I recently got my hands on an Edirol V-4EX for live web streams; http://www.roland.com/products/en/V-4EX/

I'd like to be more compact and use a laptop instead of the ancient desktop I have.

I use windows media encoder 9 at the moment but I want to use the Expression Encoder next. I have a newer server just waiting for me to use... I wanted to use Smooth Streaming but I'll post elsewhere about that.

The live streams are about 2 hours long, the video console does have HDMI so it may be an option or I can use the USB out.

Would you have recommendations on what I would need? (prefer specs not brands) Things to avoid?