PC build for live stream

[Derick.C]

Hi everyone

I am looking for some advice in building a streaming PC running OBS.
The use-case is as follows for a presentation/seminar/church type scenario:

I have two 1K (1080p) HDMI feeds coming in (through two separate Elgato dongles):

• Presenter, from a laptop connected to an HDMI splitter to send images to 2 screens and to the OBS PC , and
• Camera, direct HDMI cable from a camera set up with wireless mic

These are then parsed and processed in OBS, with a person switching between the feeds (presenter and camera) as needed. The presenter feed also has an external audio source through USB (Audiobox fed from mixer for live music). Main audio is from the Camera feed.

OBS runs some plugins/extra scenes:

• Audio filters (mostly noise reduction to clean up the audio as the mic is super sensitive and variables keep changing)
• Some overlays
• RTSP server for local broadcast
• Snaz timer for countdowns

The entire setup runs from an ASUS Strix laptop, running an i5 7300HQ, with a GTX 1050 4GB and 8GB of ram on a 512GB m.2 SSD (Hikvision E something) with additional 1TB SSD (Sata) for backup. OS is windows 10.

We run a 40mins to 2hour livestream to youtube (also 10800p @4600kbps due to internet constraints), with multiple transitions (at least 3 per minute), overlays and such. We also record the stream locally as a backup and for later distribution. Saved to MKV and then remixed to MP4.

The laptop performs well, but the stream sometimes glitches a bit due to CPU usage (averages around 15-19%). NVEC is enabled, but due to the way in which the laptop internals are set up, all traffic goes through the CPU anyway, so turning GPU on or off makes no difference.

I have approval to build a PC for the streaming side, and as we will be expanding with an additional camera soon, we will be using an Elgato capture card (PCI-E)

What would the most cost-effective specs be for such a PC?

i have the following in mind:

i5 11600K
GTX 1660Ti (apparently this has dedicated streaming cores?)
8GB 3600MHz Ram
Z590 based motherboard (for the expansion slots and MB speed)
m.2 SSD

Is this overkill? Can i make do with a lower-end CPU, since theoretically the GPU will be doing all (most of) the work?

The PC will also be used to run the Adobe Creative Cloud suite (Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects mostly)

Any advice will be much appreciated, thanks in advance

 

[deFrisselle]

I'd go with 32Mb of RAM due to the Adobe software You'll need it for all the loaded assets
A motherboard with lots of USB hubs will be helpful A multi input PCIe capture card is a good idea
Could go with a lower end CPU Maybe consider a 2060

I used to stream on an old AMD Phenom II x4, 8Gb RAM, Radeon 270x with encoding on the GPU I was good enough for 720p30 and could still run VLC for background music and my my chatbot It's all about managing system resources and knowing what those are

 

[Derick.C]

I'd go with 32Mb of RAM due to the Adobe software You'll need it for all the loaded assets
A motherboard with lots of USB hubs will be helpful A multi input PCIe capture card is a good idea
Could go with a lower end CPU Maybe consider a 2060

I used to stream on an old AMD Phenom II x4, 8Gb RAM, Radeon 270x with encoding on the GPU I was good enough for 720p30 and could still run VLC for background music and my my chatbot It's all about managing system resources and knowing what those are

Thanks for the reply. Just a few things though:
Our stream has to be 1080p due to quality rules for the organization. Many of our members follow from home on TVs and so we need to stream at least 1080p for Youtube to be able to down sample as necessary. so 1080p is a must

At the moment GPU prices in my country are in flux. I can get a 1660ti for the same price (sometimes cheaper) as any 20series, so thats my option now. But practically what would the difference be? is the 1660Ti really as good as they claim for streaming (with "native OBS support"? or is this just a sales gimmick?

I will definitely consider the 32gb RAM, thanks for that reminder!

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

You want at least a Turing based nVidia GPU (that used to be a GTX 1650 Super.. so the 1660Ti has the same NVENC encoder chip)
If price is even close to similar, and there is availability, I'd strongly recommend a newer Ampere based card (ex RTX 2060) for 'future-proofing' and some RTX noise filters (which appear to work on non RTX system, but whole other discussion. And current implementation appears to be a CPU hog?? but point being that I can easily see future features being Ampere or newer.. so not the older Turing/GTX series).

