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Perhaps surprisingly for what is predominantly a lighting-oriented show, J Eric Wade, the president and CEO of DiGiCo USA, said that he thought the 'immediate' response at LDI had been stronger even than that received at AES in New York; that could be because this is a more 'immediate' market; but whatever the reason Wade (pictured here with Dave Webster) was well pleased with the show.

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UK - "At first there wasn't going to be any grid, we were asked to rig a system off the king poles." Bryan Grant of audio contractor Britannia Row Productions describing the preliminaries of what is always a big event in the music industry calendar, the MTV Europe Awards (EMA's for short). Unrealistic as that might seem - this is after all Europe's premier music awards show (isn't it?), the initial belief that you could stage a world class event off some tent poles proved a partial blessing.

"The design was very different this year," continued Grant, "they brought in Mark Fisher [creative director was Ray Winkler] and he produced a quite minimalist set design, a big departure from previous years. Plus the show was characterized by multiple performance points, with many presentation areas as well."

The concept predicated a highly distributed syste

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If the PLASA Show in September provided a much-needed boost of optimism to a largely struggling industry, North America's main showcase, LDI - The Entertainment Technology Show, has emphasized the perception that, at last, the economic downturn is becoming an upturn. With over 10,000 visitors on day one and palpably more buzz than in Vegas last year, LDI has, to quote one long-term exhibitor who no doubt echoed the thoughts of many, returned to the quality of business of three years ago. It's been a tough time economically, compounded by terrorism, disease and war - but things, it seems, are looking up.
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Indochine X PixMob Fan Immersion

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's - 40 thousand LED pixels on a ceiling!!! Indochine's whirlwind tour transports fans to another level of the live experience - immersing them from floor to ceiling with PixMob's X4 wristbands, and an LED ceiling made entirely of its NOVA Minis! With the vision of Indochine's creative team, PixMob used its LED fan-technology to turn attendees and venues into an ocean of effects, and a starry sky of LED magic. Très très cool!

Read more about the Indochine tour in the latest issue of LSi

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Pulsar's increasingly evident Chroma range of LED lighting fixtures was on show, including the new 30% brighter ChromaBank batten and the ChromaPanel300 - the half-size version of the ChromaPanel600 (600mm square) colour changing LED tile.

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Italian cable manufacturer Link showed two new cabling options for the Yamaha PM1D digital mixing console, as part of its Eurocable range. Bundling SCSI, video sync and audio cables into one casing and mating it with its proprietary LK connectors, Link's new solution offers offers reduced set-up and get-out times with greater cable connection integrity. The elegantly-named CVS LK YMHSCSI is suitable for connecting the CS1D and DSP1D modules, as well for cascading DSP1D, DSP1D EX and AO8/DIO8 connections. The CVS LK YMHPM1D is composed of a single cable to connect the PM1D control surface to the brain unit. In the US, these products are available from distributor Atlantic Audio, headed up by Craig Beyrooti.

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Among the new architectural lighting fixtures on show from Altman was the SpectraPar (right) - an LED-based colour changing luminaire for indoor or outdoor use. SpectraPar utilizes 36 1W LEDs inside a cast aluminium housing, and offers three interchangeable lenses.

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UK - For the third consecutive year Brighton-based, lighting and power management consultancy, Studio 23, has lit London's premier outdoor ice rink in the beautiful setting of the courtyard at Somerset House. In association with Bryan Leitch of Siyan Lighting - LD for Coldplay and Feeder - Nick Read of Studio 23 - LD for the ice rink - came up with a new concept for the design. Read told L&SI: "This year, we knew we had a lot of corporate and publicity events, including many publicity photo shoots for bands such as The Sugababes and Busted. We therefore wanted to provide a design that was both attractive and flexible; we wanted colour changing facilities and movement of image on the ice."

