Internet Metronome: An Experimental Remote Jazz Jam Session with Uncompressed HDTV Transmission over Lightpaths

An experimental remote jazz jam session with uncompressed HDTV over the Internet was conducted on September 21st as a Grand Final event of the Aichi Exposition 2005. Professional jazz musicians located at the venue of Aichi Exposition and at SARA in Amsterdam have made the jazz jam session with new mechanisms called as “Internet Metronome” and “delay-control unit” using an international “lightpath.” This was the first music collaboration using a new methodology and, one of the challenging demonstrations to transport the uncompressed HDTV streams with timing control under the current software and hardware architectures. “Internet Metronome” and “delay-control unit” enabled to make a tempo using and controlling delay, and “lightpath” minimized the network jitter. Using these new mechanisms and technology, the musicians could play with new music collaboration environment over the Internet with long communication delay, and enjoyed remote jazz jam session at both ends. key words: Internet Metronome, delay control, lightpath, network collaboration, HDTV over Internet