from what i can see there is an awful lot of plugins and patches to make this work…
you will not need all of this to make your setup work. while vvvv does contain a lot of possibilities to communicate with a vast amount of different hardware, you will most probably use only a fraction of them. also, unlike in other software, all the nodes in vvvv behave in the same way and are rather easy to figure out once you’ve gotten the hang of it.
Is this system an equivalent as a playback of video with real time manipulation of multiple video layers or more of a content generation device.
like karistouf said, vvvv is a toolkit that enables you to do both. frankly, if you’re already familiar with a certain set of vj/video playback software and happy with their functionality, it would appear redundant to rebuild those tools in vvvv - unless you crave for different effects (e.g. want to implement your own pixelshaders), different functions and interface paradigms etc. which you could then create yourself. it is also a great tool (and one of the few that can actually do that) to connect completely different devices to a new whole, which sounds like your thing.
vvvv can also be used for content creation, and is also especially suited for that, because of the speed and flexibility with which you can prototype (and afterwards finalize) your ideas. it is almost immediately graphic and, due to its realtime nature, has the closest creative feedback-loop i have ever encountered in any software.
Your thoughts please…
if you’re looking to substitute (or extend in functionality) parts of your impressive existing hardware rack, vvvv is a valuable option. i think that it would take some time, though, before you can do so productively. vvvv is easy to learn and very fast, but a smart solution to the challenge of unifying this amount of gear (in a way that suits you and your needs) takes some though and experience. if you were trying to tackle this straight away, i’d be afraid that you’d miss many of the basic and very productive features of vvvv and become frustrated when small things turn into big problems simply because of the scale of that project.
so yeah, i’d give it a try :) and if you’ve can spare some time to crawl before you walk, it’s well worth the effort.