Hippotizer GrassHoppers Find New Home at Phlippo in Belgium

With a 50 year history in the industry, Phlippo has become one of the biggest competitors in the Benelux area for equipment hire and full production support. Phlippo provides both dry rental of all their equipment as well as full production support to everything from musical productions, TV shows, and dance events to touring productions, festivals, and corporate events.

Phlippo consists of two companies. A rental branch, Phlippo Rental, which deals with rental activities and Phlippo Productions, which works on all the production support. Offering a wide variety of equipment including moving lights and control desks (Clay Paky, Vari-Lite, Martin, Robe, High End Systems), video (2000sqm of LED screens), and sound (DiGiCo, L-Acoustics, Martin Audio), Phlippo has, after careful consideration, decided to add Hippotizer to their product range.

Having recently purchase two Hippotizer GrassHopper media servers, Phlippo choose to use these units immediately at the prestigious Jim TV Awards on May 26 - 27, 2014.

Jim TV is a high-profile Belgian Music channel that hosts an annual award show, known as "The Jimmies" which is broadcasted live on national TV.

Phlippo supplied all the video, light, and sound equipment for this event, including their two brand new Green Hippo Grasshoppers.

Kristof Nys, project manager at Phlippo, comments: "We haven't had a chance to attend Green Hippo's HippoSchool yet, since there was no time between the decision to purchase these units and the preparation for 'The Jimmies'. However, setup was very easy, and features such as, content syncing, VideoMapper, Zookeeper, and CITP support, made running the two machines a breeze."

The GrassHoppers were used to feed content to 4x 16mm LED screens and one 10mm screen. One machine was used as the "live" machine, while the other GrassHopper was running parallel as a backup, and the set-up was being controlled externally with an MA2 light desk.

Sarah Cox, technical sales manager and trainer at Green Hippo, says: "We are very excited that Phlippo Rental decided to take Hippotizer into their hire stock. We are working very closely with them and Hippotizer Benelux distributor, Interlight, to reach out to companies who before have struggled to find local rental possibilities of Hippotizer servers in Belgium."