Hi Gary, interesting reading this thread and likewise hope you can make some good inroads with your research. Devices like the Stellacam, G-Star, Mallincam, etc are capable of live view of deep sky objects not just planets or the moon. I know some guys have used Samsung low-light cctv cameras for deep sky live observing as well.
There's a pretty good video forum on
CloudyNights that you should probably have a squiz through. I recently purchased one of
these cheap low-light cameras from China and waiting to get some time to test it out properly but from the little time that I've had mucking around with it, it looks very promising. I just need to make a remote OSD box as the on-board buttons are tiny