Finn fans see red as technical hiccups mar online show

By PETER GRIFFIN

The final performance of Neil Finn's five night stand at the St James Theatre in Auckland was webcast across the world last Friday, but technical glitches upset some local fans watching the concert online.

While it is not yet known how many people logged on to watch the three hour show, the star-studded gig was heavily promoted in the UK on the music website nme.com as well as on Neil Finn's own site nilfun.com and Australian music site, channelv.com.au.

The webcast ran smoothly for European viewers logged on in off-peak conditions, but when the Herald logged on choosing the 300Kbps (kilobits per second) download, the video feed was patchy.

And concert viewers accessing the web on a slower, 56Kbps dial up modem had poor sound quality in the second half.

Webcast organisers said the video stream was sent to servers in the UK rather than Australia which may have caused a lag in video feed to some Australasian users, taking a toll on picture and sound quality.

When the Herald, using a high-bandwidth cable connection, watched the encores at 10.45 pm, the "live" picture was more a series of freeze frames than fast moving video.

Fergus Milner, technical director at Internet Pictures New Zealand, the company that oversaw the webcast, said the technical glitches could be put down to a number of things and that in future he would look to provide a 128Kbps connection as well for those using ADSL services.

"We're aware that the audio dropped into slow motion in the second half of the show for about 20 minutes," he said.

But he said many had received a glitch-free video feed, and a replay of the concert to the European market 12 hours later ran without problems.

Links


DVNZ

NME

Channel V

Nilfun