A Hippotizer Media Server system from Green Hippo, an ACT Entertainment brand, provided the visual engine for WrestleMania 42, the flagship annual event of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), held at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, across two nights attended by more than 106,000 fans. The system handled content across an extensive network of LED canvases, including the ring posts and skirt, trusses, barricade, over-ring trons, ramp, entranceway and stadium ribbon boards.
The Hippotizer network comprised eight Hippotizer MX Series Kasai Media Servers alongside six Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers. The Kasai MX servers drove a range of high-resolution canvases, including the 7,272 x 864-pixel over-ring trons, the 6,080 x 128-pixel stadium VOMs and the 13,856 x 448-pixel lower ribbon boards, while the Boreal+ MK2 servers supported the entranceway, ramp, barricade and other LED elements throughout the venue. All Hippotizer Media Servers were controlled via a grandMA3 console.
The installation was delivered by Upstaging with WWE media server programmer Chris Keene and project manager Tony Thompson leading the technical team.
Chris Keene said: “For the most part, we take over the screens with custom pre-produced graphics during entrances, and then the TV truck takes over some screens during matches to show live camera feeds. Video is an integral element in our world. It is constantly featured.”
He added: “As always at WrestleMania, one of the biggest challenges we face is ingesting all of the content and syncing it across the network. We are either downloading, encoding or syncing constantly for days. The Hippotizers are tanks and keep going.”
Tony Thompson said: “We have been using them for over a year. There were no demos – we just bought them. The performance you get out of such a small package with the Hippotizer Kasai MX Series Media Server is impressive.”
Bob Bonniol, chief innovation officer at ACT Entertainment, added: “We’re thrilled to hear about the success of the Hippotizer system at WrestleMania. This reflects the ‘Tier ZERO’ philosophy and performance standard at Green Hippo and tvONE, which we use to describe the most critical, no-fail environments that our technology is designed for. Tier ZERO equals mission-critical, one-shot environments where failure is not an option.”
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