Phish fans were delivered a treat at the MGM Grand Garden Arena for the Phish Halloween 2018 run, the first showing of the now legendary hi-jinx that berthed Kasvot Växt. Many of us in attendance were really aware of just how advanced the production was for a typical Phish show, but for fans at home given the new option for a 4K live webcast via LivePhish.com, they were watching the show live in pristine quality that had never been delivered during a live concert.
Today an article was released on Streaming Media Magazine that details out some of the behind the scenes that went into delivering this particular run’s webcast, which had an added constraint that the band was hoping they could deliver the concert in 4K fidelity via live stream, something that had actually never been done before.
It wasn’t just the first 4K live stream for Phish. Believe it or not, it was the first 4K live stream of any major concert. What follows is the story of how it came together and how the band pulled it off with the help of its technology, creative, and business partners: video crew 201 Productions; software-as-a-service streaming platform MobileRider Networks, live streaming and download service Nugs.net, and content delivery network Akamai Technologies.
You’ll see that we get yet another example of how Curveball allowed the band to turn lemons in lemonade, as they were hoping to get the 4K rigs working in time for the festival. Essentially they got to dry-run the production setup instead, horrible pun intended.
And there’s some great nuggets in there about the Halloween show.
For the Halloween show, Kerr and his crew had the added challenge of working with Phish to make sure their equipment was invisible against the all-white stage. Kerr couldn’t talk about exactly what they had to do differently, but there was plenty of white-wrapped cable visible when I spoke to him backstage before the second night of the Vegas run.
Read the full article here which includes various quotes from Brad Serling, founder and mastermind behind Nugs.net.
