I am in desperate need of some help from some Linux Streaming Video Experts.

I'm putting together a small streaming solution for a friend to stream a common input video source to about 10 remote locations. I have successfully got a Hauppauge HD PVR working with very awesome results. I can capture to file and publish it to a RTMP Server (Both ErlyVideo and Wowza) using ffmpeg with absolutely no problems.

With the capturing part done, I turned my attention to the client side of things. I first tried looking at the Roku STB but soon ran into a wall with Roku only supporting HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) for streaming which requires some fancy outdated freeware for Linux or Wowza. I first tried the free route but had problems with compiling along side newer version of ffmpeg and if a compile was successful, the program did not work as promised. When I looked at Wowza, I was joyed to get it working by converting a RTMP stream to HLS but soon ran into problems with the demand for the HLS stream using large amounts of CPU and Memory because of Re-encoding and this made the stream unstable. I already did not like the idea that Wowza was going to cost $50 a month to use and decided to find an alternate solution.

I next turned my eyes to a pure RTMP stream using ErlyVideo. (ErlyVideo is free as a RTMP Server but costs HUNDRED$ per month if you want HLS) I got a couple slightly used PCs with HDMI to act as the streaming clients. I put together a quick webpage that loads a jwplayer instance and plays back directly from the RTMP Server that ffmpeg is publishing to. We tested the simple webpage which streamed HD like video and the audio was crystal clear. I was so excited, I moved on to building a striped down minimal linux client with nothing more then a straight boot into a chromium-browser using kiosk mode. It worked like a charm until the flash video initialized. The audio was clear but the video was choppy. I tried everything to fix it. I have no idea why it plays so nice on both my linux desktop and my windows laptop but it is just messed on these new clients I built. I tried both debian and ubuntu with no difference. On debian the flash player would use over 100% CPU usage but on Ubuntu it did not but still was choppy. I tried two different test machine as clients, with no difference. I could not say if my stream is the problem or it might even be JWPlayer. I will try some more testing and flash players but in the meantime can someone recommend alternative streaming protocols?

My capture device captures with H.264 and AAC so no re-encoding should be needed.

What streaming options can anyone recommend I look into? I also tried using RTSP using ffserver but that did not work either because it never started converting the input stream. Clients would connect with status WAIT_FEED being displayed on the status page.

HLS, No Good with Wowza and ErlyVideo.
RTMP, Choppy play back on Clients.
RTSP, Problem with ffserver.

Please any recommendations would be appreciated.