For our HoW, I'm running a single NDI PTZ camera and I've got an i7-10700K (not over-clocked) and a GTX 1660 Super and was inter-mixing (during lockdown) 4K pre-recorded content, and 1080p camera, and have lots of CPU/GPU head room. Naturally, additional cameras will add load, but my camera feed is 1080p60 so equivalent to almost 2 cameras at 1080p30. I'd beware mixing HDMI thru USB capture dongle and NDI, but I have to say, I love having a PoE NDI camera, and ease of adding additional with so little effort and only a single Ethernet cable. There are HDMI to NDI adapters, but they aren't cheap.

Regarding PC
- One thing to consider for the PC is hardware support. For that reason, I bought a Tier 1 (top name brand) office computer, with next business onsite support, with local language native support 24/7. Doing so cost a few hundred US dollars extra, but makes lots of sense considering a 4-5 year PC lifespan, volunteers, etc.
- With CPU security issues, and Intel's disaster of mfg failures for prior 5 years, I'd advocate for Intel 12th gen on any new system (I didn't really have a choice 2 years ago).
- And I agree with @deFrisselle regarding RAM and stronger CPU to handle Premier Pro for future video editing.
- Another thing to consider is chance of upgrading beyond 1080p for streaming (or at least recording) during the life of this PC, and if budget allows, buying a computer capable of handling at least 4K recording (ex for Wedding, baptism, etc)

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

@pradeepsingh - if you are going to reply, it helps to read the post(s). Purpose was listed in line #2 of original post, and description of add-ins means your suggestions are completely unhelpful, and indicate NOT reading the original post .. at all. and that isn't ok

I agree, the right tool for the job, and OBS can be overkill for some use cases. but this isn't that thread.. jeesh

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Regarding GPU
- another consideration regarding video editing vs real-time encoding for livestreaming, is the amount of recommended VRAM (video RAM) on the GPU. I'm not a Premier user, so you'll have to do your own research, but another of the future-proofing considerations would be 4K video editing in the years to come. For DaVinci Resolve, for example, recommends 8GB VRAM for 4K editing. In the RTX line, one reference I'm looking at mentions RTX 2060 at 6GB VRAM vs 2060 Super with 8GB. ... though looks like there is a 12GB 2060?
anyway, point being to look at video editing requirements separately.

Personally, I figure we'll end up with a 4K camera next (even if still streaming at 1080p for now, as camera will last far longer than PC)
- I have already provided funeral and baptism service videos to families (at 1080p)
- oh, and with spare CPU/GPU cycles, I record at a higher quality than I stream (like 2-3x the bitrate). And remember that YouTube and others highly re-compress videos so downloading after the fact will be a lower quality video than you upload (hence my archiving original, higher quality videos on streaming PC)
- so, planning for 4K video editing seems prudent (and was part of my 'calculus' when I spec'ed our HoW livestream PC 2 years ago
- 6 months ago, with crazy GPU prices, I'd have argued for lowest GPU you could get away with now, and replace GPU later when prices came back to Earth
- But now, expectation is nVidia will drop prices on RTX 30x0 GPU in next week or two to clear out excess inventory (after PC shipments tanked in last quarter) to make room for RTX 40x0 series soon {tomshardware.com, for what it is worth, article Aug 16) . So I'd be looking at a RTX 3060 (around $100 more than a similar 2060 on newegg.com)... but my vague-back-of-the-head-recollection is that DaVinci Resolve is more sensitive to GPU RAM than Premier, (and I could easily be remembering incorrectly, so beware)

And I should note that if ALL you are going to do is trim your OBS recordings, avidemux (?? free) enables such without re-encoding (and therefore associated quality loss.. ). and you can ignore all of the above
If you plan to edit a video, adding new title page, overlays, etc for a special occasion, then you need a video editor like Premier and teh above GPU consideration makes sense

 

[Derick.C]

You want at least a Turing based nVidia GPU (that used to be a GTX 1650 Super.. so the 1660Ti has the same NVENC encoder chip)
If price is even close to similar, and there is availability, I'd strongly recommend a newer Ampere based card (ex RTX 2060) for 'future-proofing' and some RTX noise filters (which appear to work on non RTX system, but whole other discussion. And current implementation appears to be a CPU hog?? but point being that I can easily see future features being Ampere or newer.. so not the older Turing/GTX series).

