New Networking Upgrades "Future-Proof" Famous U.K. Studio

Sohonet, the leader in secure high-bandwidth connectivity for the global entertainment industry, has recently completed a total upgrade in the fiber infrastructure at the famous Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England. The upgrade dramatically enhances Pinewood's networking and data-transfer capabilities across all of its facilities, enabling the studio to easily accommodate the "next generation" of content creation and digital workflow technologies.

Pinewood Studios, which has been a key member of Sohonet's global community since 2002, partnered with Sohonet to proactively plan and implement the upgrade in order to provide enhanced services to productions at Pinewood and to “future proof” itself in order to meet the increasing demands of new technology.

A range of enhanced services is now available around the studio lot including the following:

  • Dedicated Sohonet service to individual productions at speeds ranging from 100Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s and above, this can be enabled to any other Sohonet client anywhere in the world.
  • Live video transmission in both HD and SD between Pinewood and other Sohonet clients in central London.
  • Linking of the many production spaces spread over multiple locations on the studio lot, including 18 soundstages, 2 TV studios and 7 audio post production theatres, all at bandwidths of 1Gbit/s or greater.
"With the enhanced Sohonet services and network upgrades Pinewood now offers productions even greater advantages in terms of digital workflow process," said Nick Smith, Sales and Marketing Director of Pinewood Studios. "With these higher bandwidths, we can keep ahead of the accelerating demands of the global entertainment industry and ensure we continue to provide the best connected studio facilities in the world".

“Upgrading the services we provide in partnership with Pinewood has been the culmination of many months of work and is a major point of pride for us.” said Dave Scammell, CEO of Sohonet. “It was extremely gratifying to be able to further enhance our service to Pinewood and equip this iconic film studio with the means to meet the future head-on.”

The upgrades provide productions based at Pinewood with expanded capacity to all other members of the Sohonet global community, including Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Technicolor, HBO, The Mill, Moving Picture Company, and Framestore CFC, among many others. A similar upgrade is also underway for the existing Sohonet services provided at Shepperton Studios.