user1552: As a small independent TV Station we cooperate with festivals and congresses which want to broadcast their content live. Most of the times these partners send me a webstream. 
Currently we have a very basic solution in place
A machine with a videocard which is capable of extended desktop is used to play the stream via VLC and then send out the signal via the Videocards SDI port. 
What is your solution?

user3295: I could only think of a more automated solution but if this isn't happening every other day your solution is probably the cheapest and easiest method.
I would only recommend to configure VLC a bit so you don't get any surprises while broadcasting. For example disable the interface showing when the player is in fullscreen so it cant pop up by accident and set it to exclusive fullscreen so another application isn't forcing it out of fullscreen.

user2836: While I am pretty sure there are a few stand alone devices that can perform this process, they are effectively doing the same thing as you are doing by playing it back through the HD-SDI output of a computer.  RTMP is a very different type of signal than SDI and requires fairly complex translation to get it back to SDI.

1552: <p>As a small independent TV Station we cooperate with festivals and congresses which want to broadcast their content live. Most of the times these partners send me a webstream. </p>

<p>Currently we have a very basic solution in place
A machine with a videocard which is capable of extended desktop is used to play the stream via VLC and then send out the signal via the Videocards SDI port. </p>

<p>What is your solution?</p>
 3295: <p>I could only think of a more automated solution but if this isn't happening every other day your solution is probably the cheapest and easiest method.</p>

<p>I would only recommend to configure VLC a bit so you don't get any surprises while broadcasting. For example disable the interface showing when the player is in fullscreen so it cant pop up by accident and set it to exclusive fullscreen so another application isn't forcing it out of fullscreen.</p>
 2836: <p>While I am pretty sure there are a few stand alone devices that can perform this process, they are effectively doing the same thing as you are doing by playing it back through the HD-SDI output of a computer.  RTMP is a very different type of signal than SDI and requires fairly complex translation to get it back to SDI.</p>
