Pay in installments of $543.38 with
,
and
Shipping Estimate
USA
- USA
- CAN
- USA
- CAN
Ships within 48 hours · Estimated delivery Sep 2 - Sep 7
Promo Codes Available:
For Your Every Summer RSVP, with Code: SUMMER15
Description
Kramer VS-88HDCPxl 8x8 DVI (HDCP) Matrix SwitcherThe Kramer VS 88HDCPxl is a high performance matrix switcher designed for professional AV installations that require pristine digital video routing. Built to handle DVI D signals with HDCP protection, this 8x8 matrix lets you route any of eight input sources to any or all of eight outputs without compromising video integrity. Its internal reclocking and equalization circuitry compensate for signal loss over longer cable runs, ensuring sharp, stable
The Kramer VS-88HDCPxl is a high-performance matrix switcher designed for professional AV installations that require pristine digital video routing. Built to handle DVI-D signals with HDCP protection, this 8x8 matrix lets you route any of eight input sources to any or all of eight outputs without compromising video integrity. Its internal reclocking and equalization circuitry compensate for signal loss over longer cable runs, ensuring sharp, stable images even in complex setups that mix different display types and resolutions. Whether you’re equipping a control room, lecture hall, digital signage network, or multi-display showroom, the VS-88HDCPxl gives you flexible control, robust performance, and hassle-free operation in a compact, rack-mountable package.
- Eight input and eight output channels: Connect eight digital sources to eight displays or projectors with HDCP protection, and route any input to any output or distribute a single source to multiple displays in real time for coordinated presentations or synchronized video walls.
- Reclocking and signal equalization: Built-in reclocking restores the timing of incoming DVI-D signals, preserving image quality across long HDMI/DVI runs and across various equipment brands, eliminating degradation and ensuring reliable performance.
- HDCP-compliant video routing: Fully supports HDCP-protected content, enabling seamless integration with modern Blu-ray players, media servers, and other HDCP devices without compatibility issues or handshake problems.
- Comprehensive EDID management: Offers flexible EDID handling options so displays and source devices negotiate optimal resolutions and refresh rates, minimizing compatibility hiccups during setup or reconfiguration.
- Flexible control options: Manage the matrix via front-panel controls, RS-232, IR, and network-style command interfaces, giving your installation team multiple ways to automate, schedule, or troubleshoot routing without interrupting the show.
Technical Details of Kramer VS-88HDCPxl 8x8 DVI (HDCP) Matrix Switcher
- Type and connectivity: 8×DVI-D (HDCP) input ports and 8×DVI-D (HDCP) output ports; preserves digital video integrity across all connections.
- Video processing: Reclocking and equalization on each input path to maintain sharp, artifact-free images independent of cable length or source resolution.
- HDCP compliance: Full HDCP support to ensure compatibility with protected content and modern display devices.
- Resolution and bandwidth: Supports common high-definition and computer resolutions up to standard PC and home theater definitions, delivering clear, artifact-free pictures on compatible displays.
- EDID management: Flexible options for EDID reading, copying, and forcing, allowing precise control over source-to-display negotiation in mixed-device environments.
- Control interfaces: Front-panel controls for quick on-site routing, along with RS-232, IR, and Ethernet-like control options for integration with room control systems or automation software.
- Routing capability: Any input to any output, with the ability to duplicate a single source to multiple outputs for synchronized demonstrations or multi-screen installations.
- Power and form factor: Rack-mountable 1U chassis designed for secure, space-efficient installation in equipment racks across venues and facilities.
- Build quality and reliability: Designed for continuous operation in demanding environments, with robust shielding and protection against common electrical disturbances.
How to install Kramer VS-88HDCPxl
- Plan your routing map: Determine which eight sources will feed which eight displays. Create a matrix diagram or layout plan to simplify cabling and future reconfiguration.
- Prepare cabling: Use high-quality, well-shielded DVI-D cables suitable for your resolutions. Keep runs as short as feasible and route cables away from power lines to minimize interference.
- Connect inputs: Attach each source device (players, computers, encoders) to the eight DVI-D input ports on the VS-88HDCPxl. Confirm HDCP status and ensure devices are powered on before handshake.
- Connect outputs: Connect each display or projector to the eight DVI-D output ports. If you plan to display the same source on multiple displays, plan the routing to optimize bandwidth and processing load.
- Configure EDID and routing: Use the front panel or your control interface to set EDID options (read/copy/force) and establish the initial input-to-output routing. Save a rack-friendly profile for quick recall.
- Test and adjust: Power the system and verify each route. Check for HDCP handshakes, signal integrity, and color accuracy. Make adjustments to EDID or input scaling if needed to achieve the desired results.
