Audio Video News

On January 19, Film Scouts announced the Internet premiere of the legendary film Koyaanisqatsi, which will occur at 7 pm PST, Sunday, February 7, 1999. Originally released in 1983, the film was produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Godfrey Reggio, and it features a score by Philip Glass. The Web debut of Koyaanisqatsi is presented by Film Scouts in collaboration with the Internet Protocol Multicast Initiative (IPMI) as the centerpiece of the IP Multicast Summit, an event showcasing advancements in IP multicast technology.

"This is the perfect movie for the IP Multicast Summit," says Mayra Langdon Riesman, founder of Film Scouts LLC. "It harks back to the silent-film era in its lack of dialog, and yet it shows the power of the medium and how well it can be merged with the Internet as a broadcast vehicle. This is really the merging of two worlds, the Internet and the motion picture; just as sight and sound merged to give us motion pictures, we are now seeing the beginning of a new medium on a new frontier."

Philip Hoschka, of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), declares that "this will prove that IP multicast is a viable technology for TV-like content on the Internet. I worked with Film Scouts during the Cannes Film Festival on IP multicast, and their dedication to this technology is exemplary in the industry. They are truly pioneers."

Low-bandwidth Internet users able to receive audio and limited video; higher-bandwidth users will have the best video experience. The highest-bandwidth (300 Kbps and above) users must be connected to a multicast-enabled ISP to make full use of the transmission. The online screening is being supported by Broadcast.com, Stardust Forums, Hughes Network Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Real Networks, Sprint, UUNET, and Microsoft.