A Papal Mass on Sacred Ground - PLSN.com
A Papal Mass on Sacred Ground - PLSN.com
A Papal Mass on Sacred Ground - PLSN.com
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PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS<br />
BUYERS GUIDE<br />
Media<br />
Servers<br />
By RichardCadena<br />
Pandora’s Box Media Server from Coolux<br />
One of the best indicati<strong>on</strong>s of the growth<br />
of a new technology is to <strong>com</strong>pare the<br />
latest Buyer’s Guide with a previous<br />
year’s versi<strong>on</strong> of the same subject. If it grows<br />
horiz<strong>on</strong>tally (features) and vertically (listings)<br />
then that’s a good indicati<strong>on</strong> that the category<br />
grandMA Video screenshot<br />
is thriving. This year’s Buyer’s Guide <strong>on</strong> media<br />
servers is as wide and tall as ever.<br />
A more subtle way of gauging the technology<br />
is to keep an eye <strong>on</strong> which columns<br />
go away after they’ve appeared at least <strong>on</strong>ce.<br />
You see, as a new technology develops, particularly<br />
software-based products, new features<br />
are added and the number of columns<br />
in our buyer’s guide grows. But as all of the<br />
<strong>com</strong>petitors catch up, then the answers in the<br />
columns start looking the same — there’s less<br />
<strong>com</strong>petitive advantage, at least <strong>on</strong> paper.<br />
Fewer Distincti<strong>on</strong>s<br />
BG<br />
Take, for example, the column that used to<br />
say “graphics mapping to geometric objects.”<br />
In the early days of media servers, this was a<br />
feature that some offered while others didn’t.<br />
Today, virtually all of the media servers offer<br />
some form of graphics mapping <strong>on</strong>to objects.<br />
The same goes for keyst<strong>on</strong>e correcti<strong>on</strong>. The column<br />
that used to say “number of file locati<strong>on</strong>s”<br />
has g<strong>on</strong>e away because <strong>com</strong>puters have gotten<br />
so powerful and memory so cheap that it’s not<br />
much of an issue any more. So we have eliminated<br />
some columns as the <strong>com</strong>petiti<strong>on</strong> catches<br />
up and <strong>com</strong>petitive advantages diminish.<br />
On the other hand, the number of listings has<br />
grown. Today, there are 18 individual product<br />
listings from 10 different manufacturers, with<br />
prices ranging from $899 to $42,999.<br />
With the media server Buyer’s Guide growing<br />
in width and height, it’s not easy keeping up<br />
with the new offerings. But a few minutes spent<br />
perusing the next couple of pages will keep you<br />
up to date until the next trade show.<br />
Ax<strong>on</strong> Media Server from High End Systems<br />
Hippotizer V3 HD from Green Hippo<br />
Maxedia Pro from Martin Professi<strong>on</strong>al<br />
Mbox Extreme v3 from PRG<br />
ArKaos VJ DMX screenshot