All things related to multicast

["Landry, Greg" <>]

Philadelphia Orchestra Global Concert Series Test Partners-

 

The Philadelphia Orchestra is seeking qualified, new partners to join in multicast transmissions of its Global Concert Series. Participants will be shipped an Amino 130 set top box (on loan, while supplies last) and the opportunity to receive The Orchestra’s HD MPEG-2 transmission on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 2:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time), alternatively, Friday, March 7, 2008 at 2:00 pm (Eastern).

 

To give you a little history, the Philadelphia Orchestra has been working to bring concert content to Internet2. Some of you may know about our project and the details can be found at www.philorch.org/internet2 . We conducted two tests this fall to several Universities. These tests consisted of us sending our concert programs via an HD1080i MPEG-2 multicast, and the remote sites picking this multicast up with VideoLan.  Even though the tests went fairly well, there were some issues with VideoLan that prevented us from delivering a stable stream of the utmost quality. Also, it was hard for us to standardize the reception of this multicast, as all of our participants setup up their own VideoLan PC, which introduced several variables that affected the reception of the stream that were beyond our control. To overcome this we tested a few IP TV set top boxes in-house. Initial tests have shown that the set top boxes generally decode the HD MPEG-2 stream at a higher quality than VideoLan. Having an appliance decode the stream also takes away some of the setup and stability issues that are inherent to running VideoLan, or any other software decode, on a PC or Mac.  On January 25, 2008 the Amino 130 was in use and will continue on February 22. 

 

The requirements for being a participant are as follows:

 

    * 20 Mbps or better of I2 bandwidth

    * multicast enabled to the intended viewing area

    * SD or preferably HD 16:9 projector and some sort of higher-end sound reinforcement (home theater system works)

    * you give us feedback about your experience

    * sign some legalese that says you will return the Amino if asked and you will not copy our concert

 

There is no need to have an audience but yourself and any technical staff. However, if you have a suitable venue, and you want to conduct the test with music faculty or other relevant staff, this would be ideal.  Also, we will be giving you the GUI management passwords to the Amino so you can get familiar with the box and experiment with configurations. Lastly, while you have the Amino you will be able to view non-Orchestra content. In other words you can set the Amino to tune into any MPEG-2 or H.264 streaming address you like. There will be a multicast test available on 233.88.110.60:1234 if you need testing content for the Amino.

 

Please e-mail me if you'd like to participate and I'll send the details directly to you. Since the number of people on this list-serve is greater than the number of Amino boxes we have, we have to limit the number of participants.

 

Thank you,

Greg

 

Greg Landry

Development Manager

The Philadelphia Orchestra

260 S. Broad Street

16th Floor

Philadelphia, PA  19102

p  215.893.1994

f  215.875.7649