Extreme multimedia

Summary form only given. Recent availability of production-quality switched gigabit and 10 gigabit networks on an international scale has facilitated the emergence of extreme multimedia devices and applications. Digital cinema at four times HDTV resolution (4096 /spl times/ 2160) can now be streamed from Japan 15,000 kilometers over CineGrid gigabit networks. 100-megapixel tiled displays can be managed as large landscapes of information fed by up to 20 gigabits/second of data from Amsterdam. A 3D point-to-point life-size teleconferencing with no glasses or tracking encumbrances is eerily natural. Stereo HDTV from underwater reefs in Taiwan or robots at play in Korea, and live HDTV sent from smoker vents two miles under the surface of the ocean triply illustrate the extended reach of multimedia today. To protect content from disruption or theft, new prototype technology showed switches in Ottawa, Amsterdam, and Chicago transmitting twelve 800 megabit/second multimedia streams to San Diego with 256-bit AES encryption, in real-time, without any knowledge by the application. This keynote presents multimedia pushed to demonstrated limits at the extreme September iGrid2005 workshop at which 49 networked demonstrations from 20 countries took advantage of 100 gigabits of networking into San Diego from around the world, displayed on huge screens in the just-opened Calit2 building at UCSD. Credits and references are amply provided.