ElectroMagik

The  System is an animatronic control system developed by AHF Animation Productions in 1998 for Carwardine Parks, used for controlling animatronics within Carwardine's properties, including the main theme park chain and its FEC chains Circus Playhouse & Food Emporium, Tex Critter's Pizza Jamboree and Major Magic's. The system consists of a combined decoder & A/V switcher, with a Blu-Ray player (formerly a D-VHS VCR) (two Blu-Ray players (formerly two D-VHS VCRs) on 3-Stage Rock-afire Explosion and New Rock-afire Explosion installations) connected to the ElectroMagik unit. The Blu-Ray discs contain the show video along with the audio (on the left and right audio channels) and inaudible signals (on the center audio channel). The signal channel is sent to the ElectroMagik unit which retrieves and decodes the signals.

The system succeeded the earlier ElectroMotion system from the late 1980s, which used Beta tapes.

Since 2017, a large number of Carwardine Parks and most Carwardine FEC locations have replaced their old ElectroMagik units with Weigl ProCommanders (primarily the X2 and VX), but many others still retain ElectroMagik units.

Trivia

 * D-VHS, which was introduced midway through ElectroMagik's development, was chosen as the original video format for ElectroMagik due to it's support of chapter selection and multiple audio channels (which helped Carwardine streamline playout - on Rock-afire and New Rock-afire shows, material played via four tape decks with ElectroMotion was consolidated to just two, with one VCR running the main show and special shows and the second VCR running the Show Selector Mixes and the backup show), along with being determined to be "more easier to transition to" and having better picture quality than DVD. This is also why many of the queue line TV setups began transitioning from using Betacam tapes to using D-VHS tapes to run the queue tapes.
 * On Rock-afire shows, the ElectroMagik equipment is hooked up to the greybox (or Blue Box). The data is carried to the greybox (or Blue Box) by way of a USB cable. As certain parts of the old computer were removed during the older ElectroMotion installations, such as the old playback board, data from the ElectroMagik equipment is routed directly to the character driver boards.
 * The D-VHS VCRs were originally JVC HM-DSR100 units that were factory-modified to not rely on a satellite television connection, but Carwardine later upgraded to HM-DH30000Us later on to allow better usage of the HDTV standard.