UK - Paradigm AV is set to launch a new Simulation Displays division this month, at the ITEC Show in Cologne, Germany.

Paradigm AV has been producing simulation displays and components since the 1990s. "Steadily increasing demand has driven the launch of a separate division - and a consolidated show specialising in defence, training and simulation is the obvious launch-pad," says company founder and chairman, Greg Jeffreys. "The setting up of Simulation Displays Ltd to serve our many simulation and visualisation clients on an exclusive basis was a logical development.&q

UK - PLASA 2011 will switch to a paying registration site on Wednesday 11 May, giving visitors one last chance to avoid the £20 ticket price and register for free online.

The show is now over 85% sold - almost five months ahead of its four-day run at Earls Court from 11-14 September. Confidence that PLASA 2011 will be a busy event is confirmed by the increase in visitor registrations, with 8500 visitors representing a healthy 5% increase on the same period last year. This is matched by a 14% increase in the number of companies confirmed to take part.

PLASA 2011 event manager S

Denmark - dnp denmark has launched a simplified version of its Supernova Flex Screen. Available at about half the price of a Supernova Flex, the new screen targets the mid to high-end market for meeting and boardrooms. It will be marketed under the name dnp Supernova Flex Classic as it utilises a classic design with a dark grey drop above the screen, instead of being suspended by wires.

dnp global sales manager, S°ren Kræmmergaard, comments, "We wanted to create a retractable screen at a significantly lower price point, without compromising on image quality. The new screen d

UK - Christie has announced the largest and one of the most prestigious installations of Christie MicroTiles to date in EMEA, at the London Stock Exchange in Paternoster Square, London. The installation will be utilised in the Exchange's new Market Open Ceremony.

The installation of 508 Christie MicroTiles at the London Stock Exchange follows a recommendation for their use by CMS Consultant Jerry Collins and a subsequent tender won by long-standing Christie Partner, Focus 21 Visual Communications.

The new Market Open Ceremony provides companies joining London Stock Exchange markets

USA - Seattle's Experience Music Project (EMP) has installed Barco's C7 to provide a dramatic video display for its live music shows and entertainment acts.

Barco was selected to upgrade EMP's visualization platform with a curved, 60' x 33,' 7mm indoor LED display which spans the width of the innovative special event venue. The new display was unveiled at the recent debut of Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses exhibition, in which it showcased a candid retrospective of the grunge luminaries' musical history.

Despite containing more than six times the number of LED's as the pre

Norway / USA - projectiondesign has confirmed that it has successfully concluded negotiations on acquiring long-standing partner and distributor projectiondesign LLC, the exclusive distributor of projectiondesign products in North America since 2004.

"North America represents the largest single market for our world-class projection and display technologies and we are consistently impressed at the scale, innovation, and dynamic ways in which they are used by our partners," says executive vice president, Ă…smund O. Fodstad who was recently appointed by projectiondesign to driv

Austria - London-based motion graphics studio The Darkroom brought Bacardi's new Together worldwide brand campaign to life through light and sound in Vienna.

Bacardi's brief asked for experiences incorporating Cuban heritage and the iconic Bacardi Mojito drink as well as the Social Culture.

The Darkroom creatives Emma Wolf and Bruce Ferguson realised Bacardi's vision through an engaging mapping projection - the first public displays of the technology seen in Vienna, Austria.

Projected onto the Kursalon building in Vienna, the five minute public light show masterfully transf

UK - Helen Ward has rejoined Saville Audio Visual as North West area sales manager for conference and live events operations.

Ward joined the sales team at the company's Leeds office in 1987 and later transferred to the Saville Manchester centre and progressed to hire manager before leaving in 2004 for a spell outside the company.

She has returned to take up a newly created role as part of the company's drive to strengthen its national profile and comments, "I'm delighted to be back and looking forward to renewing acquaintances and making new ones. The conference and events sec

UK - Le Maitre have introduced a new range to their Prostage II brand of pyrotechnics. The "VS" - Virtually Smokeless range has the distinct advantage of a very low smoke output, greatly enhancing the resulting visual effect, says the company.

