internet.  All you need is an internet connection and a TV to connect to (and the roku box of course, prices start at 59.99 with no additional subscription fees).

With so many churches going multi-site and multi-campus, the question comes up… How do you share the same message between all sites?  You can burn DVD’s.  You can cart a laptop around and then struggle with getting it properly configured to go to a TV and/or sound system… Or Subscribe to Media Fusion and get a Roku Box!  For a comparatively small setup cost, your church and your message has now just gotten a lot more mobile!

In fact the prominent Christian Technology magazine Christian Video Magazine has made our strides to innovate with such things as the Roku channel and other new technologies the cover story for the october issue.  Check out an Excerpt here:

Ministry and Streaming Video Online – Where’s all this headed?
By Steve Hewitt

This year has been exciting for ministry-based video production and distribution. Although some churches have been streaming their services online for years, recent advances in technologies that give more options and offer lower prices have made online streaming a reality for churches on almost any size budget.

Read this Article in PDF Format
Read this Article in HTML Format

Media Fusion’s one click podcast feature helps organizations easily overcome this limitation. Simply upload an mp3 file to Media Fusion, select “add this lesson to podcast” and give the lesson a category and description. It’s as easy as that! Your podcast was just updated! Media Fusion hosts the audio content and generates the code automatically!

The resulting podcast feed can then be submitted to iTunes to appear in the iTunes store. Or, if you are switching to Media Fusion from another podcasting provider already set up through iTunes, you simply have to update your old feed with the new feed location. iTunes makes this easy. In your old feed simply add the tag <itunes:new-feed-url> to the channel section, and your subscribers will be directed to the new link.

The resulting code would look like this:

<itunes:new-feed-url>http://go.startthefusion.com/fbcgt/rss/NewFeed.xml</itunes:new-feed-url>

And you would place it anywhere between the <channel> tags.

Check out what they had to say about Media Fusion’s use for audio podcasting, sermon video, and Vimeo support.

For years, these two ways of delivering online video have been quietly “duking” it out. On one side is the fast, slick, but more expensive solution of streaming video. On the other side is the cheaper, although potentially slower and less reliable option of progressive download.

We here at Media Fusion happen to support both teams. So we thought we would do a fair comparison of the pros and cons of both options.

To begin, let’s give some definition:

What is Streaming Video?

Streaming video is a technology that allows a user to begin watching a video instantly (or near instantly) without having to download the entire file. The video is delivered “on demand” to the user’s computer. In addition, it allows the user to start the video from any point on the video timeline, without waiting for the entire video to be downloaded first.

What Is Progressive Download and How is it Different?

Progressive download is a technology that is often mistaken for streaming, but it is not. The progressive download method downloads the video from the video’s start, and allows the user to start watching as soon as a little bit has been downloaded.

However, if a user wants to “skip ahead” in the video, they can only go as far forward as has been downloaded at that point. Also, progressive download generally uses more bandwidth, because the user may end up downloading the entire video, but only watching a 10 minute portion of it.

Streaming Video Advantages

Streaming Video has several advantages over progressive download.

1. Streaming Video is usually faster for the end user.

It is hard to beat a streaming video server for speed. Since data is delivered bit by bit in an on-demand basis, the overall load on the users bandwidth is smaller.

Of course, this is assuming the streaming video provider has a decent Content Delivery Network in your region of the world.

This speed is why you see popular video providers such as Hulu.com and Netflix.com using a streaming server to deliver their video content.

2. Streaming Video uses less bandwidth.

As mentioned above, with a streaming video, a user only uses bandwidth for the video content they actually watch. So, if bandwidth usage is an issue for you, streaming video may be the way to go.

2. Streaming Video is usually more reliable.

Most of the companies that operate streaming video servers have invested a significant amount of money in making sure those servers are up and running and operating at their peak efficiency.

Whereas with progressive download, many times the video providers do not have as high quality equipment, nor access to as many CDN’s around the world, meaning a good end user experience happens with less frequency.

Progressive Download Advantages

So, now you may be thinking “Well, if streaming video is so reliable, why would I ever consider using progressive download?” Good question. As you will see below, progressive download offers some advantages as well.

1. Progressive Download is less expensive or even free.

Services like Youtube.com and Viddler offer progressive download at no charge, but they put ads in your videos. Other services like Vimeo offer a significant amount of storage for a small fee, but restrict the content that can be uploaded. Either way, progressive download can be an inexpensive solution.

2. Progressive Download can be fast

In metropolitan areas, it is often hard for a user to tell the difference between a streaming server and a progressive download server. It is only when you get into areas where Internet bandwidth is smaller, or you are farther from a Content Delivery Network that you really begin to see a speed difference.

Conclusions

There you have it. Streaming video offers speed and reliability, but can often times be costly. Progressive download is cheap, but once you get out of metropolitan areas and fast Internet connections, reliability can degrade quickly.

