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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

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