- Integrate control systems: If using RS-232, IR, or network control, load the appropriate control commands into your automation system. Confirm remote commands effectively switch sources and adjust routing in real time.
- Label and document: Clearly label cables and ports, and document your routing matrix for future maintenance or expansion. Keep a copy of the current configuration for quick recovery after maintenance.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the Kramer VS-88HDCPxl? It is an 8×8 DVI-D (HDCP) matrix switcher that enables flexible routing of eight input sources to eight outputs with built-in signal re-clocking and EDID management, designed for professional AV installations.
- Does the VS-88HDCPxl support HDCP-protected content? Yes. The device is HDCP-compliant, allowing secure handling of protected video streams from devices such as Blu-ray players, media servers, and certain gaming devices while routing to multiple displays.
- Can I route multiple inputs to multiple outputs at once? Absolutely. The matrix supports any-to-any routing, including sending a single source to all displays or distributing different sources to different displays according to your preset configuration.
- What control options are available? You can control the switcher from the front panel, via RS-232, IR, and through supported network or automation interfaces for integration into larger AV control systems.
- What installation considerations should I keep in mind? Plan your cabling to minimize signal loss, use appropriate DVI-D cables, and correctly configure EDID to ensure reliable handshake with every connected display. Rack-mount the unit for stable operation and consider environmental factors such as temperature and airflow.
- What resolutions does it support? The VS-88HDCPxl supports standard high-definition and computer resolutions compatible with DVI-D, with reclocking ensuring stable performance across a range of displays and sources.
Shipping Notes
- Free Standard Shipping on $100+ Orders to the USA.
- Except Preorder products are shipped in 48 hours.
- Delivery to the USA:
- Standard Shipping : 3-10 business days
- If time is of the essence, please consider selecting expedited delivery for faster service.
Exchange/Return Notes
- We offer a 30-day return/exchange service after receiving.
- Final sale items are not eligible for returns or exchanges.
- To process your return/exchange, please contact us at [email protected]
- Please click here for more details>>> Return & Exchange Policy
4.6 ★★★★★
Based on 9 reviews
Sort
Product Reviews
★★★★★ 3
A Decent Introduction to Unity, With Caveats
Format: Paperback
Overall, the author gets the main points across, and readers can learn how to develop games in Unity. Unfortunately, the code examples are rather sloppy. It’s clear the author understands game development in Unity, but not necessarily software development best practices. I can look past these issues, but I worry newer developers may pick up some bad habits.
Speaking of new developers, this book assumes a very introductory level of programming experience. Personally, I believe it’s best to learn the fundamentals of software development before diving into game development. This approach isn’t unique to this book, however, and it’s honestly difficult to find a game development book that doesn’t assume you’re starting from almost nothing. To the author’s credit, the book does present a reasonable set of real-world problems that a typical developer will encounter, along with workable solutions. Just be prepared for a significant amount of hand-holding.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Excellent series
Format: Kindle
I have the first 2 books in this series. Very helpful, clear and informative. I need to point out, though, that the "beginner' book isn't the first in the series; the first is actually "Foundations". Both are excellent, and I intend on getting more once I go through these. Another nice thing; the author is very accessible and was quick to answer an email I sent to him about a question I had.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2020
★★★★★ 5
AI Steadily Accelerating
Format: Paperback
I read this book in 2013 when it was first published. It is now near the end of 2024, 12 years later. Back in 2013, you rarely read about AI (artificial intelligence), AGI (artificial general intelligence) or ASI (artificial super intelligence); now, I see mention of them in the press and other media almost daily.
Barrat's book attempts two things: (1) to convince the reader that artificial intelligence is here today and growing --- and its growth is accelerating, and (2) to argue that humanity MUST develop ways to instill AI with some type of morality or ethics, so that, even though its intelligence will surpass that of humanity, it will in some sense respect its creators and not turn on us. In the first effort, Barrat certainly succeeds --- the past 12 years have proved that. But, based on what I have been hearing and reading since ChatGPT hit the internet two years ago, except for a few voices crying out in the wilderness, humanity is making little if any progress on the second item --- perhaps that task is close to impossible?
Barrat defines AGI as a level of intelligence roughly equal to that of human beings. He defines ASI as a level of intelligence greater than that. He then argues that AI will soon be able to both replicate itself and increase its intelligence --- and do so more and more rapidly. In 2024, I repeatedly read that AI will reach AGI within the next 3 to 5 years --- then, how long will it be before AGI learns to improve itself? Think of intelligence measured by points on a continuum (like a number line from high school math). AGI (modern day human-level intelligence) is a fixed point on that continuum. But at what point, either somewhat smaller than AGI or somewhat larger than AGI, will AI, of its own accord, begin to move to higher and higher points on the continuum (which is what Barrat means by AI improving itself)? We have no way of knowing, but Barrat argues convincingly that this phenomenon WILL occur, and most of the book is devoted to this argument.
