Hive Media Control System
Hive is a system designed to power complex and creative visuals, without relying on large, power-hungry servers, or software that’s overloaded with unnecessary features. From exhibitions and galleries to ceremonies, live shows, theme parks, and high impact advertising, Hive powers experiences that inspire, connect, and captivate audiences.
The ingenuity of Hive is that everything works around your project, with the ability to scale from small, intimate experiences, to large, long-term installations that work day after day.
Hive products are designed to work together like a bee colony, where the ‘queen bee’ (any device you assign) controls a network of ‘worker bees’ to power complex visuals. It’s why it’s called Hive, because it’s a naturally intelligent and interconnected system.
Hive Servers
The basic unit of a Hive system is the Beeblade. The Hive Beeblade is a powerful media playback and processing system in an Intel SDM format. The small size and SDM format allow it to be mounted inside the display device or projector that it is driving saving huge costs on complex signal distribution and removing the requirement for a central media server rack room.
Beeblade
The magic of the Beeblade is that by removing the functionality that is not needed in 90% of applications and by harnessing the networking capabilities in a similar way to how communication in a real bee colony works, a Beeblade network becomes infinitely scalable, but effortlessly efficient because you only use exactly what you need – there are no wasted outputs.
Beeblades come in 3 levels for different playback needs:
- Minima with HD playback for less demanding applications
- Osmia with 4K media playback and output
- Pluto for large scale mapping with 8K media playback and 4K output
Beebox
For devices that don’t have an Intel SDM slot, the Beeblade can be mounted in a standalone box (Beebox)
The Beebox is a small enclosure that holds a single Beeblade, turning it into a portable media server that can be placed wherever you need it.
Beehive
For larger projects, there is the Beehive a 5U rackmount enclosure that can hold any combination of up to 16 Beeblades — each with their own network connection — allowing you to scale to complex productions of any size.
Hive Software
Hive’s software is designed intelligently, so it can be operated from any modern web browser, on any device. You can even build a custom user interface for your client’s laptop, phone or tablet.
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- Control from your phone, tablet or laptop via the web browser interface
- Designed from the ground up by experienced AV professionals to be simple to use & easy to operate
- Market leading lossless video codecs – H.264 & H.265 in addition to Avolites AiM & Notch LC
- Build your own live control pages, accessible through your web browser or controlled by MIDI
- Control the system from your lighting desk using ArtNet
- Newtek NDI input
- Rock-solid embedded Linux render engine
- USB Video input. HDMI or SDI via external adapters supporting the USB Video Class standard
- Ultimate flexibility with high resolution parameter control (up to 32 bit resolution)
- Synchronize to external clock sources such as SMPTE timecode via USB MTC or ArtNet Timecode
- Uncompressed 16 / 24 / 32 bit audio playback of videos with embedded audio
- Easily controlled by 3rd party systems via comprehensive UDP command set
- Advanced play list with follow-on commands
- Synchronize multiple players to create huge installations