HIVE brings Earth Experience to life
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“We are introducing a new technological era into the industry with the BeeBlade series, and when TDC in Australia contacted HIVE for the BBC Earth Experience in Melbourne we could not have been any more excited,” recalls Mark Calvert, co-founder at HIVE. “The natural world, preserving it and the beautiful documentaries of David Attenborough have inspired the entire HIVE team for many years.”
Produced in collaboration with Moon Eye Productions, Live Nation and BBC Studios, the BBC Earth Experience consists of a multi-room digital art experience that guides visitors through Earth's diverse ecosystems across seven continents. Visitors embark on a 360-degree audio-visual adventure, taking them deep into the heart of our planet's most spectacular landscapes. The experience is played out across dynamic multi-angle screens, showcasing both new and existing footage from the Seven Worlds, One Planet series.
What sets Melbourne’s BBC Earth Experience apart is the playback technology used for this installation. Australian video technology and production supplier, TDC, harnessed an innovative and cost-effective HIVE media server solution to power the entire project.
Launched earlier this year, BeeBlade is a compact media engine that seamlessly integrates with video projectors and display technology through Intel's Smart Display Module (SDM) slot, thus eliminating the need for extensive cabling and extensive power consumption.
The Melbourne exhibit is equipped with 70 Panasonic projectors, with 55 creating the main immersive space, 49 of which are powered by BeeBlade. The remaining six utilise HIVE’s BeeBox chassis, to power the remaining projectors that lack the SDM compatibility.
TDC’s managing director, Michael Hassett expressed his enthusiasm for the HIVE solution: "The BeeBlade and BeeBox don't just represent technological advancements; they are harbingers of a new, greener, and more efficient era in digital art installations. This transformative approach is not just a disruption in the media server space; it’s an evolutionary leap, saving time, money and the planet."
Panasonic echoed these sentiments on savings, as Tony Molloy, European sales manager at Panasonic Business Europe confirms: “In applications such as this, having a system where you can combine the projectors and media servers together in the same location saves enormous costs from an installation and commissioning perspective.”
“The BBC Earth Experience is the perfect environment for our range of BeeBlade products,” concludes Calvert. “They align perfectly with the environmental narrative, and most importantly they provide rock-solid reliable, easy-to-support playback to the production team, day in, day out.
“Our team are all immensely proud of the BBC Earth Experience, and I am extremely grateful for their ongoing support and dedication to our brighter vision to revolutionise video playback for the industry we love.”