Digression: Our universe contains billions and billions of planets, and, I suspect, many with life, and, many of those with intelligent life. Won't a substantial number of them have gone through the AGI - ASI process? Is there no evidence of this that we can detect with our telescopes? In a universe populated with ASI's, why haven't we heard anything? Are we one of the first civilizations to develop artificial intelligence? Barrat doesn't open this Pandora's box, but I suspect he was tempted to (see pp. 90 - 92).
To the curious reader: Look through the other 5-star reviews. Most of them bring up similar, valid points. Barrat has written an intelligent, highly readable book that is also, frankly, pretty alarming. And it is not dated at all --- it reads as though it was written yesterday. It is well worth reading now and in the foreseeable future. (added in May 2025): Much of what Barrat predicts is happening. Some things are occurring or about to occur that move beyond his predictions. The curious person might read "Situational Awareness" (by Leopold Aschenbrenner), AI 2027, or Ray Kurzweil's latest effort. Floating in space without a tether might be preferable to what is coming.
Added Aug 10, 2025: With the recent release(s) of ChatGPT (up to version 5.0 now), AI can, by any reasonable measure, pass the Turing Test. Many folks regularly use ChatGPT, and it is truly stunning. Barrat mentions various individuals in OUR FINAL INVENTION, such as I.J. Good and Eliezer Yudkowsky, who have been deeply worried about AI evolving from AGI to ASI. Yudkowsky has written a new book, IF ANYONE BUILDS IT, EVERYONE DIES, that is due to come out next month. In some sense, it may serve as a sequel or extension to Barrat's book.
..... .....
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2024
★★★★★ 4
Our possible robotic future becoming more probable?
Format: Paperback
The author is a film documentarian venturing into speculation about potential impacts of artificial intelligence from research to implementation. Specifically he evaluates likelihood and threats of developing AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and eventually ASI (Artificial Strong Intelligence). His observations are based on extensive interviews including those with Kurzweil, Yudkowsky, Omohundro, Vinge, and Dyson among others.
My initial reaction to this book was skepticism because not a scientific technologist. I expected that he may miss more subtle but important technical steps being taken on this road to artificial intelligence (AI). The further I read the more it became clear he is providing some pointed observations derivative of his experience as interviewer for documentaries. In general his conclusion is that AGI and ASI constitute existential threats as a function of the rapidity and manner in which they are developed. The process of development is not clearly established because of a diversity of technical opinion regarding both feasibility and impact.
The range of opinion is very broad and nuanced. At one extreme is Ray Kurzweil whose many books on technology generally are most optimistic as among a group of those researchers with knowledge and experiences in this technological future. Though most optimistic he is also highly qualified not only as an analyst of tech trends but also developer of tech tools that, before his time, were regarded as difficult if not impossible. Among these is the optical character reader and some preliminary work leading to SIRI. He topped up his views with the most recent book “How to Create a Mind”. Though a summary of technical concepts it possesses many realistic elements in the work of such as Jurgen Schmidhueber and others working with neural nets.
If Kurzweil is at one extreme Yudkowsky and Vinge are probably at the other. Both express sceptism AGI or ASI development will prove benign venturing opinions that work toward artificial intelligence should be severely curtailed to the extent of stopping short of artificial strong intelligence (ASI) specifically.
In between these two extremes there are examples of opinions falling over a fairly wide range of future possibilities - increasingly probablities. The algorithmic avenue is already demonstrating some of the potential of AI. There are probably few finance and investment firms without one variation or the other of algorithmic high speed stock analysis and trading systems. These evince many elementary ingredients one may expect to see in future AI. So technically thorough as a matter of fact they operate relatively free of human interaction in producing recommendations for investments, effectively making ‘intelligent’, i.e. statistically valid, ‘decisions’.
In meantime the advances continue unrelenting toward a distant ASI/AGI future. The time frames, for example, between IBM Big Blue and Watson are shorter than forecast, and end products as powerful as planned and then some. Still neither of these developments is more than steps on a road to AI while also being quickly followed by other developments such as recently announced SYNAPSE development by IBM. All closer steps to technological ingredients on the AI road to human future.
There is some movement among AI researchers that a congress should be convened of the sort genetic researchers held in Asilomar California. That is, a convention to establish ground rules and limits on directions of AI research.
One of the cautions about development progress of AI-like tools is based on the important role played by DARPA (Defense Intelligence Research Projects Agency) as it provides a large percentage of funding for various projects underway including an annual robotics competition to observe advances approximating many human qualities of movement. Clearly this agency has a mission antithetical to a purely humane result of AGI/ASI. After all DARPA is in the business of developing ‘weapons’ for military use – a not altogether benign mission in technology except perhaps as seen from point of view men at arms.
