I have a friend who runs a small local concert venue. He wants to mount a camera in the theater to broadcast live footage out to large flat-screen TVs in the bar and lobby. Everything will be networked with Cat-6 cable.
What do I need to know/learn to get it done?
The folks at Black Box may end up being your friends.
Even if you don't buy from them, they've got some pretty good design guides on their web site.
You can do it with cheap off-the-shelf computer equipment and free software like VLC...although that stuff from Black Box is vastly simpler and the expense isn't horrific.
Perfect, I'll check it out. Thanks!
HDMI over ethernet is cheap and would do exactly what you need. Assuming your camera has an HDMI live output.
In reply to Grtechguy:
Still need to find a camera, so definitely a possibility.
Hmmm...so it seems that while I can send video images over tcp/ip, even on a gigiabit network I'm likely to run into issues with resolution and bandwidth. 
Since the one display is something like 72" diagonal, that could look REALLY bad!
So it looks like we'll either need to run a 2nd cat-6 cable for dedicated HDMI, or go with good ol' co-ax.
On a gigabit network with multicast traffic, you should be able to stream 1080p no problem...what resolution are you running?
In reply to GameboyRMH:
We don't have a camera yet, so that's up in the air.
The end result is we need live video sent ~100' through some 16" thick brick walls, and projected on ~70' wall-mounted displays in more-or-less real-time.
So, glitching/freezing/image loss would be bad, and given the display size I figure the resolution needs to be pretty high to not look like crap.
We already have gigabit Ethernet tying everything together, so I was hoping that would be the easy answer. From what I read online last night it sounds like we run too much risk of interference caused by other network traffic?
Wow, ok that's more involved than I realized. 
I spoke to the folks at Black Box and got some good info. According to them, HDMI over CATx only works if your're using independent cables, not over TCP/IP. So in addition to running another ethernet cable, we would need the HDMI camera(about $300 for something that looked reasonable), a HDMI-to-CATx transmitter ($550), and separate CATx-to-HDMI receivers for each display ($150 each), plus HDMI cables, etc. or about $1100 all-in.
There also is a service called Ustream which looks intriguing, as it would allow the theater to sell streaming subscriptions, broadcast live, etc. Though it seems like it would also add up to a similar cost.
On the cheap end of things, I found this HDMI tcp/ip security camera that looks like it could work, though we'd need a PC to run their software and output it onto the two displays. But I'm afraid that depending on network traffic it could cause inconsistent video, and that the image may look like crap on a 72" display.
Any thoughts/input?
That security camera definitely won't cut it, the resolution is pretty low and the optics on security cameras is typically relatively crappy.
I'm thinking maybe you could rent a good digital camcorder that could output an HDMI stream.
Sounds like your learning some of the same things I did when I cabled my wife's veterinary clinic-- if you're pulling cable, pull at least two!
In reply to GameboyRMH:
Unfortunately, the theater is ~100 miles from any real civilization(anything over 50,000 people), so they've already been working to upgrade their PA and backline equipment so they don't have to rent when bigger acts come through.
I'm not sure that the camera needs to be that good anyway. At this point if they're only displaying on the 2 TVs, not broadcasting online, it probably makes more sense to spend $300 vs. $3000 on a camera?
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