For our HoW, I'm running a single NDI PTZ camera and I've got an i7-10700K (not over-clocked) and a GTX 1660 Super and was inter-mixing (during lockdown) 4K pre-recorded content, and 1080p camera, and have lots of CPU/GPU head room. Naturally, additional cameras will add load, but my camera feed is 1080p60 so equivalent to almost 2 cameras at 1080p30. I'd beware mixing HDMI thru USB capture dongle and NDI, but I have to say, I love having a PoE NDI camera, and ease of adding additional with so little effort and only a single Ethernet cable. There are HDMI to NDI adapters, but they aren't cheap.

Regarding PC
- One thing to consider for the PC is hardware support. For that reason, I bought a Tier 1 (top name brand) office computer, with next business onsite support, with local language native support 24/7. Doing so cost a few hundred US dollars extra, but makes lots of sense considering a 4-5 year PC lifespan, volunteers, etc.
- With CPU security issues, and Intel's disaster of mfg failures for prior 5 years, I'd advocate for Intel 12th gen on any new system (I didn't really have a choice 2 years ago).
- And I agree with @deFrisselle regarding RAM and stronger CPU to handle Premier Pro for future video editing.
- Another thing to consider is chance of upgrading beyond 1080p for streaming (or at least recording) during the life of this PC, and if budget allows, buying a computer capable of handling at least 4K recording (ex for Wedding, baptism, etc)

Thanks for the answer and advice.

At the moment i can get a RTX2060OC for about teh same as a GTX1660ti. My question is which runs OBS and stream encoding best? I know the ampere cores are more "future-proof" but sometimes "newer" does not equal "better".

I am planning a 10-year (plus) lifetime on the system. Luckily i've been doing tech-support and maintenance since i was in primary school so i dont think outside support is necessary. I have distributor access so i'm getting the best price anyway. This isn't a pre-build, im building it myself.

So if i understand you correctly i am looking at a:

i5 12600K
RTX 2060
32GB Ram (i'm not going to worry about speed too much - i've been doing heavy video and graphics processing on my personal PC with 16GB 600Mhz RAm and a 4470K i7 for years now)
Z690 based motherboard? i'm not too familiar with MB's thesedays, but this is all we have available at present. Lower end (B and H) models will only become available by next year.
m.2 SSD

With regards to programs, etc, I am set with those. I am a long-time Adobe user and know the systems intimately. It will take a few months of work to convert everything to a new system that i need to learn all over again. But thanks for the advice.

The main-use is only OBS streaming. Premiere will be used in rare cases, with Illustrator used weekly for every week's sermon's graphics (yes we do it by hand because I prefer it to "boilerplate" cover images).

Unfortunately i cannot wait until our RTS30series drops, as south africa is generally a few months (about 8) behind global price drops. We have 3 main distributors and they kind of have us by the balls when it comes to computer parts. GPU's are replaceable at least and if needed i can always upgrade the 20 series.

Thanks for the advice.

I'll post in a few weeks once i convince the church leaders that dropping R20k on a PC is worth it and that i pinky swear not install games on it (considering almost everything is branded "gaming".

 

[bugreport987]

you should get an amd computer. in obs in advanced mode there are many more settings for amds codec then intels or nvidias. the setting you want is keep every nth frame. with that you can make the stream faster than real life but not faster than the stream itself. streaming to multiple computers might be where youd run into a problem but all you really need is an 8 core processor. I instanteously played video games through a capture card on my intel 7700t and even ran two monitors spanning a resolution of 6k. unfortunately your using laptop parts but the version of xtu that came out around the time of the 7700t and possibly 7300hq supported raising the speed of something called the reference clock. setting it to 101.0 speeds up encoding performance dramatically and increases memory bandwidth for the igpu.

 

[Derick.C]

you should get an amd computer. in obs in advanced mode there are many more settings for amds codec then intels or nvidias. the setting you want is keep every nth frame. with that you can make the stream faster than real life but not faster than the stream itself. streaming to multiple computers might be where youd run into a problem but all you really need is an 8 core processor. I instanteously played video games through a capture card on my intel 7700t and even ran two monitors spanning a resolution of 6k. unfortunately your using laptop parts but the version of xtu that came out around the time of the 7700t and possibly 7300hq supported raising the speed of something called the reference clock. setting it to 101.0 speeds up encoding performance dramatically and increases memory bandwidth for the igpu.

Thanks for your input, though i think you might be a little confused.

Nvidia supports OBS natively, and your own example quotes Intel specs. Also, i'm not playing games so theres no additional rendering required.

