Haivision’s video streaming solutions are being used by the Boston Symphony Orchestra to offer audience members at its outdoor summer concerts an enhanced mobile viewing experience.
The orchestra has been playing outdoor concerts at Tanglewood in Massachusetts’ Berkshire Hills since 1937; currently 300,000 visitors attend during the summer season. For the first time this year, the Tanglewood Lawncast offers audience members access to exclusive digital media content – including programme notes, performer interviews, and live camera feeds of the concert – via their iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.
The pilot programme was launched earlier this summer, and has been expanded to 400 participating audience members at two concerts taking place on 15 and 23 August. Lawncast was designed and implemented by engineering, programming and installation AV company North American Theatrix, using Haivision video solutions. To provide the streamed video, the Boston Symphony Orchestra is broadcasting the concert to mobile devices using Haivision’s enterprise-grade Makito X encoders. Audiences can access the video streams on their iPads, iPhones and Android devices using Haivision’s InStream Mobile, a free high-performance video player.
The Haivision solution delivers HD video to mobile audiences in well under one second, making it suitable for video distribution at schools, medical facilities, stadiums, and auditoriums, where audiences do not want to experience a delay in receiving live video content. The Makito X HD encoders support up to 1080p60 resolution with extremely low end-to-end latency. InStream Mobile brings high-quality, low-latency HD video to iPads, iPhones, and Android devices and is claimed to deliver the highest performance media experience to many simultaneous mobile viewers throughout a facility or campus without a dedicated streaming server.
Participants in the Tanglewood Lawncast pilot have access to multiple camera feeds – including one focusing on the conductor and another on a different view of the orchestra – that are part of the multi-camera shoot used to create the concert broadcast that is projected onto the large video screens located inside and on top of the concert hall. Patrons can also access programme notes and exclusive interviews related to the evening performance.
“With Lawncast, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s goal is to give audience members more ways to engage and see the orchestra up close,” said Bernadette Horgan, director of public relations. “Haivision video streaming solutions are helping us deliver this unique program so audiences can have an enhanced concert experience using their mobile devices.”
www.bso.org
www.haivision.com
www.natheatrix.com
www.tanglewood.org/lawncast
