Digital Rapids StreamZ media encoding servers have been chosen by Streaming Tank to stream live web broadcasts of concerts by legendary rock band The Who. Live webcasts will be streamed from each stop on the tour, currently winding its way through Europe.

Each broadcast begins with In the Attic, an Internet TV music show broadcast live from Oceanic, the recording studio owned by The Who guitarist Pete Townshend. A combination of live and archived footage of The Who follows, including live performance of a minimum of three songs streamed directly from the concert location. Selected tour dates, including the July 2 concert in Hyde Park, will also feature live webcasts of the performances in their entirety. Proceeds from the very small viewing fees go to Double O, Townshend's charity which supports a wide range of worthwhile causes. More information and a schedule of web broadcasts are available at www.thewholive.tv.

All encoding and streaming for the broadcasts is being performed with StreamZ.

Streaming Tank, specialists in advanced video streaming, are providing management and logistics for the online aspects of the tour. Part of The Creative Tank Group, Streaming Tank provides creation, design and delivery of high-quality video content with comprehensive live reporting and tracking.

"This is a world first, as no band has ever provided live webcasts spanning an entire tour on the Internet," said Chris Dabbs, Group Account Director at Streaming Tank. "With all of the attention focused on these events, and the large anticipated audiences, we require an exceptionally reliable and stable platform for the encoding. The remote technical team that we're using for the events was familiar with the Digital Rapids products, and knew that they would meet our demanding needs. We've been very pleased with how well the systems are performing."

StreamZ encoding solutions combine powerful hardware for video and audio capture and pre-processing with the intuitive Stream software, delivering real-time, multi-format media encoding, transcoding and streaming. The advanced, hardware-based video processing features - including motion adaptive de-interlacing, scaling, filtering, and 3D motion-adaptive noise reduction - enable optimum quality and the most efficient use of bandwidth in the compressed result.

"We're very pleased to be part of this ground-breaking tour coverage," said Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids Corporation. "These webcasts allow The Who fans to view the performances from anywhere in the world, and the benefits to charity further exemplify the impact that streaming video can have. The high visibility and dynamic environments of a concert tour of this magnitude place heavy demands on the encoders in terms of quality, performance, ease of use and reliability, and as always StreamZ is up to the task."