Media Fusion now has the ability to embed a specific series into a website, instead of just the default “current” series. How is it done? Well, it’s pretty simple:

Embed a Specific Series via iframe

Your typical iframe code looks similar to this:

iframe height='850' frameborder='no' align='center'
width='600' scrolling='no' name='frame1'
src='http://go.startthefusion.com/iuser/YourUsername'

Which works well to embed your current series. But let’s say you want to embed a series that is not your current series. All you have to do is add a ‘ / ’ and the series name to the end of the src URL, while escaping the blank spaces.

For example, a series entitled “My New Series” would be input as:

(Target series in bold)

iframe height='850' frameborder='no' align='center'
width='600' scrolling='no' name='frame1'
src='http://go.startthefusion.com/iuser/YourUsername/My%20New%20Series'

The %20 you see in the above code is the “browser safe” way of putting spaces in the URL address.

Now, all of this sounds great, but you may be wondering:

What is an iframe?

At its core, an iframe is a way to put a part of another website inside of your website. So with Media Fusion you are in essence putting StartTheFusion.com inside of your website.

The code looks like this:

iframe height='780'  width='780' frameborder='no'
align='center' scrolling='auto' name='frame1'
src='http://go.startthefusion.com/username'

Code Breakdown

Let’s look in depth at that chunk of code. Some of the settings are fairly obvious.

The height and width settings define how much of the external page you are going to show on your page.

The scrolling setting is there in case the width or height of the page you are embedding is larger than the width or height of the space you have allowed for it. In the case of Media Fusion, we turn off the scrollbars because we have designed the console to fit exatly in the space we provide you in the code (780px high and 600px wide). The scrollbars would just look funny and get in the way.

The real meat of this code however, is the src setting. This is where you define the website you will be embedding into your page. The default Media Fusion iframe code gives you the src of the series you have marked as “current” in the Media Fusion admin section. It is important to note, however, that you can embed any series from your library with a little iframe “magic.”

To embed a series directly into your page, that is not labeled as your current series, just add a ‘ / ’ and then the name of the series to the end of the src.

For example, if you had a series called “The greatest hits of all time,” then your src would be “http://go.startthefusion.com/username/the greatest hits of all time” and your iframe code would look like this:

(Target series in bold)

iframe height='780'  width='780' frameborder='no' align='center'
scrolling='auto' name='frame1'
src='http://go.startthefusion.com/username/the%20greatest%20hits%20of%20all%20time'

See, wasn’t that easy?

Don’t worry if you are confused

All this talk of code overwhelming? Don’t worry. You do not have to know any code at all to use Media Fusion – however a bit of coding knowledge can help to extend its capabilities.

We always smile a little bit before showing them all of the robust features Media Fusion has to offer, because honestly:

Who needs another online video player?

There are so many great video hosting services out there that it can be a little daunting sometimes – from progressive download hosts like YouTube and Vimeo, to streaming servers like Akimai and Lightcast. They range in price from free (YouTube or Vimeo) to outrageously expensive, all depending on the quality you need and the size of the audience you want to reach.

That’s why when we created Media Fusion we decided not to be “just another online video player.” In fact, the videos you use in Media Fusion can be hosted anywhere you like. This allows you utilize the the online video source that best fits your needs.

So why use Media Fusion at all? Why not just use Vimeo or YouTube’s player?

We’re glad you asked. Media Fusion combines all the media you have for a specific topic or series (from images and audio, to podcasting, video, and downloadable documents) into one easy to manage console. Your users get all the media you have to offer, in one convenient location. Plus you can use keywords with your media to make it easy for your users to find exactly what they are looking for.

Imagine this scenario:

A real estate agent is selling 5 homes in one neighborhood. They have a video tour of each house, plus several PDF documents that talk about the neighborhood, lay out the specs of each house, pricing, etc. What would this budding real estate agent have to do to put all these things on the web in an organized, easy to find manner?

Well, they could hire a web designer to build a custom content management system that could display all of this information on one page for them. And while that might be an option for some, it can get costly very quick.

Or they could try to do it themselves – editing the raw HTML files, linking to the PDF documents, etc. But then, how would it be searchable for the user? Would it be worth the time they spend learning the new technology when they could be out selling houses instead? What if something breaks, who is going to support it?

Or, they could use Media Fusion, and in a matter of minutes have their houses organized by neighborhood, with all their videos and documents in one place on their website, and completely searchable by users. All for just $290/year!

What does this mean for Media Fusion Users?

Vimeo offers a plethera of advantages for hosting your video online, from its easy to use tools to its convenient price (only $60/year for the pro version). And now, when you integrate Media Fusion with your Vimeo account, it means adding media to your site is faster and easier.

How it works

When you log into your media console through go.starthefusion.com, then go to the settings page, you will see the option to enter your Vimeo username. Check the Vimeo box, enter your username, and hit “Save.” That’s it, you are integrated with Vimeo.

Now when you go to add video to a lesson, if you select Vimeo as your source, a list of all videos in your Vimeo account will appear for you to select from. And, as always, you can enter the embed code of any video hosted with any online video provider as well.

We are excited about the opportunities this integration with Vimeo brings our Media Fusion customers.