The CineGrid @ Holland Festival (along with the UltraLight project) received the CENIC 2008 Innovations in Networking Award in Experimental/Developmental Applications at CENIC’s annual conference on March 11, 2008.
The international nonprofit CineGrid promotes research, development, and deployment of ultra-high-performance digital media – sound and picture – over advanced networks, using grid computing technologies for networked collaboration. CineGrid has organized a number of experimental projects designed both to showcase what advanced networks can support in the world of digital media, and to test those same networks, pushing them as far as they can go in the pursuit of the most immersive possible experience.
On June 20-21, 2007, CineGrid recorded and streamed live 4K digital motion pictures with 5.1 surround sound of the operatic performance “Era la Notte” from the Holland Festival in Amsterdam over CalREN and partner IP networks to California. The 75-minute live performance was transmitted nearly 10,000 kilometers, in real time, to the University of California, San Diego, where it was viewed in 4K on a large screen, with surround-sound, by an audience in the 200-seat auditorium of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). People in the audience in San Diego reported that they felt as if they were actually in the concert hall in Amsterdam.
This technical experiment was interesting for many reasons, but primarily because live performances require utterly reliable throughput and low-latency responsiveness. A less than perfect connection would be instantly noticed and may not be fixed later because, of course, there is no “later” during a live performance. The CineGrid @ Holland Festival 2007, a 2008 Experimental/Developmental Award recipient, confirms that even these most demanding types of streaming media distribution can be done over high-performance fiber-optic infrastructure, such as CalREN, today.
URL:
www.cinegrid.org
http://cenic08.cenic.org/news/FinalCENIC08Awards.pdf
