ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—CP Communications subsidiary Red House Streaming designed and deployed a wide-area Layer 2 network across multiple event locations for the SXSW Conference and Festival, March 11-20, in Austin, Texas, the company said today.

This year’s SXSW, the first to feature a hybrid of in-person and remote participants, relied on the network to support the crew onsite responsible for delivering sessions, panels and music and comedy performances to audiences around the world.

With festival locations around the city, the SXSW relied on CP Communications and Red House Streaming to support events at 10 venues, including the Austin Convention Center where many of the largest sessions and Radio Day Stage music events were held and Brush Square Park, an outdoor venue where the International Day Stage music showcases took place.

Red House Streaming connected SXSW’s master control center, located in the Austin Marriott Downtown, with the 10 remote venues and a roaming camera crew that covered other venues around Austin. RHS’ family of IP and bonded cellular technologies were used to manage all Dante audio signals and intercom communications over the network, CP Communications said.

The expansive wide-area network and supporting technology infrastructure required a three-man crew from CP Communications and Red House Streaming. Besides building out and crewing the master control center, RHS technicians supported the remote camera crews on location, provided field support and maintenance services for all connected remote venues and managed a large communications infrastructure across all sites. The master control center also doubled as a network operations center for live signal monitoring and troubleshooting, it said.

“The technology infrastructure put into place for this year’s events proved exceptionally reliable,” said Marshall Dungan, technical director and senior producer for SXSW Conference and Festivals. “Their video and audio equipment worked very well between master control and our many remote sites, which is not an easy endeavor given the complexity of the network. The reliability of the bonded cellular video encoding equipment proved invaluable when we had to switch from the primary feed.”

More information is available on the Red House Streaming and CP Communications websites. 

TOKYO—Why do 4K when you can do 8K seems to be the strategy for Japanese public broadcaster NHK, which has announced that it intends to launch an 8K TV channel later this year.

NHK says that it will release the 8K compatible satellite broadcast channel on Dec. 1. The broadcaster claims that it will be the first 8K channel in the world.

However, if you can’t wait that long to experience 8K and you are able to head to this year’s South by Southwest Festival, then you can get a sneak preview of NHK’s 8K capabilities. NHK will host an 8K exhibit in the SXSW theater, which will showcase 2D and 3D musical experiences. The theater will reportedly project visuals onto a 200-inch screen and be accompanied by immersive 3D sound.

The 8K theater will be open to SXSW attendees starting from March 13 to March 15 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. To RSVP, contact Kosuke Tanabe at tanabe-ko@nhk-ep.co.jp.

The 2018 SXSW Festival takes place in Austin, Texas, from March 13-15.