Hippotizer Performs at Birds Nest, Beijing

birdcage2.jpg birdcage1.jpgThe Bird's Nest Summer Concert was held at the Beijing National Stadium last month, the first major event at the venue since the 2008 Summer Olympics. The visual spectacular featured performers from China, Taiwan and Spain and a massive stage set including six 80 ft. columns wrapped in low-res LEDs, plus 19 large LED screens. Production companies Kingsmark Enterprises Ltd. of Hong Kong and ETG Staging Connections China installed the equipment, including eight Hippotizer HD media servers, routed through Barco Encore processors and controlled by two GrandMA full-size consoles.

“This was a very large production with many elements,” says Loren Barton, TMB Product Specialist. “Hippotizer's control interface allows for easy live blind programming which made last minute changes easy to implement, even during the show. Hippotizer's Zookeeper software enabled the programmers to view live previews from any location on the network. Hippo's active interface shows what the lighting console is sending, which makes programming much easier than working blind. With a large, eight server system like this, HippoNet really made a difference, allowing simultaneous synchronization of both media and playback – 100% frame locked!”

Sha Xiaolan of Beijing Olympics fame designed the show with Hippotizer media content provided by CCTV's special media group, headed by Xia Dao. Chris Lim of ETGSC was lead programmer for the show. “Amongst other features, the Hippotizer was specified for its extremely smooth playback characteristics,” says Chris. “We've had great success with the Hippotizer on other projects and with each application we discover more of its power and flexibility. Like a fine musical instrument, it just gets better the more you use it.”

Manufactured by Green Hippo Ltd. of the UK, Hippotizer media servers are continually specified for high-profile events worldwide and are recognized by many to be the industry standard for real-time creative content delivery and manipulation.

Find out more about Kingsmark at www.kingsmark.com. Staging Connections of the Asia Pacific region is at www.stagingconnections.com. Kupo Shanghai Co Ltd., http://www.kupo.com.cn, distributes Hippotizer in Mainland China for Green Hippo's exclusive distributor TMB. For more information about Hippotizer, visit the TMB Hippotizer web page at www.tmb.com/products/hippotizer. Learn more about other innovative and exciting products from TMB at www.tmb.com.