The Hiperwall software development team had a busy and productive 2022 with an outstanding video wall software release, and we’re preparing amazing stuff for 2023. Each member of the team designed, built, integrated, or tested complex software components that form the Hiperwall distributed video wall software product. Each team member expanded their capabilities by learning new techniques and skills to do a great job making highly capable and reliable software.
The big version release of 2022 was Hiperwall video wall software version 8.0. This version includes new features strongly desired by our customers, including HiperZones, the new HiperSource Streamer+, a new component to drive the video wall called HiperView+, and an enhancement to make HiperCast connections easier and more powerful with HiperCast Pull. Each of these major new capabilities and all the smaller features that go along with them add value to the product and give our customers more power to show their content in the most productive way possible. Customers with maintenance agreements can upgrade to version 8 where most of these features are included with no extra charge. Our Premium customers automatically get the incredibly powerful HiperZones when the upgrade, which is yet another reason the Premium package is the best deal around.
HiperZones
The crown jewel of the Hiperwall version 8 release is HiperZones, which allows a customer to define virtual video walls on their physical video walls to make separate zones of control and responsibility that help maintain content integrity. Different users can be assigned to control each zone and they cannot interfere with content on other zones. This means a large LED video wall can be split into different zones monitoring different regions of the country, for example, or different business elements. Changes to content in each zone are isolated from the other zones, so critical content is never obscured by another user’s content.
HiperZones is very useful for customers with large video walls, especially seamless LED walls, but it is also perfect for customers with multiple video walls or satellite displays, so content from one does not impinge on any of the others. The technology behind HiperZones is impressive – when customers learn that zone boundaries do not have to be display boundaries but can be defined to be nearly anywhere, they are impressed. Hiperwall software’s ability to manage and display content keeps getting better and better, and HiperZones is a huge step above traditional video wall capabilities.
HiperView+
Until recently, Hiperwall systems have typically used one small form factor computer per display to provide scalable performance as the system grew. In high-end systems with multiple LED controllers, we use HiperView Quantum to drive several LED controllers per computer and synchronize each computer to get frame-by-frame accuracy on content playback. We recognized the need to drive multiple displays or LED controllers for smaller systems from a single PC, so we developed HiperView+. This software is based on the powerful HiperView Quantum technology that optimizes video performance on NVIDIA GPU-based display computers but applies it to smaller systems that do not need multiple display computer synchronization. HiperView+ provides top-notch performance with multiple display output and is compatible with NVIDIA Mosaic technology to layout the displays.
Streamer+
The original HiperSource Streamer software is powerful and easy to use but is based on a Windows technology infrastructure that has not kept up with 4K video performance. The development team reimagined the Streamer concept and created Streamer+ based on new API standards that glean significant performance from the same hardware and take advantage of newer GPU hardware. It also uses a new more secure and more capable interface to the HiperController to allow for future enhancements. This new Streamer+ turned out to be a huge benefit for our customers and integrators during the pandemic supply chain constraints, because it allowed more and better streams from a single source PC, thus reducing cost and required hardware.
HiperCast Pull
HiperCast is a powerful capability to securely share source content between Hiperwall systems across town or across the world, but it was tricky for sysadmins to configure because of port forwarding and more. The software team developed a pull-based solution where each HiperController connects to the HiperCast server and subscribes only to needed sources. This new approach makes configuration of each Hiperwall system trivial yet adds significant power over content choice. HiperCast Pull increases the available audience for HiperCast’s sharing capabilities.
What’s next?
The Hiperwall software development team has not slowed down since the release of version 8.0. We have been working towards an exciting and powerful new release that builds upon HiperZones and the other great version 8 features. Beyond that, 2023 will see even more terrific new features and products added to the Hiperwall video wall software and beyond. We hope everyone who reads this has a terrific 2023 and we look forward to shaping the future with you.
