Culture Club celebrated the 40th anniversary of the triple-platinum Colour by Numbers album with a unique one-off show, streamed live to their worldwide fan base on 25 February. “Revolutionary” distribution system, Caton Live Stage, streamed the California concert to cinemas and venues in digital, low-latency quality from Brazil to Hong Kong, Bangkok to Dublin.
Caton Live Stage came about thanks to Caton Technology’s AI-based intelligent routing, which enables “unprecedented” performance at a much lower cost than satellite and leased lines. A cloud architecture known as C3 uses smart traffic engineered algorithms to generate multiple routes with self-optimising capabilities between the source and destination, ensuring zero disruptions and quality impacts, even in markets with challenging connectivity. Caton Live Stage is the first-of-its-kind solution that moves connectivity beyond the legacy of fixed paths, and is said to revolutionise the business case for digital cinema, broadcast, and OTT.
For the One World, One Love concert held at the Fred Kavli Theater in Thousand Oaks, Monogram Media and Entertainment captured the entire show in 4K Ultra HD, including a short set by Berlin, before Culture Club performed for close to two hours. Caton Live Stage ensured seamless distribution of the show from the production output to every single venue around the world. Some markets, including Japan, received the feed live, while others, like Europe, had a time-delayed stream.
“We are really excited that the technology has finally arrived which allows us to live stream our music around the world, giving our fans a great experience – nearly as good as being there in person,” said Boy George, Culture Club’s iconic singer. “The show was truly amazing: enigmatic, beautiful, cinematic, sexy, 80s, 90s, now, then and everything!”
Caton Live Stage is built on the CatonNet Video Platform (CVP), which carries high-quality video over the public internet, with proven bitrates of up to 100Mb/s and availability from “six nines” (99.9999%) to 100%. Caton Live Stage is a complete end-to-end service that encodes at the event and provides guaranteed quality of service all the way to the projector at multiple cinemas and venues worldwide, delivering a cinematic experience that rivals the traditional theatre setting.
“With Caton Live Stage, we’re changing the paradigm for digital cinema, broadcast, and OTT,” said Gerald Wong, senior vice president at Caton Technology. “Our AI smart traffic technology and completely autonomous switching ensure users are guaranteed complete reliability and real theatrical quality over commodity business broadband. The system is easy for the cinema or venue to deploy, with the decoder configured remotely, making it a simple plug-and-play solution. This is a game-changer for the entertainment industry, providing venues with a new way to offer high-quality music and sports to audiences and operators with valuable sources of revenue.”
