System builder
Nine questions, then a complete system — microphones, mixer, cameras, lenses, lighting, switching, grip and post — with the reason each block is in there and what it costs. Adjust anything, buy it through the vendor links, or send it to us for a dealer quote.
It will also tell you when you are about to overspend, or when what you have asked for does not add up. That is the useful part.
Prices are approximate US street and move constantly. Quantities include sensible amounts of cable and grip rather than the bare minimum, because running out mid-build is the most predictable way to lose a day. Nothing here is a commitment — it is a starting specification you own.
A mixer with a microphone per seat and an independent headphone feed for each person, one well-lit camera, and two colour-matched lights. A two-microphone setup built this way costs roughly $3,400 and is genuinely enough to publish. Spend on audio before cameras: an audience forgives a soft picture and leaves over bad sound.
PTZ makes sense at three angles or more when nobody is standing behind the cameras, and it needs a hardware joystick controller plus a managed PoE switch — budget around $5,000 before anything else in the room. Mount them at eye height and cut between stored presets rather than driving them live, or the result reads as a security feed.
If you stream and publish at 1080, buying 4K spends money you throw away in the encoder. Choose one resolution for the whole rig and set every camera and the switcher to the same frame rate — a mismatch there is the most common cause of a black input.
A hardware encoder taking the switched program feed, a control surface so the show is run from labelled keys rather than a mouse, and a UPS on the switcher, encoder and router. Set the streaming bitrate to about half your tested upload speed, measured at the hour you actually go live, and always record locally alongside the stream.
Roughly $3,400 for a two-microphone starter with one camera, $12,600 for a four-seat table with proper lighting, and $46,000 for a four-camera studio with ISO recording. A PTZ room driven by one operator lands around $43,500. Build in that order and stop when the budget does.