"We are absolutely delighted with the result" says Rick Wilson, sales director of Le Maitre. "The VS range is in line with our continuous strategy of introducing the best range of visually stunning pyrotechnics in the market. The drastically reduced smoke levels ensure that spectators get to see the effects at their very

UK - Saville Audio Visual has announced the appointment of Paul Riddell as North East operations supervisor at the Saville Gateshead conference production centre.

Durham-born Riddell has worked in the live events sector of the audio visual industry for 16years, starting as an AV technician at British Airways' conference centre and later working with WH Smith, the Currys/Dixons rebrand roadshow and with NCJ Media.

Speaking about his new role, he said, "I'm really happy to be working with Saville in the north east. It's a difficult time for the events industry but I'm looking for

UK - out post distribution, the exclusive UK distributor of Mediaport?s Punchlight automated cue light and timecode display system is now stocking the new Studio Display XXL.

Coming in at 1.72m long by 33cm wide, the XXL display is billed as the largest automated timecode display system in the world.

Aimed at large post production houses or anywhere that needs to display timecode from a long distance, the Studio Display XXL is compatible with all existing Punchlight hardware allowing automated display of MIDI timecode from Pro Tools LE & HD, Cubase, Nuendo, Logic Pro, Digital Perfor

UK / USA - PLASA will update its members on a significant 12 months when it meets for its AGM and Members Lunch in a couple of weeks' time in central London.

It's just a year since members of PLASA and ESTA voted to merge the two Associations, and in the intervening 12 months, PLASA has reinvented key elements of its operations introducing a new membership structure, a new Governance system and election process, granting the vote to Organizational and Individual members, and launching a complete new PLASA logo and identity.

Whilst the day will reflect on the achievements of the last

UK - PLASA has revealed that Ruth Rossington, a former editor of LSi magazine and now Executive Director EU and COO at PLASA, is to leave the association at the end of 2011. Ruth joined the organisation in 1988, working initially as assistant editor on LSi, and becoming editor in June 1997.At the start of 2004, she left LSi to become a Director of PLASA, working alongside the events, media, membership, skills and technical teams. In the last 18 months, she has led the operational side of PLASA's merger with ESTA, working closely with Lori Rubinstein in North America to steer the first p

UK - XL Video supplied 119 panels of Pixled F-30 LED screen - totalling 114sq.m of surface area - plus crew for DJ and music producer David Guetta's recent UK tour - his first carrying a full technical production.

The F-30 was specified by Guetta's show/visuals designer and vibe engineer Ben Brett, who has developed a special piece of control software - Pilot - which is used to run the screen visuals. For this tour, in addition to the screen content, Pilot was running a back wall of 60 x LED moving lights positioned upstage of the rear section of F-30 screen.

The back screen compris

Belgium - ArKaos has announced the release of GrandVJ 1.5, which includes major new features and enhancements.

GrandVJ is a real-time video mixer software allowing VJs to compose up to eight layers of video on the fly.

The new GrandVJ 1.5 brings video mixing to the next level with the addition of two major new features: Transitions and ArKaos Connect VST plus several other great enhancements, says the company.

With the addition of 37 transitions, it's "even more fun to mix with GrandVJ 1.5". The transitions are distributed across the following groups: eight Fades - three

UK - Christie has extended its Mirage Series projector line with the launch of the Christie Mirage WU-L.

The Christie Mirage WU-L delivers "high resolution and rich pixel density, as well as continuous system calibration, in a small footprint unit capable of advanced 2D-3D visualisations". Targeted to the professional market, the Christie Mirage WU-L is suitable for all applications from entertainment, to museums and education, scientific research, manufacturing, and oil and gas exploration facilities, says the company.

The 1-chip DLP with RGB LED is the first Mirage Serie

UK - XL Video has announced the tragic loss of company director Des Fallon. Des was a key figure in the history of XL Video and a well known and respected character in the live event production industry.