My personal experience with AMD and any form of video editing/encoding is that it sucks. This may have changed recently with teh 5th gen ryzen chips, but iv'e never had Intel chips pack up, even under extreme loads and with temperatures in excess of 110degrees. AMD just doesn't cut it for me. If i remember correctly, i also read a guide that said to stay far away from AMD for any form of streamimg.

Also, if you look at your processes you will see that OBS uses only one core of the CPU (at least on my laptop and PC), so multithreading helps nothing.

Plus i have enough heaters in my house, i don't need another one! XD ;)

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

At the moment i can get a RTX2060OC for about teh same as a GTX1660ti. My question is which runs OBS and stream encoding best? I know the ampere cores are more "future-proof" but sometimes "newer" does not equal "better".

in this case, Ampere and Turing NVENC are similar, so its really about the rest of the card, features, etc. EposVox has good comparison videos on encoding. my recollection was that the difference, especially at higher bitrates, are negligible. In which case, for same/similar price, get newer card

I am planning a 10-year (plus) lifetime on the system. Luckily i've been doing tech-support and maintenance since i was in primary school so i dont think outside support is necessary. I have distributor access so i'm getting the best price anyway. This isn't a pre-build, im building it myself.

My primary PC is over 10 yrs old, so I get making stuff last.
But expecting a 10 yr lifetime for real-time video encoding is NOT realistic. Any more than you'd stream at 480i today, you aren't likely to be streaming at 1080p in 10 years. And HDR, etc. So, yes you'll be able to upgrade GPU, but even know with short PCIe v4 life, getting a newer GPU in 5 years that will work on your motherboard... not something to count on

So if i understand you correctly i am looking at a:

i5 12600K
RTX 2060
32GB Ram (i'm not going to worry about speed too much - i've been doing heavy video and graphics processing on my personal PC with 16GB 600Mhz RAm and a 4470K i7 for years now)

Remember - real-time video encoding is computationally intensive, as is video editing. For regular PC usage, memory speed isn't all that important. But for this systems workloads, DDR5 will make a material difference

Z690 based motherboard? i'm not too familiar with MB's thesedays, but this is all we have available at present. Lower end (B and H) models will only become available by next year.
m.2 SSD

I used to build my owns PCs (decades ago). But that long ago became not worth it for me. So I can't comment on specifics. Though, as I tend to go for the upper (but not top as not worth it value wise) CPUs, I also only get appropriate MBs, with PCIe lanes. In this case, just as PC performance went up drastically with switch from HDD to SSD, new PCIe v5 NVMe SSDs are so much faster. So if wanting long life, I'd be thinking about next OS release, streaming standards, and Disk I/O impact. Ideally PCIe Gen 5 should have a longer life (not as long as PCie Gen3, but way longer than Gen4). So a Gen5 M.2 slot would be nice for long-term impact, overkill for today (most likely.. I have a SATA SSD in my i7-10700K and it is plenty fast enough for now at 1080p).
My concern with Alder Lake systems is lack of PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD support. it is up to you to prioritize.

With regards to programs, etc, I am set with those. I am a long-time Adobe user and know the systems intimately. It will take a few months of work to convert everything to a new system that i need to learn all over again.

I didn't mean to imply/suggest switching software vendor. Only that each program has it nuances, and that I don't have such info for Adobe

Unfortunately i cannot wait until our RTS30series drops, as south africa is generally a few months (about 8) behind global price drops. We have 3 main distributors and they kind of have us by the balls when it comes to computer parts. GPU's are replaceable at least and if needed i can always upgrade the 20 series.

Unfortunate. As depending on availability, I'd be inclined, especially with Intel 13th Gen CPUs imminent release, to wait a couple of months (USA availability) for such systems, especially if long-life desired.
Understand that a couple of year old system will work fine, for now, at 1080p light workloads. But pre 12th gen Intel CPUs has security issues fixed in h/w (supposedly) with 12th gen (and now even latest Intel and AMD have new vulnerabilities). Due to security issues, and importance of livestream at a House of Worship (HoW), I'd recommend streaming PC:
- be protected by auto-voltage regulating battery backup (does wonders for protecting hardware from voltage fluctuations, especially brown outs, which often do more damage) US$100->150
- be in isolated network segment protected from office computers
- limited local admin, and streaming, etc NOT be done with local admin rights
{all typical IT support recommendations for system stabilty}

Personally, for security reasons, I prefer AMD CPUs over Intel's. But I also want USB4 speeds and AMD is poor at overall system level support (and in my professional IT role in large global companies, I've had this exact conversation with AMD). AMD does nice hardware, but unless software and overall system is there to support it, its worthless. And AMD stumbles terribly outside core hardware (unfortunately).

