Home security system with webcam?

[Crucible1001]

One of my neighbors are going out of town for the 4th of July weekend. They have asked me to house sit for that period because another neighbor was just robbed for thousands during the middle of the day. I was wondering if using a good webcam as a security camera would work out well. I figured I could just setup one of their computers with a webcam mounted in their living room. At my house I could set up one of my unused computers to display the feed 24/7 on the table next to me. I can also record the entire stream.

I checked out justin.tv and that seems like a good place to do that. A can adjust the bitrate anywhere from 100-1024 kbits per second. I'll keep sound disabled and use whatever their crappy dsl can handle for the bitrate.

Does justin.tv allow this and will it stream 24/7 without timing out or something? The alternative to this is running a 100 foot ethernet cable through a neighbors driveway and yard which I am sure they would probably be okay with. I already have the cable after a little soldering to attach two 50 feet cables. I can't do wifi because I am out of range and I am trying to make this not cost anything.

 

[bastage]

I would imagine that what your saying would be fine either way & I believe that some of the chat clients (yahoo or msn or something like that) actually even allows you to record a buddy's webcam feed while in chat. That would make it even easier.