Read needed a colour changing, water-proof unit that was reliable, punchy and relatively small, as they would have to hang from a 'flambeau' post, in all weathers, for three months, he had s

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ETC was making an impression at LDI on two fronts. Product first, and the US launch of the Source Four Revolution, the moving head version of the industry standard profile luminaire, with improved optical system. Bill Gallinghouse, VP of business development and marketing, told me that the response to the Revolution has been excellent since its launch at PLASA, and the interest shown at LDI had certainly continued the trend.Away from product, ETC was also noted for its LDI Student Sponsorship programme, which again saw six lucky lighting design students from across the US join the company on an all-expenses-paid trip to LDI to 'schmooze' with leading industry practitioners. ETC's Fred Foster semi-joked that this initiative was introduced in an attempt to do something better with ETC's money than simply throwing big parties - and it looks like it'll pay off (although the parties were good

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Martin Audio had a good show: apart from the joy of being one of the hardy Brits who filed into the Cricketers pub at an unholy hour to watch England win the Rugby World Cup, sales director Rob Lingfield also reported that the company's W8LM mini line array has been selling very well since its PLASA launch, with in excess of 350 boxes sold and systems currently out with Eddie Izzard and the Stereophonics.

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BSS Audio's new software control suite for the Omnidrive Compact Plus - SB2 - has undergone rigorous testing at the hands of Adlib Audio on David Bowie's Reality tour (see page 16). The software allows selection of the new 'WhiseWorks - NTM' filter in the FDS-366T, which provides a higher performance 4th order crossover filter. The new software is designed to run on the latest PC operating systems, including Windows 2000 and XP.

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Under the creative direction of Richard Belliveau, the High End Systems stand was one of the highlights of the show. Eschewing the 'architectural' approach to stand design which seems to have predominated in recent years, their demonstration of the Catalyst DL1's considerable capabilities was conducted in an enclosed 'black box' - and was all the more powerful for it. The stand was continuously packed with visitors - if some thought the aisles were quiet at times, High End could be to blame. Interestingly, the Catalyst DL1 (running off the new Catalyst Version 3 Media Server) now incorporates a Sony camera in its head, and was therefore able to simultaneously film and project the audience, stylishly incorporating us into the demo. This show was a reminder of what powerful lighting effects - combined with strong imagery and a thumping soundtrack - can do.

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As its Pixelline LED fixtures become an increasingly common sight on tour and on TV, James Thomas Engineering used LDI to launch PixelDrive for Mac, the Macintosh-based version of its new control concept for driving DMX fixtures, which has been developed alongside IRAD, the developers of the RADlite digital media server. The Mac version is expected to find particular favour in the US market and we can expect further additions to the range next year with the development of a 'value-engineered', streamlined version of RADlite on both platforms.

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Dimming specialist IES showed its iSine dimming technology, which it claims is the world's most advanced sinewave dimming technology. With a number of high profile installations across Europe and a Best Product Award from this year's Showtech exhibition in Berlin, the Dutch manufacturer has some weight to back up its claim. With iSine, IES dispenses with what it calls the 'mature' phase control techniques of conventional dimming systems, which inherently create unwanted noise and harmonic distortion because of the way they 'chop' into the wave form. iSine technology's far greener solution employs an Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT). For more on IGBT, sinewave dimming and dimming technology in general, see this month's Technical Focus feature on installed dimming systems.

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Color Kinetics Inc (CKI) had one of the most eye-catching stands, thanks largely to its striking new LED effect, the iColor Tile FX (see picture). Each 2ft by 2ft (600mm by 600mm) panel incorporates 144 individually addressable RGB LED nodes (432 LEDs in total), powered by CKI's Chromasic system, enabling surprisingly high-resolution control of the light output - allowing morphing colour waves, animated objects, logos, emblems and customized patterns.

CKI's Light System Manager is an integrated software/hardware solution engineered to enable large-scale and intricately designed installations that exceed the limitations of today's lighting programming and network protocols. LSM facilitates the management, authoring and control of show effects that span multiple DMX universes and scale to tens of thousands of individually controlled LED-based nodes.

The PDS-60ca is a cost-effective co

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UK - The Mania DC2 is the third fixture and the second decorative effect in Martin Professional's Mania series. The fixture projects images of flickering flames, and has a variable focus that allows the user to blur the edges of the projected image, plus a variable speed of the flame effect to change the projections from a flicker to an inferno.

According to Martin Pro, its R&D team has once again produced a product which offers high class features and performance at an affordable price. It comes in a durable yet stylish symmetrical housing complete with hanging bracket that also serves as a carrying handle. Attractive to the eye, trendy graphics complete the cool look.