As for GPUs, there is no AMD vs nVidia native support for OBS issue. {there really is no such thing}. To summarize, most livestreaming today requires H.264, and probably (hopefully) allow(/encourage) AV1 in a couple of years. The issue has been nVidia's better NVENC (and most importantly associated software support, which AMD is atrocious at, and AMD's resistance to adequately supporting the older H.264 standard). Both AMD and nVidia can work with OBS for GPU encode offload, and up until recently, nVidia's NVENC has simply been better supported, and generally better quality [though it really depends]. With OBS v28 and AMD's just released new SDK, they will probably be on par. As I'm not a gamer, and value driver stability (for non-games) over all else, hence my recommendation to stick with nVidia cards with OBS for now, keeping an eye on Intel GPUs

At our church, we spent over US$6K for our livestream setup, but that include $1,500 for PC [5yr next business day onsite support], $500 for 2 DisplayPort monitors (great deal), just over $2K for NDI PTZ camera, $500 in cables/misc, and ~$2K in construction (as dual monitors up in choir loft, with PC in sound closet downstairs), and some donated tech gear from me (old router, UPS, etc), all of which was covered by specific donations during lockdown.

In your case, I'd be tempted to see if thermal throttling is one of your issues with current laptop, and if you can't fix/address that, and then some OBS optimization, to extends the laptops life for about a year. then get 2023 based CPU/GPUs later next year, which should be a much longer life [and give you time to run a fund-raising campaign to pay for your new system ;^) ]
And beware some OBS plugins are more CPU intensive than others. Example - audio filters can be CPU impactful.
Another consideration would be to look into a HDMI switch so laptop is only processing a single video feed (vs 2 now)
And multi-threading does make a difference for overall OS ability. And then you have your plugins (not sure exactly multi-thread impact, and if plugin dependent)
And how is your current laptop's 8GB RAM usage during a livestream?

 

[Derick.C]

Just an update

thanks to @Lawrence_SoCal for his knowledge here.

So a few months ago we finally managed to get this through. I ended up going with 12th gen (13 hadn't launched here yet). I was a bit busy and it had slipped my mind to thank you. So a belated thanks

I am happy to report that OBS CPU runs at sub 1% for an entire stream, plus we can run anything we need. Last weekend we had a seminar and we ran multiple streams without even having a fan at high rpm (my case and cooling system are all BeQuiet!, as is the PSU). Multiple as in, OBS>Youtube, OBSCamra>Jitsi(a web-browser based conferencing tool), OBSRTSP Server>Local network, as well as full 1k recording. Everything was done at 1k, and we had situatioons where i had to run Illustrator to fix some graphics mid session - no hiccups.

I do have some problems with the RTSP server plugins, but will open another thread there.

 

[Chrishanscom]

I am late to the show, but glad to hear things are working well for you Derick. I just finished my first complete build and now working the settings and getting things preset in OBS for when our Sanctuary remodel is complete. Actually due to delays, having to push it into service early to replace my laptop and make room for a larger audio mixer in our Gym to add choir mics/monitors.

Thought I would also get Lawrence's input. Currently running AMD Ryz 7 5xxx series laptop with 2 phone cameras (droidcam), usb capture card from our Presenter PC, and USB Audio from the Audio Mixer. This actually worked smooth for me so used this as a minimum requirement for my build.

I went with the AMD Ryz 7 7700, with 32GB Ram on the AsRock B650 Mixer Live Motherboard and added the Asus NVidia RTX 3060ti. Since our new system (presenter) will run on SDI lines and our 2 new PTZOptix cameras also work via SDI, I have added 2 Blackmagic Duo2 SDI capture cards (8 total Inputs). The PC Build alone was $2400 not including Monitors.

