On Mon, 15 Nov 2021 at 00:24, Matt Ryan <[email protected]> wrote:
> 25 years ago on the 14th November, the MTV Europe Music Awards were > streamed live from Alexandra Palace using connectivity from AS5388 (Planet > Online which was acquired by Energis, then C&W bought Energis and Vodafone > took over C&W). > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_MTV_Europe_Music_Awards > > The following should be treated as suspect due to the passage of time but > at least gives a flavour of what happened: > - Connectivity was ISDN on a Securicor 3net router. Most likely ISDN-2 but > possibly a larger number of B channels on an ISDN-30. > - Streams were served from an SGI Indy or Indigo (pizza box format) in a > rack in Telehouse North that was installed on the day and removed the > following day. > - Guessing the SGI box was running software from RealNetworks (although I > also have a nagging thought it could have been something from Adobe > instead). > - I think something was arranged with LINX (see partial extract of an > email at end) to get more bandwidth. Not sure what the outcome was but I > know at some stage the LINX LAN was extended with a Planet Online switch > that wouldn't fit in the rack so went under the raised floor. Might be it > was for this event, certainly would fit with the last minute deployment. > - Being late 1996 there weren't really a lot of people with halfway decent > Internet connections to view the streams. Concurrent streaming was > somewhere in the low single digits so nothing like the amount of video seen > on networks today 8-) > I didn't see the streams or the show as I was sitting in a small booth > backstage making sure the router stayed working. I did hear it however, > being in close proximity to the performances. > Perhaps some of those on the list streamed this on the night? > Err Demon Internet did the "first" live broadcast from Live '95 with Realaudio (first EU licensee - I paid for the license on my credit card as Demon didn't have international payment facilities at the time - well not for Seattle / Progressive Networks anyway). We had an ISDN2 connection and an SGI Indy running Progressive Network's Real Audio server. Seem to remember there was a lot of Stereo MC's "Get Connected" played. In 2000 Demon also netcast the first Big Brother (Nasty Nick) with BT and I think at peak there were 34,000 streams (17K each) which was the largest netcast at the time (also using Real Networks streaming tech). Shame Demon never took full advantage of the free 2 streams (in perpetuity) that each customer could have. Steve > > -- NetTek Ltd UK mob +44 7775 755503 UK +44 20 3432 3735 / US +1 (650) 423 1390 social id stevekennedyuk Euro Tech News Blog http://eurotechnews. <http://eurotechnews.blogspot.com> net
