Livestreaming Basics
The quality of the streaming is experience is highly dependent on the speed of your internet connection. We recommend a minimum download speed of 20MBps for an optimal viewing experience.
When you get your confirmation email of your streaming ticket, you’ll find a couple ways to access the stream!
The most straightforward way is to click the Watch button that you see in your confirmation as in the image below.
If you click through the “View Tickets” link, you’ll see your full ticket info and be able to access the stream via the Watch Video button on the ticket, as seen in this next image.
Your ticket link will become active the day of the show, and the livestream will begin at house open, about 10 minutes before show time.
We recommend clicking through before the show is scheduled to begin, just to make sure the stream is working for you!
If you click through before your link is active on a MainStage Show, you’ll get a screen that looks a little something like this.
If you find yourself still on this screen after “house opens” hit the green “submit” button to resend your access code.
For Serials! your screen will probably look a little bit more like the image below. You’ll note that for Serials! we’ve got a live chat below the video window! Click on those three dotes to pop the chat out into a second window.
Once the stream goes live, you’ll be greeted by some pre-show welcome cards with information about the show! You’ll also hear the sounds of the theatre as the audience enters the space or some preshow music.
Before the show begins, you can learn more about Know Theatre and the team behind our work in our Season 24 Playbill.
At show time, the feed will automatically switch from preshow cards to the live camera.
Watching the Show
We livestream at full HD, at 1080p, but our video streaming provider automatically adjusts the resolution based on the speed of your connection.
You can adjust the resolution based on your own preferences by clicking on the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the video and selecting the desired resolution: higher is a crisper picture, lower may alleviate buffering issues or choppy playback.
You can make the video full screen by clicking the arrows in the bottom right corner.
We’re still working on making captions available for our true livestream. If available, you’ll see a “CC” button in the bottom bar of your player.
Viewing the Stream on your TV
Because there is no ability to pause the live stream to trouble shoot your home network set up, we recommend watching it directly in the browse on your internet enabled desktop, laptop, or mobile device.
If you’d like to watch the stream on your TV, here are a couple of options!
Hardwire
The most reliable way to watch the live stream on your TV is to connect your computer via an HDMI cable to an additional input on your TV. Depending on your particular components you may need some adapters! Unfortunately, it’s hard to offer step-by-step instructions as every computer and TV is a little different.
Casting
If you have a Chrome Cast device, or a TV and computer that supports another proprietary casting system, you can broadcast the show directly from your browser to the TV.
While this can be very effective for video on demand content, we don’t recommend it for true livestreams: because the casting process can introduce some additional lag into the transmission, you may miss some of the show due to buffering.
But what if there’s Additional Trouble?
If you’re experiencing significant buffering or playback issues, we recommend closing all other browser windows/tabs and any other open applications; this will reduce the amount of bandwidth and computing power being used by background processes, allowing your hardware, and you, to focus on the show!
We understand that watching theatre on the internet can get complicated.
If you’re unable to complete the viewing of the show due to technical difficulties, please contact us at boxoffice@knowtheatre.com, and we’ll transfer your tickets to a future performance.