With a solid track record of over 20 years, PRG’s Mbox has consistently delivered creative solutions for powerful and flexible media manipulation and playback. Mbox is a fully featured media server, designed for live and cued events that require multi-layer composition with multiple input and output options. From music artists such as Miranda Lambert at the Stagecoach Festival at Coachella to films like Everything Everywhere All At Once to the hit musical Six on Broadway, from its inception, it’s been popular across markets, the company says. And because it’s a family of products, it offers a solution for every application — from the simplest to the most complex. The just launched V5 software is a universal application that runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs and leverages Apple’s Metal framework for better performance and efficiency. Mbox v5 is fully compatible with all current Apple Mac hardware and the latest macOS versions.
“Because the original developers all came from production, Mbox has always been ideal for our live entertainment markets. It’s an excellent media playback solution for applications where operators make live, real-time changes during a performance,” says Matt Corke, PRG’s Mbox product manager. “It also excels in pixel mapping. And users often prefer Mbox because they can build their own systems, using their own hardware. It’s less expensive and easy to use compared to other servers.”
Eric Wade of Texas-based Crossfade Design, a longtime Mbox fan, used it on Janet Jackson’s latest North American tour, Together Again, and plans to upgrade to V5 for Jackson’s new tour which starts in June. “One thing I love about working with Mbox is the support I get from Matt,” says Wade. “He is helping me refine the software for some segments in the show where we have dancers on stage using iPhones as live feed cameras. The shots are pretty awesome, so that’s a cool aspect where Mbox, with its many inputs, really makes an amazing visual impact. Matt has put a lot of emphasis on reducing latency for live IMAG so that your frame loss is significantly less.”
