Event streaming to stress-test new datacenter

Not much of a surprise, but nice to have some details: Cult of Mac cites a source close to Apple saying that the live stream of today's iPod event will be used to put some real-time load on Apple's new North Carolina data center. The facility isn't all the way operational quite yet, but it's apparently ready enough to play a major role in today's festivities.

The NC datacenter is five times the size of Apple's similar facility on the West Coast and is officially intended to support the iTunes music and app stores. Obviously there's a lot more horsepower needed for streaming content, so here's where you'll find it.

As noted last night, today's live stream is intended for Intel Mac OS X 10.6 users in Safari, iPhone/iPod touch users running iOS 3.1 or higher, and iPad users. Support for the HTTP Live Streaming methodology is included in the current version of the ffmpeg open source library, so in theory apps like Mplayer should be able to handle the stream; VLC may also work.