The new Hippotizer family builds on that success, offering new functionality and increased power to meet the expectations of even the most demanding designer, and further stretching the possibilities of digital media. At the same time, the Hippotizer remains rugged, reliable and easy to use.
The new Hippotizer family consists of three members all built around the same Generation 2 technology. All three offer a fully hardware-accelerated graphics engine for super fast playback, full support for almost any file format that is compatible with Windows Media Player - including sound as well as video - a second monitor output offering full preview of all layers and effects, an advanced 3D engine, multiple control options and a host of new effects. The Hippotizer layers offer some of the most comprehensive control possibilities of any digital media server, and unlike many media servers each of the new Hippotizer models offers a master layer to give overall control of complex sequences of images or video clips.
Hippotizer Express is the first general purpose media server designed and priced for less demanding environments and applications. Housed in a portable micro-case, the Hippotizer Express provides four layers of PAL/NTSC video or still images, each with brightness, contrast, colour mixing and application of two variable effects chosen from a bank of 14. These layers are then fed to a master canvas allowing an additional two effects and full geometric adjustment. The Hippotizer Express incorporates a number of control options, including DMX, RS232, MIDI, touch screen, and a VJ/DJ interface and will be available in an optional 19" rack-mount.
Version 2 of the Hippotizer Stage offers eight layers of video or graphics with media resolution of up to 1024 x 768. Each layer allows control of brightness, contrast, colour mixing and two effects engines with an additional two on the master layer. The new Hippotizer Stage offers one live input as standard, but may be expanded to include up to sixteen. The Stage is housed in a 4U professional 19" rack case, and has the same control options as the Hippotizer Express.
The HD is the top of the new Hippotizer range, addressing the needs of those with the most demanding video applications. Building on the feature sets of the Hippotizer Express and new Hippotizer Stage, the Hippotizer HD uses fast RAID hard drives to give high-speed access to complex video sequences, supporting high resolution output of source material in all HD formats up to 1080i. Housed in a 4U professional 19" rack case, the HD can optionally support SDI input, Genlock in/out and studio-quality sound output.
"Digital media is the most rapidly changing field of entertainment technology at the moment," comments Scene Change's Nigel Sadler. "Users are constantly facing new challenges, exploring new ideas and making new demands on their equipment. The Hippotizer family is designed to meet those demands now and in the future."
(Lee Baldock)
