USA - Intelix's new SkyPlay-HD wireless HDMI distribution system is designed "for just about any professional AV application seeking the advantages of cord-free performance". Capable of seamlessly distributing high-definition HDMI audio and video up to 100ft in both point-to-point and point-to-many configurations, each SkyPlay-HD transmitter is compatible with up to 20 receivers.

Fully HDCP compliant and operable in the 5 GHz spectrum, the device's rugged black plastic enclosure houses five antennas to bring strong signals and coverage to all destinations. In addition, proprietary Intelix technology delivers low AV latency, low power consumption, and real-time processing with less than three milliseconds of delay. Utilizing WHDI and AES 128-bit encryption to insure the integrity of every transmission, the SKYPLAY-HD system transmits in open spaces or through light cons

UK - Rebranded event production specialists, VisionEvents (formerly called Sound+Vision) has become the first company in the world to invest in the new WU14K-M WUXGA platform from Christie.

With a 30-year pedigree, and offices across the UK (after starting out in Edinburgh), VisionEvents purchased two each of the Roadster WU14K-M and Mirage WU14K-M projectors as the major component of a £200K investment, to help maintain their status as a world class production company.

Said managing director, Chris Montgomery, "We've always been impressed with the Christie products as they design specifically for the industry. Their after sales service is excellent and our team really benefitted from the training they organised for the products we recently purchased. The projectors have already assigned to events last September."

The new Christie projectors were quickly put

UK - The glittering glass facets of the new Siemens Crystal building form the striking exterior of London's newest landmark, at the Western end of the Royal Docks. Just down the road from the Stratford Olympic park and across the river from the O2 Arena, formerly known as the Millennium Dome, the Crystal represents a £30m investment and will be home to the company's global Centre of Competence Cities. The aim is to encourage the growth of sustainable cities through partnerships, research and expert collaboration.

The structure covers 6,300 square meters and is designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects with Arup to be one of the most sustainable buildings in the world, using solar power and ground source heat pumps to generate its own energy among a large number of sustainable technologies. With offices and a 270-seat auditorium, the highly interactive building offers the publi

Germany - Aquanario, Europe's biggest mobile water show, celebrated its official premiere on 17 August in Berlin, Germany. For 10 nights, no less than 45.000 visitors saw an impressive show with water, lasers, fire, lights, pyrotechnics and music. Rock Solid Lighting created the lighting design and was responsible for programming and the lighting control system.

From 17 to 26 August, the Zentraler Festplatz of Berlin was transformed into a magical stage, featuring Europe's biggest water show. Flash Art Show Productions' director Markus Katterle and Rock Solid Lighting's lighting designer Jens Hillenkotter created an extraordinary 50-minute performance with 500.000 litres of water, lasers, fire, lights and pyrotechnics synchronously to the music.

From the very early stages of the show, Markus Katterle and Jens Hillenkotter decided to use the V:3D software of Syncronorm.

USA - London-based projection artist Ross Ashton was commissioned by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire to produce an exclusive Son et Lumière show celebrating the 50th anniversary of its high profile Hopkins Centre for the Arts.

The show Five Windows was based around stunning large format projections highlighting the history, achievements and impact of the Hopkins Centre, which also houses the Ivy League College's drama, music, film and studio arts departments.

Giant images were projected on to the magnificent front façade of the Hopkins Centre, which was designed by architect Wallace Harrison and opened in 1962.

The College approached Ashton who has completed several prestigious projected art installations in the US within the last three years.

He comments, "It was an amazing opportunity to work with one of the most prominent educational institutio

UK - Following a recent successful showcase of the Christie Nitro YK50 on their stand at PLASA 2012, A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has been appointed by global visual technology company, Christie, as sole UK & Ireland distributor for its new Nitro Solutions series of integrated motorised yoke and projector systems.

Initially, AC-ET will concentrate on the dual-arm YK50, the smallest yoke in the three product range, designed to support the Christie LHD700 3LCD, full HD projector, and LX700 XGA LCD projector - both offering a 7000 ANSI lumens output.

A.C. Video division's sales manager, Peter Butler comments, "AC-ET has been a Christie partner for many years and is delighted to add another high performing product to our distribution portfolio. The YK50 performed extremely well during testing and provides an exceptional quality of video with an extremely accurate y

UK - S+H Technical's new 12 mm lightweight LED screen made its touring debut on the recent Kim Wilde European tour, specified by lighting and visual designer Ian Holmes.