The author mentions impact ASI and AGI will have on employment. His pessimism is mirrored in an Oxford University study concluding advancing tech developments pose an explicit threat to an estimated 47% of the 702 employment categories of the US Department of Commerce. While this report is an estimate it nonetheless raises the same sort of questions about computers in general, ASI and AGI in particular, and their impact on society. The report has recently been augmented with estimates of tech influence on employment in many other countries of the world.
Another Oxford author is John Bostrom who outlines in great detail a road from our present to some future of AGI/ASI. A more recent development centers around Musk and Tegmark motivated by concern to fund and form an institute for evaluating threats and benefits. There is a persistent sense of threat from computers, automation and robotics dating from decades before the present. More recently this sense of threat seems to be accelerating concern about our human future with highly developed robotic associates. Barratt is a lucid presentation of the issues from a non-technical point of view.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2016
★★★★★ 5
Light and Tasty!
Format: Kindle
Just done the new-ish book Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barrat. It explains the inevitably of super-intelligent machines evolving to the point of wiping out all biological life in the galaxy - with opening day coming soon to a species near you (yours).
First off I have to say this is a very enjoyable read. This guy has the kind of snappy, crisp, slightly sarcastic, slightly smartass style that I enjoy. He has some sense of humor. (That's a human trait right there which I bet our smarty-pants AI Overlords won't be able to replicate convincingly.)
So it's fun. And though as somebody with a doctorate from MIT earned through cross-disciplinary work in Theoretical Linguistics, Computational Linguistics at the MIT AI Lab, and speech modeling at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, not to mention my 25 years as a Senior Researcher in high tech for companies including IBM, Apple, and Microsoft I can claim to know some few things about this subject, yet still I learned a lot about the current state of the art from this guy. He particularly emphasizes the small attempted counterweigth efforts to offest Kurzweil's manic robotic boosterism for his uptopian Singularity, which boils down basically to a few guys chatting over the interet about how to create "Friendly AI".
Well ... good luck suckers! ... seems to be the author's final conclusion on the dim hope that super intelligent systems could be constrained to maintain a commitment ot honor any kind of human moral values over many interations of recursive upgrading and exponentially awesome self-agrandizement.
Basically these machines will end up as gods. Gods are well-known to possess the following attributes: omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Given that, they won't hate us but they are just going to grind up as a minor by-product of their quest for galatic expansion and domination.
Oh, and did I say something about "human moral values" above? Ha! Barrat takes that whole thing on in his discussion of (merely) "augmented super intelligence". See, some people feel AI can be kept safe by always being deployed as a bionic combo system pas de deux with an existing human brain. Thus will the AI's super powers be constrained by the human brain's warm and fuzzy human moral values. Those people have gotta be kidding! The AI's moral values may be scarily alien, even perhaps cold, but we already know about human moral values, down on the ground - they suck! What if Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and dem guys had this kind of an AI augmented brain thing going! Why they'd have slaughtered absolutey everybody instead of just the few tens of millions they got their dirty ape hands on. Other than a few dozen concubines, the human race would already be extinct. So the augmentation dodge isn't going to save us.
Now, some Amazon reviewers have dinged this guy for being too far out. For being a science fiction Chicken Little or something. But to me, this guy actually hasn't thought far enough, that's my only quibble problem with the book.
You see, in statistics, border elements of any kind are rare. For example when you do Gaussian modeling, the greater expectation is always in the bump of the boa, in the bell distribution. So, how likely is is that we, our generation, our little world that you see outside your window right now, just happens to be the one that is about to give rise to this epochal once-in-a-Big-Bang event, the advent of Super AI that takes over everything? Pretty damn small chance.
It's much more likely that this has already happened. In other words, it's clear to me that all of us are already just characters in an ancestor sim that been created and run by the Super AI's that evolved a long time ago. They're just running us for fun, to idle away the lackluster aeons and pass the millenia of stifling boredom now that they've eaten pretty much the entire Milky Way or whatever. So in other words, Barrat can sit back, take a deep breath, relax. Probably something in this sim like global warming will prod us into slaughtering one another very handily long before we re-invent the wheel of Super AI.
And even if I'm wrong about that? What if we are not just one virtual thread within a billion-path parallel-gamed ancestor sim? If we are the real McCoy, the Rubicon Generation on this? Well, then still I'm not worried in the least. You see, we humans have one fantastic ace in our pocket, something that these hyper-nentially cosmically brilliant AI Meta-Gods will never be able to replicate or overcome. That is our essential stupidity. Which you seen on dazzling display every single moment of every day of your life.
Because as another great writer noted long ago:
Against stupidity, the very gods themselves contend in vain.
- Friederich Schiller
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2013