XL Video has this afternoon issued a statement which reads: "With great sadness we announce the death of Des Fallon, XL Video director, production industry legend and incredible personality.

"Des passed away in his sleep on Wednesday night. Des's passion and dedication to his work, love of people and life, and incisive wit and humour was an inspiration to all who knew him.

Recycling Sets - Theatre companies can now advertise and recycle old sets and costumes on a new Freecycle-style website specifically designed for the sector. With the tag line "giving your unwanted set a new home", Set-exchange.co.uk has been launched with the aim of encouraging production companies to share unwanted sets, costumes and props with other theatre organisations across the UK for free. Companies including the Royal Court, Glyndebourne and the Lyric Hammersmith have already pledged their support to the website.

Set-exchange was set up by lighting designer and prod

World - PLASA has released a draft voluntary code of practice on Artificial Optical Radiation (AOR) for comments or observations from the global professional lighting industry.

The background to the document lies in the introduction of new EU Directive and national legislation regarding AOR, and the subsequent agreement, by manufacturers attending a presentation that PLASA's Ron Bonner and the Health Protection Agency gave at the PLASA 2010, that guidance should be created.

In short, the new legislation requires employers to assess the exposure to the workforce of AOR and if the exp

Benelux - Over 100 axes of Kinesys automation were utilised to move a host of scenic and visual elements for Dutch megastar Marco Borsato's recent all-action 3Dimensies (3Dimensions) shows. He played to over 210,000 people during a two- week period across multiple nights at the Gelredome stadium in Arnhem, The Netherlands, and the Sportpalais in Antwerp, Belgium.

The total count of 107 Kinesys motion controlled elements on this production beats the previously held record of 80 by the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest final in Oslo.

Borsato's set and lighting was designed by Ignace

Germany - It's easy to hide behind a wall of superlatives: bigger, heavier, brighter, bolder, sharper; and for Creative Technology this years' Eurovision Song Contest was all those things and more; but it's the little details that put the polish on this project, says CT.

"The spectacular creative design from Florian Wieder and Jerry Appelt stretched us in places we'd never been stretched before," said head of CT's Dusseldorf Office, Alex Klaus, and the man responsible for running the project.

The Wieder/Appelt design was dominated by a 1250sq.m expanse of Spider 30 LED scr

Macau - Opened in May 2011, Galaxy Macau was billed as Macau's first integrated leisure and entertainment resort, designed to help the region achieve its aim of becoming a diversified 'Global Centre of Tourism and Recreation'. LED screen manufacturer Lighthouse Technologies had successfully acquired the contract for the provision to the resort with a series of visual elements.

Lighthouse's first involvement with owner Galaxy Entertainment Group (GEG) was at the beginning of 2008, when it supplied two LED screens to GEG's flagship StarWorld Hotel and Casino in Macau Peninsula.

Lighth

UK - Calibre UK's HQView520 is a scaler/switcher/scan convertor designed to "address the very latest trends in AV system design and integration".

The HQView520 switches, scales, scan-converts and edge-blends multiple images - also performs warp mapping so that those images can be projected onto curved screens.

The new HQView520 will also perform sub-pixel precise image alignment for stacked pairs of projectors used for 3D applications.

Like the other products in the HQView500 series, the HQView520 has a 3G-SDI input and output capability, as well as backwards compatibili

UK - Le Maitre created a spectacular finale to the 2011 UEFA Champions League final at Wembley. As Eric Abidal lifted the cup for Barcelona, the skies above the arch lit up as a host of gold and silver mines and comets were fired some 220m into the air above the 90,000 capacity stadium below. This was the first time pyrotechnics have ever been fired from the famous arch and Le Maitre were "delighted to have been chosen".

The pyro display was the culmination of months of hard work for Karen Haddon, events director at Le Maitre and her team.

"The size of the task cannot

Latest Issue. . .