Even though this has already been purchased and built, just wondering if you see any issues that I should watch out for.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

@Chrishanscom
If too late, then so be it... But I'd have avoided the buying new, old-school analog SDI and gone NDI for simplicity (single cable for power, control, and video feed) ... recognizing I have enough IT networking background to not be intimidated by Ethernet, have terminated my own cables (back in Cat5e days)

That said, with multiple 4K cameras and demanding settings, one can bring a US$10K workstation to its knees. so it really does depend. As for your build, the really important details, impacting lifecycle, etc would be
- what resolution, frame rate, and color depth for cameras and for streaming/recording?
- are you doing separate Recording (with different Encoder settings, like I do)?
- and do you plan to run any audio intensive app (like a DAW)? Or do you have a sound engineer doing both an in-house and separate live stream mix (where you only need the Stereo or Mono sub-mix)? In our situation, there is no 'sound person', so having each Mic channel visible on the streaming computer would be really helpful. And as Aaron recommends, do mixing in DAW, then output to OBS (vs trying to manipulate each mic channel in OBS, on Windows ... I've read, not great, but not my area of expertise)

the flip side is, with SDI, like HDMI, if computer gets overwhelmed, you could use an external switcher to select video feed, and then computer is dealing with only 1 or 2 camera feeds (presuming additional future cameras)

I'd have also made sure power supply is large enough to handle larger, next gen GPU, should the time come to upgrade. Getting a 3060Ti now, presuming good price, makes sense, and wait a little while for 4K streaming (and AV1 encoding) to become more mainstream before upgrading to a GPU that can handle such (the 3060 doesn't do AV1, that I recall)

 

[AaronD]

I'd have avoided the buying new, old-school analog SDI...

SDI is digital too. (Serial Digital Interface) It just doesn't have the handshake to know when there's a receiver connected, nor the encryption that HDMI does.

It just blasts out a digital bitstream on 75-ohm coax, and hopes that something picks it up, which is usually a good thing because you don't have to mess with a transmitter that refuses to transmit. It just does. When the receiver gets something good, it syncs to it and "just works" too. Very easy to work with.

The only problems I've had so far, came from cheap cabling with deceptive claims. Replaced that junk with some TV antenna cable (BNC adapters on the ends), without rebooting anything, and it works!

So the feel to work with it is very much "old-school analog", in all the good ways, but it's actually digital, with all of those benefits too.

 

[Chrishanscom]

I agree on a whole with both of you(Aaron/Socal), I never considered SDI as an option, but when the installer brought it to my attention I was all in. I considered using NDI and since our PTX's will be connected by a POE network it is still an option. SDI has been a top player in video transmission for decades, it's the most reliable with the best transfer rates and bandwidth. But it comes at a price and is not commercially an option for most enthusiasts as most homes do not have SDi TV's or equipment to run it on.

The interesting point made is that like Analog and Digital TV Antennas, there is no difference. Both are just pieces of wires and Cables to carry a signal. Same thing for SDI vs HDMI or even NDI, difference being the longevity and reliability.

 

[AaronD]

...not commercially an option for most enthusiasts as most homes do not have SDi TV's or equipment to run it on...

In that situation, you'd convert it to HDMI, right behind the TV. Possibly even power the converter from a USB port on the TV, since they often have those now.

Generally, if your HDMI run is less than 25 feet or so, it's not worth it. If it's longer, then SDI is effectively an extender. It's good for 300 feet on good cable, before you have to boost it somehow. (active splitter, convert to something and convert back, etc.)

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

I get it with SDI... but I'll stick with NDI for single cable connectivity (which 40yr old SDI can't do) and far greater future-proofing. And, I'd never go SDI for common OBS Studio use case, as SDI is end-of-life tech
I get why in professional production studio and certain select other environments, SDI might be preferred, but elsewhere? the end video quality difference for livestreaming is effectively zero between the two in the vast majority of cases.. and reliability is only an issue with a poorly set up Ethernet network... Silly reliability comparison to create new dedicated SDI network and compare to old poorly-maintained Ethernet network...

@Chrishanscom - I'd be concerned installer was simply advocating for what they've been doing for a long time, vs what was actually better for you. Though I don't know your specific environment and requirements. so ... it depends.
And SDI PTZ cameras tend to be cheaper than NDI models (with SDI and HMDI/USB being same model/price). The SDI price tag comes in with SDI capture device or switcher.... and a dedicated PoE A/V Ethernet switch is cheaper.. but either way... whatever works is fine.

ok, having a hard time letting this go... Is SDI much more mature, sure. and certain Pro's and Con's for SDI vs NDI. again, sure.
but I call BS on claims SDI is more reliable, better longevity, bandwidth advantage, etc over current NDI (now on v5). What is common is for installers to have experts in 1 technology (SDI, in this case) attempts installs on next gen technology (NDI for this example) and run into bleeding edge tech teething problems, lack of training/expertise on adjacent technology (ex PoE networking) and then claim the old tech is better. And years later still stick to that story... until they go out of business... which I've seen time and again in other technologies