Tech Forum

mulhollandj wrote: ... people will have a better excuse to miss church services because they can just download them. ... they will lose personal interaction ...

these may be some of the reasons behind the policy as it currently stands.

Seems like everything else is a podcast these days...why not church services. :p

pwhiting wrote:these may be some of the reasons behind the policy as it currently stands.

So I have to whole-heartedly agree with pwhiting here. I still don't like having a prayer over a phone for meetings and such. Can't really put my finger on it, but it just isn't the same and now we are talking about recording it and having a delay involved.

mulhollandj wrote:I have two big non-technical concerns. The first is that people will have a better excuse to miss church services because they can just download them. The second is that they will lose personal interaction through a general email with the services attached.

Let me add a 3rd: distribution control. If it's offered in a format that's easy to distribute (such as MP3), one could find some talks going far outside their intended audience. If only the last meeting were available in a streaming format on the ward website, I think it would be less likely to get out of control. (Yes, I know anything can be captured by someone with the technical ability - but that takes work.)

While podcast, internet streaming, and mp3 recording are all good ideas, I don't know about your units but the majority of the shutins in our stake do not have internet or an mp3 player. They are in their later years and aren't really interested in this technology.

Another problem with recording and playing back later is they don't really feel a part of the ward. There's something different with hearing it live vs recorded.

One idea is looking into a VOIP (Voice Over IP) solution with a PBX where users can use a regular telephone to dial a number. They will be asked for a 4 digit pass code and then connected to something similar to a conference call. At the meeting house, the mic audio feed would be piped into a computer that feeds the audio to the VOIP.

This would allow them to dial in at sacrament time and listen in to the talks. Once set up, it would also be less work than most other solutions.

I've been looking into this a little and hope to be able to find a solution. The cost of this would be broadband connection to the building and a VOIP phone number.

tleish wrote:One idea is looking into a VOIP (Voice Over IP) solution with a PBX where users can use a regular telephone to dial a number.

That sounds like a good idea for the shut-ins, but it doesn't address the needs of those who are unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts. For them the streaming audio from the website might be a better fit. It's entirely possible that this will requires two different solutions to meet everyone's needs.

tleish wrote:
One idea is looking into a VOIP (Voice Over IP) solution with a PBX where users can use a regular telephone to dial a number. They will be asked for a 4 digit pass code and then connected to something similar to a conference call. At the meeting house, the mic audio feed would be piped into a computer that feeds the audio to the VOIP.

whether or not we use voip, the idea of using audio bridging has merit. It would be relatively easy to tie the audio from a building into the phone system. Someone in the meetinghouse would call a conference bridge and then connect the phone to the building's audio output. Homebound members could call the same bridge to listen to the meeting. The bridge could be set up to mute all lines except the meetinghouse's.

pwhiting wrote:whether or not we use voip, the idea of using audio bridging has merit. It would be relatively easy to tie the audio from a building into the phone system. Someone in the meetinghouse would call a conference bridge and then connect the phone to the building's audio output. Homebound members could call the same bridge to listen to the meeting. The bridge could be set up to mute all lines except the meetinghouse's.

Exactly... so the question is, how can we affordably do this. Our Stake Presidency wants to do this and we have been trying to research solutions for this.

tleish wrote:Exactly... so the question is, how can we affordably do this. Our Stake Presidency wants to do this and we have been trying to research solutions for this.

Any idea how many people per Sacrament meeting you're talking about?

A quick google showed that you can do up to 4 Skype users for free.

Freeconference is free, but user's will probably have to pay long-distance charges to wherever an available conference bridge is located.

I see ads for others charging 4-6¢ per person per minute. That adds up to $2.80-4.20/per person per meeting. You might look around your area and see who is local (no toll charge) and see if they can cut you a better rate for Sunday usage. (non-business day).

I think you may need to sound out the SP on how much he's willing to pay. Phone lines are nice, but I suspect there will be significant operating costs. And there may be toll costs as well. Internet is much cheaper, but then you have problems of getting to all the users.

RussellHltn, all of the solutions you are suggesting we've been looking into. It's different for every Stake, but in our Stake there's an average of 6-10 shut-ins per ward.