Digital Theatre announces new streaming service hosted by Claranet

Digital Theatre, the UK’s first website offering high definition downloadable theatre productions, today announced the launch of its streaming service. This streaming capability will complement its current downloadable catalogue of theatre productions on the website www.digitaltheatre.com which is hosted on dedicated infrastructure by Claranet.

Claranet’s robust, flexible and high capacity hosting environment delivers uptime with an end-to-end service level agreement (SLA). This enables Digital Theatre to provide customers with a high quality online experience when viewing and downloading performances, and helps the company make it easier for anyone, anywhere, to experience London’s finest theatre productions.

Co-founders Robert Delamere and Tom Shaw said:
Our new live streaming service is another great way to enjoy theatre online, users can now enjoy instant access to our theatre catalogue without having to download our theatre player. This of course places a greater demand on our site/system and it’s important that we have a service provider that can ultimately provide us and our customers with the best possible service.

Claranet has provided managed hosting services to Digital Theatre since the website (www.digitaltheatre.com) launched in October 2009 with support from its first five theatre partners, The Almeida Theatre, English Touring Theatre, The Royal Court, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Young Vic.  In its first 6 months Digital Theatre has been viewed by over 30,000 people in 107 countries.  Digital Theatre’s continuing success and growth highlights the critical need for a hosting platform that is reliable, scalable and flexible enough to handle rapid, large-scale changes in demand.

Claranet’s UK managing director, Michel Robert, commented:
We are thrilled to be working with such a pioneering company as Digital Theatre and excited about helping it to provide the new live streaming service. As more video content moves online we continue to experience strong demand for high capacity, high availability hosting and network infrastructure.

Our work with customers in these sectors helps us to advance our managed services to meet their changing requirements.

For more information please contact:

Katie Boulton, Amy Bunn
3 Monkeys Communications
Tel: 020 7009 3100
claranet@3-monkeys.co.uk

About Digital Theatre

Digital Theatre announced their first high definition downloadable theatre productions on 26 October 2009, available from their website www.digitaltheatre.com using their specially developed Theatre Player which is compatible with all major browsers and operating systems. 

With an investment of over £1 million and the support of Equity and BECTU, Digital Theatre and its first five creative partner theatres - the Almeida Theatre Company, English Touring Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Young Vic – will produce downloadable top quality theatre productions filmed in front of live audiences.

For a cost of £8.99, users can enjoy access to each production from www.digitaltheatre.com or via the individual partner theatre’s website.

Digital Theatre.com has been built with a variety of technologies to provide the user with the best platform for delivery.  The entire application is hosted in a secure and scalable environment with servers running the latest Windows and Adobe software. Adobe Rights Management ensures top level digital copyright protection. SSL site encryption provides high-level security guaranteeing the privacy of customer and payment information.  The use of new and emerging front-end technologies means we are able to provide the richest possible user experience with short development times.

www.digitaltheatre.com