The Devon, UK based drapes, starcloth, LED and visual effects specialist S+H has invested in a quantity of the new LED panels as have Buckinghamshire based technical solutions providers, Universal Event Productions (UEP). The idea is that the two companies can work closely together and combine stocks of the same product to supply larger shows and events as required.

The screen features include a very light weight of just 4.5Kgs per panel (9.5 Kg per square metre made up from two panels), quick assembly and overall user-friendliness, all combined with an excellent multi-purpose pitch.

Essex based Ian Holmes was very keen to try the new screen out on the final stages of Kim Wilde's 2012 Snapshots tour w

UK - A major lecture theatre on the Glenside Campus of UWE Bristol (the University of the West of England, Bristol) has been upgraded with the installation of a large, 150" Da-Lite rear projection media display.

Da-Lite distributors Paradigm AV supported contracted suppliers GV Multimedia - who have a long-standing relationship with the University - and provided a single-mirror rear projection rig and technical drawings to ensure optimum utilisation of the space.

At the same time GV Multimedia project manager, Dan Victory, carried out his own computer predictions and visualisations to ensure the optimisation of off-axis viewing in the 240-capacity theatre and correct balance of brightness and contrast.

He opted for a Da-Lite Da-Snap (fixed snap-frame) solution, using Da-Tex rear pro screen material set flush against the high arched wall. The visible area now measures 19

China - Christie fascinated leading exhibitors from Asia Pacific with a demonstration of its prototype laser projector in Beijing. Short movie clips of 3D content projected on a 20m wide by 12m high screen were screened at typical 3D brightness levels of 3-4 ft-L and then using the laser projector at 14 ft at the theater of Wanda Shi Jin Shan Cinema, leaving the audiences in awe.

"Today's laser projection demo was fabulous! I'm impressed with the ultra brightness and life-like colours delivered onto the screen," said Ning Ye, general manager of Wanda Group.

"Christie is committed to creating new technology and maintaining our products at a high quality. We are continuously developing solutions to help exhibitors to project compelling, immersive images to their screens. Today we are pleased to demonstrate our first prototype laser projector to the exhibitors,&quo

UK - It was certainly a case of everyone helps when the Saville team, headed up by account director Adam Pike, were called on by retailer Tesco to provide all the AV and technology support for seven events across five days in six different venues.

Central to this frantic activity was the group Company Conference for 3000 delegates, held at London's ExCel conference centre. The main plenary featured an impressive 36m edge-blended screen covered by six Christie Roadie HD+35K projectors and fed digitally over fibre-optic from a Barco Encore system.

Audio was handled by a d&b Q series line array system with a 48-channel Yamaha M7 and the lighting spec featured over 70 Robe LED fixtures including the new Robe 100. Live action camera feeds were supplied by four Sony HD cameras sub-mixed via a Tricaster 850 vision mixer. This spec was more or less mirrored in the second hall with ano

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd's Video division has supplied XL Video with two of the latest Green Hippo v3 HD i7 media servers, which have gone into immediate use on tour with 2010 Mercury Prize winning UK indie band, The xx.

The sale was co-ordinated by Peter Butler for AC-ET and Paul Wood, XL's project manager for The xx tour. Wood also liaised closely with XL Video's technical project manager, James Morden.

The Hippotizers were specified by the band's lighting director, Michael Straun and were specifically chosen as they were the only media servers able to fulfil the exact functionality and system requirements necessary.

Two of the Hippotizers are run live, while the third is used as a 'hot' backup - all running on the latest 3.1 version software.

The tour has included a wide variety of European festival dates.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Following the successful launch of its Super2fer product at the PLASA Show in September, where it picked up a PLASA Award for Innovation, manufacturer Digital & Future Technologies has announced that it is now working on a new chipset upgrade, which will mean a delay to the shipping of the product.

Chris Crockford told LSi: "This is a blow to our original plans, but it will mean more bandwidth and more box connectivity. We have also found a couple of manufacturing errors with the original boxes when tested in the field, so we are working to correct them, along with integrating the feedback we received from people attending PLASA."

Designed for all aspects of the entertainment industry, the Super2fer allows users to modulate their video, audio, lighting, and IP data through standard 16A mains cable up to 500m from source.

