FIX8Group’s virtual events, broadcast and connectivity centre is fully operational and open for business.
Known as ‘The Hub’, it is located at FIX8Group’s facility in Greater Manchester, and has been designed to enable virtual and hybrid events, shows or presentations to be produced entirely under one roof. Inside, The Hub offers a studio, gallery and master control room, along with competent technical operators.
With all of the technology, systems, processes and talent in one building, The Hub facilitates on-site as well as full remote event production, including capacity for managing signals from broadcast locations worldwide.
FIX8Group soft-launched The Hub in late summer, enabling a number of virtual events to be successfully generated and managed while significant investments were made to install best-in-class technology. The team says that now The Hub has proven to be a robust and resilient platform to facilitate client requirements and it is fully open for business right now.
“Without live events, we all face a communications challenge, but our clients still need to deliver the excitement, immersion and experience needed to achieve their goals,” said FIX8Group’s Founder and Creative Director, Neil Trenell. “That’s why we built The Hub – a secure, dynamic, technologically advanced space that draws on FIX8Group’s decades of experience of delivering innovative, technical events for our clients.
“We’re thrilled that the Hub is in full operation, and we’re proud to have created a flexible space with event and technology architecture specified to enable creativity and communication.”
Within The Hub, the Studio space features a 12m by 4m, 2.6mm pixel density LED screen, offering more than 4K resolution and forming a flexible digital backdrop for events. This can achieve anything from a static background image to a fully immersive 3D scene where presenters can interact and communicate with the audience or remote contributors. There is a large stage in front of the screen, sound engineer consoles and a lighting rig, all of which are fully customisable to suit all client requirements. XR capabilities are embedded, meaning the solutions are ‘practically endless’.
Up in The Gallery, live feeds from the Studio or elsewhere in the world convene and are mixed and manipulated, to be combined with pre-recorded materials. A myriad of flexible workstations facilitates a fully customisable solution for whatever the project requires.
The epicentre of The Hub is the Master Control Room. All data traffic is fed through this facility, maximising the use of technology with a complex NDI network. Significant resilience is built into the facility with dual dedicated leased lines and infrastructure encompassing other fail-safe methods of reaching the internet, to provide confidence for streaming services.
“The Hub can handle multiple shows from different clients concurrently, giving us the capacity to adapt as things change,” Trenell continues. “We can scale and enhance the technology to deliver low latency and high bandwidth solutions depending on client needs. It can use a blend of platforms to deliver the content message with maximum impact. All critical components are geo-resilient, which means if there’s a problem with a connection or data centre, we can still deliver.
“We’ve worked hard to create this secure, robust and dynamic environment that provides the technical know-how FIX8Group is known for alongside our renowned flexible and customer-focused services.”
Since it first opened, The Hub has hosted a variety of clients, with projects ranging from a one-day Senior Leadership Conference for 18 personnel to a full-scale, complex project bringing in participants from multiple continents and various time zones, featuring more than 1,400 remote contributors and an audience in excess of 40,000.
