Hog 2 vs. Hog 3

It all depends on what you want to do. If you are already comfortable with the hog2 syntax and are doing shows that do not have a ton of LEDs and media servers the by all means stay with hog2.
I personally feel that hog2 is a very stable and capable platform for 90% of small to medium gigs.
I have tried several times to use the hog3 (IPC and hog3pc) on several jobs and always have come back to the hog2. I have had numerous bugs, crashes, network issues, and other annoyances with the 3 that kept me from doing my job properly and efficiently. I'm sure others may have differing opinions, but like they say "If it ain't broke...."
HES spends lots of time, energy and resources in improving the hog 3 system, and it has improved. But I think it has quite a way to go before I'll consider it again.
Sure the fixture builder is nice, as are a lot of the new features, but if reliability is an important concern, stay with what you know.

I don't agree.. it's been probably to years since i've had the H3 platform crash to a unrecovereable state during playback for me.. and the latest 6 months have had a huge impact in stability during programming.. I would say it's very stable theese days.. in fact since the H3 has the ability to recover from a partial crash(the desktop) and saves every keypress you make, i've never lost programming, or had any showstoppers with the H3, and i use the H3,roadhog,Hpc on a daily base, On the other hand, i've had many cases over the years where a Hog2, or hog2pc has just crashed on me, and when that happens, i often loose programming, and you need to powercycle the desk, and that is not funny during a show..

I'm not saying the H3 has always been stable, as we all know that's not true, hovewer everybody that have had bad experience over the years should definatelly think about taking a revisit, as the desk is not compareable to what it was 3 years ago.. -I've also had to swop the H3 out for a H2 in the early days as i didn't trust it..Personally i will argue pretty hard that very many of the problems people have been seeing over the two years is caoused by the operator not knowing the desk well enough, and have been using some funky commands that an experienced operator would not do. i'm not justifying the bugs, but i just have'nt got any other explanation as to why I don't run into the bugs/problems that my colleagues have seen. Happily most of theese bugs are gone now!

-Give the 3 a chanse, it really deserves it! it's not possible to not like the new functionality.. "unfortunately" there are a couple of things the H3 can't do that the H2 can, but the list is getting shorter, for me there are 3 main things that i miss.. Mark cue, fade pcbe, and test dmx. -Mark cue is just aroud the corner, and i'm having a feeling atleast fade pcbe is also on the horizon, since there's a desent amount of request for it..





-I will use this space and time to bump my request for test dmx, it's been quite a while i've seen someone write about it here, but man, that is so frustrating to not have from time to time..how many times haven't i had to "search" for a dimmer channel on a gig, without wanting to patch it first..grgrgr..;)

mschof,

You might want to read this document to learn more about how Hog 3 is better than Hog 2:
www.highend.com/pdfs/products/wholehog3pc/Hog3better.pdf