To see Crockford's PLASA Show presentat

UK - Following the appointment of Alex Leinster as managing director, Chaos Visual Productions has announced that Mick Jones will be joining the company as project director in the UK.

Jones joined the Chaos team on 1 November directly from PRG where he has been instrumental in the project management and delivery of their new video offering in the UK for the last two years. He brings with him over 25 years' experience across the whole live event industry.

"I look forward to joining and being part of the team at Chaos UK with such a great group of people; people who understand the value of client -supplier relationships," remarks Jones. "Chaos is one of the leaders in its field of specialist Video services and, along with the outstanding quality of their delivery to clients, it made my decision to join them just very, very easy."

"I'm looking forward t

USA - CAST is pulling out all the stops for PLASA Focus Stamford with not one, but four new products, plus an educational seminar. PLASA Focus will be held 12-13 November at the Stamford Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut where CAST will be exhibiting in Booth 121 and will demonstrate their newest products, BlackTrax, wysiwyg R29, Vivien 2012 and Vivien Online.

Jim Hutchison, product manager wysiwyg and Vivien, will present the seminar entitled, The Birth, Childhood, and Apparent Adolescence of Lighting Design Technology as part of the PLASA Focus Professional Development Programme. The seminar will be held on Monday, 12 November from 1:30-2:30pm and again on Tuesday, 13 November from 12:30-1:30pm in the Massachusetts Room.

Hutchison's session will take trip through the last 75 years or so of lighting Design technology, from its birth with paper and pencil through the ab

Denmark - The AV Alliance, of which Blitz Communications is a member, is a Bronze Sponsor of the FRESH conference being held in Copenhagen early next year.

FRESH is a conference focused purely on meeting design. Attendees will experience, discover and learn about the latest tools and techniques to improve meetings and conferences and make them more effective. They can meet and confer with professionals in all aspects of meeting planning including design, production, facilitation, evaluation and much more. This mix of people and products make FRESH the conference of choice for anyone wishing to optimise the effectiveness of meetings, say the organisers.

This year the FRESH conference has a special focus on meeting formats, session formats and presentation formats, meaning visitors can expect an immersive and varied experience. Sessions include the 'learning carousel', featuring

USA - Marquis Broadcast, specialist in content workflows and media integration software, has announced it has donated five copies of X2Pro Audio Convert for use on the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. X2Pro Audio Convert is Marquis' cutting edge conversion application for delivering Final Cut Pro X projects to Avid Pro Tools for audio finishing. The solution will be used in the state-of-the-art mobile audio and HD video recording and production facility that educates young people in free song-writing and multimedia production workshops across the US and also in Europe from 2013.

"The Bus, which has travelled the US for the past 15 years, visiting schools, musical and technology conferences and events, is only made possible through the generosity of its various sponsors, " confirms Chris Steele, product manager, Marquis Broadcast. "We have been delighted to contri

UK - Universal Event Productions (UEP) supplied a slick, streamlined design and all technical production required - set, staging, audio and lighting - to stage the 2012 Mobile Choice Consumer Awards event in the Ballroom of the Northumberland Hotel, central London. This honours the brightest, most innovative and popular mobile technologies, and UEP has been involved for the last 11 years.

Says UEP's Steve Butcher: "The concept always involves creating a comfortable and high tech looking environment to reflect a trendy up-to-the-minute industry. Working this space at the Northumberland means we have to juxtapose our temporary setting appropriately against the Victorian splendour of the room."

It was also the first live event for UEP's brand new 12mm pitch LED screen, which has just been delivered to their warehouse in Buckinghamshire.

The Mobile Choice set was based

USA / Belgium - ArKaos reports "an extremely successful show" at LDI, Las Vegas where the company exhibited with its new North American distributor, A.C. Lighting Inc. for the first time. Newly appointed in June this year, A.C. Lighting Inc distributes the full range of ArKaos Show and Lighting products across North America and Canada.

LDI saw the North American debut of two new products from Arkaos, the ArKaos MediaMaster 3.0, complete with new Video Mapper extension, and the new Stage Media Server. A.C. Lighting Inc presented the new products by saying, "The ArKaos team brings an incredibly intuitive approach to the complex problem of video mapping."

ArKaos has introduced its Video Mapper extension for MediaMaster Pro to provide an easy means of mapping video onto irregularly shaped surfaces and through multiple outputs.