Mania will appeal to the independent music lovers who crave innovation and uniqueness at a good price - DJs, musicians, partygoers, concertgoers, clubbers - and is designed for wherever people want to have fu

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USA - Production Resource Group (PRG) has announced a major restructuring which, it says, will improve both the company's service quality and its ability to manage its assets. The company is consolidating equipment in three major offices that will effectively become the depots in a 'hub and spoke' inventory management system. Inventory for larger events will be maintained, prepared, and shipped from the company's depots. PRG's smaller offices will continue to maintain sufficient inventory to support most local events, but will receive temporary shipments of equipment from the depots as needed to support larger events.

PRG's New Jersey, Orlando and Las Vegas offices will serve as the company's regional equipment depots. Other PRG offices will continue to maintain local inventories but will draw on the extensive additional stock in the depots when needed. Portions of the inventory

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UK - On 15 November 2003, Kylie Minogue launched her latest CD 'Body Language' at an exclusive concert in London's Carling Apollo Hammersmith, backed by a breathtaking design of Barco ILite 10 and MiPIX LED displays. The show, aptly named 'Money Can't Buy' and with no tickets being offered for sale, was strictly by invitation only. The show cost £1m and featured costumes designed by Helmut Lang, Chanel and Balenciaga, alongside state-of-the-art Barco LED displays totalling 100sq.m, which served as backdrop to Kylie's high energy performance.

The LED display and backdrop, supplied by Barco Rental Partner XL Video, consisted of a 20sq.m ILite 10 indoor LED display surrounded by 80sq.m of Barco's revolutionary MiPIX LED blocks. The Barco ILite 10 indoor LED and MiPIX displays were used as one seamless display on which high resolution graphics and animations were shown throughout t

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UK - Creative Technology has followed its move to a new 54,000sqft facility in Crawley by confirming the purchase of three Vista Montage processing systems. Two of these will be deployed in the USA and the third at the company's new UK headquarters.

Already featured by the company on the Mercedes stand at the Frankfurt Motor Show, Montage will allow CT to expand on its already advanced multi-image capability, by offering sophisticated high quality screen content manipulation.

CT chief executive Graham Andrews said: "Creative Technology continually strives to not only keep up with our clients' imaginations, but to exceed their expectations. We've pushed existing technology to its limits and now, with Montage, we'll be able to provide the sophisticated alpha-channel based keying, the DVE-like PiP moves and the pixel-perfect resolution that our clients demand. With this syst

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UK / Australia - Coemar DeSisti Australia has announced the availability of the latest addition to studio suspension equipment from Doughty Engineering is a range of two- and three-spring pantographs, designed to be lightweight and compact, with strength, safety and ease of use being the major design criteria.

Eight models are available, with travel ranges from 2.2m to 5m. Features include a comprehensive range of end fittings, an easy to use design, compact closed height, heavy gauge high tensile side arms, and heavy duty cable clips to take one power plus signal lead.

Used to suspend the Pantographs from fixed or rolling pipe grids and barrel hoists, the new range of lightweight cast aluminum barrel trolleys from Doughty is also available. These are designed to roll along 48 to 51mm diameter tubes and are supplied as standard with a socket to accept TV spigots (28-29mm). Bra

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UK - NXT has announced that SoundVu technology has won the 2003 SID/Information Display Magazine Display Material or Component of the Year Silver Award. Sponsored by SID and Information Display Magazine, the awards target the industry responsible for designing and manufacturing the displays that give life to television sets, notebook computers, desktop computer monitors, cell phones, PDAs, DVD players, and many other office-based, home-based, and portable electronic devices.

SoundVu technology allows manufacturers to bring sound and vision together by turning the display screen into a loudspeaker. The technology involves the optimal positioning of exciters at the 'invisible' edge of a screen and the controlled integration of a vibrating screen with the main body of a display product to achieve the best synchronization of image and sound.

SoundVu technology can be applied to a

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UK - Top London club fabric has made a major lighting investment with Coemar UK and its sister company, Lighting Effects Distribution. Part of a systematic upgrade at the venue, iSpot 575 moving heads, iCyc 250s, ProSpot 250s and a variety of LED-based products will add to the new kinetic energy in Rooms 1, 2 and 3 as a result of a new design from Dave Parry's technology team at the club.

The new equipment is predominantly for Room 2. "The room is essentially a black box, but I wanted to put a bit more focus onto the lasers," explained Parry. "The room contains a massive block of colour and we have used Coemar iCyc 250s as an architectural backdrop." At the same time the club has used six Thomas Pixel Par 87s from Lighting Effects Distribution to highlight the structural arches and create an extra dimension, along with a pair of Coemar iSpot 575s and CF as a

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