Las Vegas, NV — Seven LED screens, a crowd of people who do this for a living, and a handful of programmers making their debut at the pro level. No timecode. No safety net. Just music, Hippotizer, and one place for programmers to prove their skills. That's the Battle of the Busk at LDI 2026 on Monday, December 7, where Green Hippo's Hippotizer Media Servers are powering all the video busking in this year's competition.
The teams are comprised of fresh talent, coached in the run-up by some of the finest people working in live entertainment, then turned loose on the media server made for exactly this kind of night: playing live, in the moment, to music that won't wait for anybody. The audience votes. Reputations get made.
Under the hood, two Hippotizer MEUSE MX Series Media Servers run in an A/B configuration, so the next team can load in and prepare while the current team performs, and the gaps between sets remain short. Between them, the servers juggle multiple inputs and live camera feeds for image magnification (IMAG) across all seven high-resolution LED screens. It's a stress test wearing a party hat.
LDI is also where Green Hippo's core message makes its first public appearance: Built for Performance. The premise is simple and a little stubborn. Green Hippo products are built by humans, for humans who perform. The gear should keep up, stay out of the way, and, on a good night, make the person at the controls look like a genius.
"Busking is about the most honest test there is," says Bob Bonniol, Chief Innovation Officer at ACT Entertainment. "No timecode, no safety net... just a person, the music and a room deciding in real time whether this is a night they'll remember. That's who we build for. I spent a lot of years at front of house wishing the video gear would keep up with me. ‘Built for Performance’ is the bar we're setting for 2027: the machine should feel like an instrument you play, not a science project you babysit. The performing is yours. Our job is to make it JOYFUL."
The Estuary Series, Green Hippo's new media controller and event switcher, is now shipping. Estuary gives operators simple, intuitive control of massive screen spaces and a whole lot of I/O. It speaks DMX and sACN, so the screens can be programmed from the same lighting console as the rest of the show. Fewer people, less complexity, and nobody translating between departments at two in the morning.
Hippotizer is also bringing a few big surprises to Las Vegas, built around a new kind of freedom in how you design and run your show. That's all we're saying for now —stay tuned!
Want to get your hands on the instrument before the expo opens? Green Hippo: Hippotizer Media Server Essentials is a full-day, hands-on LDI course taking place on Saturday, December 5, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Room W229. Designed for beginners and intermediate users, it covers setup, configuration, media management, visualization, encoding, output, and playback through practical exercises. No prior experience required, just curiosity. The course costs $669 and lunch is included. Details and registration are on LDI's website here.
The LDI 2026 expo runs December 6–8, 2026, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, West Hall, with the Green Hippo team at the ACT Entertainment booth (#1111) throughout. Come by with a question or a show challenge that you're trying to solve. Then catch the Battle of the Busk on Monday and vote for whoever makes the room lose its mind.