Designed to enable the setting u

UAE - Barco has signed a distribution agreement with AV expert TechnoPro LLC. TechnoPro will ensure the availability, delivery and support for Barco's projection and image processing products, including the award-winning new range of ultra-bright HDX, HDF- and HDQ-projectors, in the Middle East region, thus helping Barco Dubai keep up with the increasing demand.

Headquartered in Dubai, TechnoPro LLC is one of the Middle East's leading suppliers of technology for the entertainment market. Its over 12,000 m2 warehouses in Dubai, Qatar, and Lebanon house a large stock of state-of-the-art equipment, from over 25 manufacturers, including the lighting products of Barco High End Systems. The company's experience and professional staff, its outstanding facilities and its large market coverage in the entertainment industry were all reasons for Barco to rely on TechnoPro for the distribut

UK - Production house sevens7 recently approached XL Events to supply a range of visual solutions to Nissan for an innovative Future : Today roadshow and driver experience promoting the new LEAF electric car which is currently touring Scandinavia.

XL's project managers Phil Goddard and Robin Evans combined seamless plasmas with conventional 85 inch screens and MiStrips to produce a highly innovative exhibition environment as well as a visually enticing display on the outside of the venue.

The novel mobile brand activation space is a concept created by brand engineers Proud Robinson and designed by Jump Studios, Constructed from four specially modified sea freight containers sitting widthways behind one another. Another two containers on top of these provide a control / technical area and a coffee terrace / lounge.

The 125 x 1.5m MiStrips are wrapped around the outside

UK - Christie has introduced the G Series and four new E Series 1-chip DLP projectors. In the new G Series, the Christie DHD550-G and Christie DWU550-G provide 5,000 lumens, 1-chip DLP technology and a single mercury-lamp design for fixed applications with "better price performance and higher brightness than other projectors in their class," says the company.

Similar to G Series, the four new E Series projectors deliver attractive price performance, higher brightness, and increased flexibility and reliability for both fixed and rental staging applications, the company continues.

At 5,000 lumens and offering a choice between HD (1920 x 1080) and WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolutions, the Christie G Series is an ideal choice for board and conference rooms, government, houses of worship, higher education facilities and a variety of small venue applications. Installation is ea

USA - Christie Lites has added Richard Willis to its Rental Rep team. Willis recently joined the company as a national account rep in the Nashville office and serves his client base from all 12 Christie warehouse locations across North America.

Willis has played many roles in the concert touring industry since his start in the 1980s. With a law degree in hand, he left New Zealand to tour as a lighting tech. He returned to New Zealand in 1989 and soon become general manager of Theatrelite - a manufacturer of lighting consoles and dimmers - where he established a dealer network throughout Australia and Asia. In the early 1990s he moved to Tennessee to join Bandit Lites as marketing manager, moving up to vice president. While there he established relationships with the industry's top designers, production and tour managers for WWE, Van Halen, Queen, Radiohead and more.

"Afte

Australia - Prior to the recent release of ArKaos MediaMaster Pro 3, the team at BAAC Light in Melbourne, Australia gave the new software - complete with its new Video Mapper extension - the ultimate final beta test.

An amateur production of Hairspray the Musical staged by one of Victoria's largest non-professional musical theatre companies, PLOS Musical Productions, provided the ideal opportunity due to the requirement for a fully projected set. Large moveable set pieces constructed from polystyrene called for a media server solution capable of individually mapping over 90 different projection surfaces as the set pieces were moved into numerous configurations for each scene.

BAAC Light co-founders Andrei Chlebnikowski (projection designer) and Brad Alcock (lighting designer) opted to upgrade their MediaMaster licenses prior to the official release in order to have acce

France - Christie has announced the opening of its new office in France near Paris. Historically located in Gennevilliers, the new refurbished facility represents the logical next step for Christie's presence in the French market, providing an unrivalled level of service and support to its clients and partners, says the company.

With a surface area that has tripled in size, the new facility now occupies over 1000sq.m and hosts a vast area dedicated to service and training. It also has several dedicated spaces including a showroom for staging live demos, several rooms for seminars and training courses, along with an extended sales open space.

The new office is headed by Pascal Gervais, regional director, Christie for France. He enthused, "Following more than ten years of constant growth and successful brand development in the French market, and since we exceeded our capaci

Latest Issue. . .

Save
Cookies user preferences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline
Advertisement
If you accept, the ads on the page will be adapted to your preferences.
Google Ad
Accept
Decline