My church is adding live streaming of services. What kind of software is best suited for this?

Only one I've known about is QT Streaming Server, now I'm hearing Windows has one and Adobe's Flash system is another...

Our videos look terrible, due to our current workflow. I don't have a crew to work with, so at the moment, it's just me, recording straight to DVD, then editing in Windows Movie Maker and uploading to Vimeo. The multiple conversions are killing quality.

We have an old Videonics 100 switcher, with 4 s-video lines. Soon as the college interns start, we'll have alot more going on, but the biggest question I have is, what's the best way to stream this stuff at as little cost?

I just saw a demo of highly compressed h264 HD and SD footage (720p at 500kbps, and 480p at 200k!), and it was jaw dropping awesome. Are there hardware-based systems that can be tweaked and encode in realtime?

We're talking standard def footage and mono audio, low light and high motion (the preacher is VERY active on stage)

Check these links out:
1- codegent : red5 : open source flash server (http://www.red5flashserver.com/)
2- (download) Red5 : Open Source Flash Server Open Source Flash (http://osflash.org/red5)

or

VidBlaster - Video Production at Your Fingertips! (http://vidblaster.com/)

There are tons of options (tricaster) but this should be a good start.

JW <'/))))><