You may have seen where John Legend and some other big names streamed performances from their homes using Instagram or similar platform. One of my assisted livings wants me to stream birthday shows from home. Rather than Instagram, they use Zoom.com for tele-conferencing and are asking all their entertainers to install it on their computers. So, I did.

We ran a test session and it worked pretty well. The A/L had connected their computer to an A/V system which projected the image from my computer onto a movie screen in their in-house theater. The audio was patched into the theaters speaker system. During the test I could see and hear the Activity Director and interior of the theater.... and she could see and hear me. There was a little window of my camera’s image in the upper right corner of my screen. The quality of the video and audio was better than I expected.

We tested with me playing an SX900 and singing using a laptop's camera and mic. First through a mic plugged into the KB, and then with no mic. She said she could hear either way, but the balance was better when the mic was used.

Of course not all facilities have theaters with this kind of gear….but….there should be somebody on staff at a lot of the A/Ls that should know how to mirror a computer screen onto a large screen TV.

The fact that my client is going to this trouble to keep entertainment available to their residents says a lot about them. I’m not scheduled to perform there until next month. However they are going to let me patch in to their next entertainer’s show this Friday. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out technically and with the residents.