HD Displays - realistically, how many can be driven by one machine and in what configurations?

We have a video wall project we are conceiving right now that involves 32 40" plus sized HD Displays… we are trying to build a sound reactive real time system that samples from webcams and integrates with some motion graphics effects.

Usually we use Flash for everything, but this may be out of Flash capabilities. We conceived with Flash this would require a Flash media/data server, and 32 Mac minis. IN this scenario, we are looking at nearly 60-70K in hardware costs alone, never mind the design and development efforts.

If we were to move to VVVV or Processing… what is realstically the hardware configuration needed to take real time video, add motion graphics and type, have it be reactive to a sound track and allow interplay from one screen to another (some images or videos may need to move from one screen to another)… All at 720P resolution.

Do we need 32 computers? Do we need a server? What kind of cameras should be used?

Moving to a node based authoring system from ActionScript 3 is daunting, but we don’t want to over extend our selves on Flash, obviously.

I need to know this before :

With those screens you want one video made by all the 32 screens, or each screen have a different video. ?

After that i gonna explain you the different PC Setup and perf you can get.

Digital Slaves \Or3