AOL already has begun making its news and entertainment offerings available via its aol.com Web portal to anyone with a Web browser, not just AOL subscribers.

Among the lures are the site's music section, which grants free access to concerts including Live 8, organized by British rocker Bob Geldof.

AOL executive Bill Wilson equates the company's effort to MTV's telecast of the Live Aid concert 20 years ago, when MTV was in its infancy. "There was a lot of new audience that came on as that event was telecast," Wilson said.

Wilson, a senior vice president and general manager of AOL programming, said AOL wanted Live 8 to similarly attract people to AOL as their music portal of choice.

But can AOL's technology handle the anticipated worldwide demand for Live 8 video online? The company predicts that hundreds of thousands of users will log on to view the concert live and that tens of millions more will be drawn to the site in ensuing weeks to see archived versions of individual performances.

AOL said it has streamed nearly 1,000 live events and so has experience with at least the process, if not the scale, required for Live 8. "There's been a lot of extra capacity added — hardware, software and people," said Jordan Kurzweil, vice president of AOL productions.

On the ground in Philadelphia, AOL will have about 25 people shooting video of the concert, interviewing artists and concertgoers, and operating technical equipment. A satellite truck will beam the video feeds to an AOL editing facility in California, which also will collect feeds from the other Live 8 sites.

The finished product will be sent to AOL headquarters in Virginia and streamed online from there. MTV, VH-1 and mtvU — MTV's college network — also will broadcast the concert.

But, Kurzweil said, online will provide the most choice and flexibility for viewers.

"It will be different in that it's commercial-free and uncut," he said. "And you'll be able to switch to other countries in the show."

The success of the online broadcast — and the reputation of the new AOL — could come down to how much server capacity AOL has added.

Peter Cook, a computer and information systems instructor at Temple University, said AOL should be able to avoid problems by having "mirror" sites to serve up the concert in different countries.