September 9th, 1999

[1:50 PM]
Longest Internet Streaming Event Brought To You Through QuickTime TV
A team climbing Eiger Nordwand, a mountain in Switzerland, is broadcasting their effort live on the Internet through QuickTime TV. Touting it as the longest Internet Streaming event yet, the team chose QuickTime TV to broadcast effort throughout Thursday (today) and Friday. According to the project organizers:

Thanks to QuickTime TV the climbing of the Eiger can be watched live on the Internet

Today and tomorrow watching TV on the Internet gets dramatic. One of the longest Internet live streams takes place: The filming of the attempt to climb the Eiger, one of the scariest Mountains in the Swiss alps. You can watch it live on the Internet with Apple's QuickTime 4.

The Eiger Nordwand in Switzerland is the most famous mountain of the alps. In the history of its climbing many spectacular attempts and dramatic rescues took place. Climbers from all countries of the earth tried it, and many lost their lives. Swiss television will accompany the mounting attempt of two teams today, with cameras and microphones mounted on the helmets of the mountain climbers. Additionally cameras at 12 locations in the mountain itself were installed by helicopters. The planning of the TV event took up far over one year in preparation time. The live coverage on TV and Internet is planned to last 36 hours.

For the high-tech on-line transfer via the Internet the specialists of Nomadic Switzerland installed the internet server at the base camp, right in the center of the Swiss TV facilities. Thus they have the possibility to access the pictures of the cameras at random and independently. The broadcast signal is converted directly on the MacOS X server into Live Streams (QuickTime TV) and made available to the Internet via ISDN. So everything is prepared for the live show to be watched all over the world on any regular Mac or PC!

The stream starts today Thursday, September 9, 1999 at 9 AM CET.

You can find more information on the event and the mountain at the project's web site. HEad there now and start watching!

Eiger Live