news Internet service provider Internode has introduced a public high definition video stream of the first Gorgeous Festival, which features rock icon band Icehouse backed by supporting acts Josh Pyke and Emma Louise, showcasing the newest enhancements of its Content Delivery Network (CDN).

The inaugural one-day Gorgeous Festival, an annual boutique music, food and wine festival, took place on November 26th at McLaren Vale, one of South Australia’s leading winemaking regions. The music acts were recorded live exclusively by Internode for its customers.

Simon Hackett, Internode Managing Director, stated that the Gorgeous Festival public video stream was just the beginning of Internode’s on-demand entertainment plans, and this experience would be taken as a starting point for potential events in the future. The Internode Connect team recorded, live-edited and post-produced in-house the performances from the Gorgeous Festival. Internode has obtained the required permissions and released these streams to be available from any broadband connection in Australia. The video streams (available here) are being offered on an unmetered basis to Internode’s ADSL and FTTH customers.

Australian broadband users will have access to free high quality streaming video of the festival thanks to the new live video streaming capabilities of Internode’s CDN. The streaming service automatically upgrades the video stream to the optimal quality output allowed by the broadband connection. The maximum quality stream needs around eight megabits per second of downstream throughput.

Speaking about bringing the talent and creativity of Australian artists to music lovers, Hackett said: “In an era when most mentions of ISPs and the creative work of artists involves high court challenges from Hollywood, we’re proud to do just a bit of what actually helps: Using our technology to connect the work of great artists to audiences in a legal and engaging way, across our brilliant national network.”

Hackett congratulated the Internode Content team for their good work, and applauded the bands for being kind enough to allow Internode to exhibit their work to the public in this manner. “So please, find a big screen and a nice sound system, sit back, and enjoy some great Australian artists doing what they do best,” Hackett said.

opinion/analysis
As an Icehouse fan, I applaud this initiative by Internode. I particularly enjoyed Icehouse playing one of my favourite songs, ‘Love in Motion’. You can watch the original clip on YouTube here, and the song starts at about 47 minutes in Internode’s stream. And Internode’s production quality is pretty great — multiple cameras, the quality of encoding is pretty good, and the streaming is flawless. Nice. Damn. Never thought I’d be using ‘Iva Davies’ as a tag on Delimiter ;)

As an overall initiative, however, I have my doubts. It’s not really an ISP’s core business to be producing content like this; that’s more the job of a production house. It’s nice that Internode can do it as well, but I kind of see this effort as a bit of a hobby on the company’s part, linked to its strong presence in South Australia. Still … it’s nice to be watching Iva Davies do his stuff once again :)

Image credit: Screengrab of Icehouse frontman Iva Davies performing at the Gorgeous Festival. Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay

Related posts:

1. Internode readies FetchTV service for the NBN
2. Internode to migrate customers to iiNet DSLAMs
3. iiNet completes Internode buyout a month early
4. Music service Rdio launches in Australia
5. No switch-off date yet for Usenet, says Internode

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1. Michael Wyres
   Posted 09/12/2011 at 8:52 am | Permalink | Reply

   Free Icehouse… #winning …and only a true fan would call him Ivor… ;)

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 09/12/2011 at 8:58 am | Permalink | Reply

     lol fixed. Yeah his name is technically ‘Ivor’, must have stuck in my head as I’ve been reading their history recently. But he has gone by ‘Iva’ for a long time :)

2. Michael Wyres
   Posted 09/12/2011 at 8:56 am | Permalink | Reply

   You are right though that it isn’t the ISPs/RSPs who should be producing this material – just delivering it. Independent production companies should be packaging it up, and offering it to multiple ISPs to stream on their FetchTV – (or similar) – offerings.

   Short term though, doing something like this is a good publicity model to demonstrate the value of IPTV going forward. Most people would never get to see a performance like this in the current television market.

   • Anthony S
     Posted 09/12/2011 at 11:49 am | Permalink | Reply

     I was thinking along these lines too. It’s a good proof of concept, both from the practical aspects and the fact that Internode now knows how much something like this should cost to produce/run.

     Now it’s just up to some enterprising production house to take up the mantle. Given the reported drop in attendance this festival season, they could make the pitch that it could inspire people to attend in the future by showing what they are missing out on (plus a share of the broadcasting fees to subsidise too.)

3. @pblakez
   Posted 09/12/2011 at 11:13 am | Permalink | Reply

   Sounds a lot like a band called the Flowers I used to go and see when living in Sydney man that was over 30 years ago

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 09/12/2011 at 11:19 am | Permalink | Reply

     :)

4. Anthony Agius
   Posted 09/12/2011 at 11:51 am | Permalink | Reply

   I don’t think Internode want to be a production company, but they needed content in order to show off the capabilities of their CDN. I’ve noticed that in Australia, there’s a general lack of live webcasting, as event production companies just don’t know how to do it. Plus I think Simon Hackett just wanted do something cool – and he did :)

5. Duke
   Posted 09/12/2011 at 7:42 pm | Permalink | Reply

   boop…boop…one more time…

6. Hubert Cumberdale
   Posted 09/12/2011 at 10:43 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Awesome. Watching now.