Through the Wire

The Democrats delivered pixels to the people.

The party went unfiltered with its own video feed — live from the Denver convention — that it called “high-definition.” Indeed, on a small-ish screen it looked as sharp as the digital TV broadcasts from CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and others (but without the commercial breaks).

The live and on-demand Internet video included footage of Barack Obama accepting the Democrats' presidential nomination last week at Invesco Field at Mile High stadium, in “HD-quality” from the event's official site, DemConvention.com.

Level 3 Communications, the Democratic National Convention's contracted telecom provider, provided Internet content distribution and video network services to support TV broadcasters for the Aug. 25 to 28 event.

“It's rare that you have an online event of this magnitude that's also being broadcast on TV,” said Maria Farnon, vice president of product delivery for Level 3's content markets group.

The Internet video feed had about a three-minute delay behind TV broadcasts, because of the additional encoding required for the Move Networks player, according to Farnon. Video was then distributed to Internet users from about 30 Level 3 content-distribution hubs.

In addition, Comcast Media Center produced the Spanish-language programming feed that was distributed through DemConvention.com and Comcast Latino (comcast.terra.com).

Many other Web sites provided live feeds from the convention floor, including CNN.com, MSNBC.com, FoxNews.com and C-SPAN.org, but only the DNC's official site was claiming to distribute live, HD-quality video.

PaidContent.org founder and media-industry blogger Rafat Ali gushed over the DNC's online broadcast, pronouncing it “awesome.”

It “certainly shows how great HD video can look online, though there have been some doubts on how it could scale without overloading the underlying infrastructure of the Internet,” Ali wrote in a post last week.

The Wire agrees: The video looked marvelous compared with what we're used to seeing on the Internet.

Still, the definition of “online HD” is fairly loose and far below the pay TV industry's standards. Level 3 defines high-definition Internet video as encoded at 1 megabit per second or higher. For MPEG-2 video used by cable and broadcast networks, HD signals are typically encoded at 15 to 19 Mbps.

To get the big-screen HD smiles and waves — and, say, see every last wrinkle on Bill Clinton's face — a high-definition TV channel was still your best bet. But surely, the convention's fairly snazzy online video is a harbinger of change.

The stars came out in Denver for events by Lifetime and Starz at the Democratic National Convention.

Lifetime executives bounced around to several events, including the opening session of the Democratic Women's Caucus, titled “Women Making History, which the network hosted last Tuesday (Aug. 26).

“My grandmother voted, my mother voted and they instilled in me the importance of making your voice be heard. Now I am so excited my goddaughter aspires to be president, not the president's wife,” said guest Rosario Dawson (Sin City).

Other Hollywood guests at that session were Fran Drescher (now the executive director of her own Cancer Schmancer Foundation) and Eva Longoria of ABC's Desperate Housewives.

Second session attendees included a possible president's wife, Michelle Obama, who (per Lifetime) declared: “Women will make a difference in this campaign. We cannot and we will not take their votes for granted.”

Lifetime also co-hosted a late night Rock the Vote party at the Cowboy Lounge in the LoDo neighborhood that same night. Entertainment was provided by singer Ashanti and Broadway star Idina Menzel.

Starz attracted notables from Hollywood and Washington to its Green Room for film showings and discussion panels. Stopping by the big tent, according to the network, were Bennifer (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner), Josh Brolin, Charlize Theron, Darryl Hannah, Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, director Cameron Crowe, Spike Lee, Anderson Cooper and J.J. Abrams.

Politicos who stopped by included former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers, who moderated a panel; Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif); Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.); Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper; New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who told reporters he was headed back to the Big Easy Wednesday night, after the city entered Hurricane Gustav's “cone of probability”); Ethel Kennedy and family and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.).

Pennsylvania Cable Network, the statewide public-affairs channel, celebrated this summer after picking up a new affiliate. Not because it's such a big new distributor — precisely because it's a small one.

The Nauvoo, Pa., cable cooperative has 16 subscribers in a rural Tioga County valley. The town was originally a Mormon camp in a lumber-producing region — the name comes from Hebrew for “beautiful place.”

In January 2007, residents who watched coverage of the Pennsylvania State Farm Show on PCN in a neighboring community decided it should be on the Nauvoo system, which also carries 10 local broadcast outlets and EWTN.

Co-op members voted to buy the necessary receiving equipment to add the channel, and PCN joined the lineup this past spring.

To show their appreciation, PCN CEO Brian Lockman and other staff members threw a party for the Nauvoo residents in the town social hall. More than 30 people attended. No word on how that affected PCN's viewer count for the night.