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SHOW REPORT
By RichardCadena
Cadena
Where’s the Whiz? Where’s the Bang?
If you went to PLASA 2009 at Earl’s Court
in London looking for that whiz-banghallelujah
got-to-have-it-life-changing
product on the show floor and you didn’t
find it, maybe you aren’t looking hard
enough. If the Next Big Thing (NBT) didn’t
seem to materialize, it’s probably because
the last NBT — LEDs, media servers and
networking — are still unfolding before
our very eyes.
To be sure, there were lots and lots of
very cool new products at PLASA this year
in every category of the industry. There
was a plethora of LED color mixing wash
fixtures, including those from Martin (MAC
301, MAC 401), JB Lighting (A7), GLP (Impression
120 RZ Zoom, Volkslicht), iPix (BB1,
BB7), Studio Due, Chroma-Q Color Block 2
and Color Force 72 and many more. One
of the new categories that is filling up fast
are the competitors to the Color Kinetics
ColorReach, including the PixelRange Sky-
Line, the Robe CitySkape (that’s not a typo
— it’s spelled with a “k”) and CitySource 96
and the Griven PowerShine D. Among the
most unique LED products is the Coemar
Stage Lite LED, which is a two-cell cyc light
with three automated tilting LED
bars per cell (you can
focus the light
narrowly
or spread it wide, depending on
your needs) and the DTS XR300 Beam, a
continuously rotating pan and tilt automated
luminaire. Also very unique is the
Vari-Lite VLX, a 630-watt LED color wash
moving yoke fixture, although GLP is working
a similar version, the Meisterstuck, and
showed a prototype of it.
Several new automated lights made
their debut, including Robe’s Robin Plasma
Wash (which uses plasma lamp technology),
ColorBeam 700, Robin 300E Beam,
Spot and Wash and a new ColorSpot 1200E
AT. Clay Paky has a new range of Alpha
1500 fixtures including a Profile, Spot HPE,
Wash, Beam and Wash LT, and Vari-Lite
showed new versions of the VL 500 and VL
1000, both with the new Philips CDM300
ceramic discharge lamp. Martin demonstrated
the MAC 250 Beam with its pencil
beams while Novalight showed a new
Nova Flower. This list is certainly not inclusive,
as many more automated lights were
seen around the show floor.
On the control side, MA Lighting was
showing the now-shipping version of the
grandMA2, while Martin was very busy
demonstrating their five Maxxyz modules,
which can be arranged in custom configurations.
Avolites had two new console offerings:
the Tiger Touch, which is comparable
to the Pearl 2004, except it has an
integrated touch screen, and
the Expert Touch
W i n g ,
which adds a touch screen interface to
the Pearl Expert. ETC showed the Element
console, which is more of an entry-level
console for the theatrical sector, and they
introduced new software versions for the
Conga and Eos consoles. In Hall 2 there
was a buzz around the LSC Clarity console.
It has a well-designed GUI and lots of features.
There is a PC and a Mac version and
two optional wings: a small wing and a big
wing. The software includes a pixel mapper
and integrates media servers through
CITP. Compulite showed their entire range
of consoles including the new Violet and
Ultra Violet, both of which have RDM capabilities.
And speaking of RDM, the RDM Pavilion
has come a long way since last LDI. Peter
Willis of Howard Eaton shepherded the
interconnection of various Remote Device
Management tools, controllers, splitters
and devices that discover, configure and
monitor lights, dimmers and scrollers over
wired and wireless networks, including
products from Doug Fleenor Design, Pathway
Connectivity, Robe, Enttec, Artistic
Licence, Goddard Design, Howard Eaton
Lighting, Luminex LCE, ELC, LSC, City Theatrical,
Zero 88, LED Team, iPix, Wybron,
City Theatrical, Barco/High End Systems,
PR Lighting, Martin, QMaxz, CDS Advanced
Technology, Lumen Radio, LEDTeam,
Novalight, Tempest Lighting, LDR, Ocean
Optics and ETC. Paul McMaster of Zero 88
was on hand to demonstrate the RDM capabilities
of the new Jester software. It
can discover lights and
automatically
create a fixture profile for it using
the information the fixture sends to the
console. It then allows the console operator
to identify the fixture by making it
flash so you can set its DMX address from
the console. Marcus Bengtsson of Lumen
Radio demonstrated their wireless RDM
transmitters and receivers, which includes
some software to monitor the network and
the status of the connected devices.
Over in the Martin stand they were
demonstrating their own implementation
of RDM called Radar. It was developed in
conjunction with Wybron and uses Wybron’s
InfoGate processor along with Info-
Store software. The Radar software is run
on a computer and it communicates with
RDM-enabled lighting fixtures and devices
like scrollers through the InfoGate processor
and an RDM splitter. The software polls
the fixtures and if there are any status messages
to report back to the console, then
the operator can spot them on the display
screen and pull them up. It also stores
them on a remote server and keeps a record
of the values. The system is Internetenabled,
and you can monitor systems the
world over. Martin is working on writing
code that will enable users to update existing
fixtures and all of their new fixtures
will come with RDM capabilities.
After what seemed like a millennium
of delay, it appears as if RDM is finally
catching on. And when it really takes hold,
watch for the whiz that will soon follow
the bang.
For more photos and info, go to www.
psln.com/PLASA2009.
28 PLSN OCTOBER 2009