UK - Cogent Lighting in partnership with home automation specialists Marata Vision shows its new Cogent XC LED lighting controller at the Essential Installation Live exhibition next week, at Manchester City Football Club's Stadium.

Cogent has recently been appointed as exclusive European distributor for this new product that harnesses the power and innovation of amBX technology. The XC offers an alternative method for controlling colour changing LEDs.

Says Cogent's Peter Coles, "This is an inventive and different solution for a number of applications, and it's great to be here with Marata Vision who have many contacts and a great track record in this specialist sector."

The key points of the Cogent XC LED lighting controller are its simple set up and ease of use. No

UK - Never Mind the Buzzcocks is back for its 24th series. The BBC2 show continues its obviously successful formula with guest competitors from the worlds of music, TV and comedy, regular team leaders (Phil Jupitus and Noel Fielding) along with a guest judge for a scathing and somewhat provocative attack on the music industry.

Lighting designer Chris Kempton, supported from the offset by Richard Martin Lighting, uses what he previously admitted as 'nothing exotic' to compliment the Industrial and Urban design of the set.

The rig includes MAC 500's and MAC 250's, while MAC 600's on the floor are used to wash set pieces.

Chromabanks can be seen dotted underneath the panel's desk, whilst LED Par 36's are used to backlight the 'speaker stack' set pieces that appear behind the contestants.

(Jim Evans)

UK - 2010 has proved to be another successful year for Zero 88 at the Edinburgh Fringe. Over 100 venues selected Zero 88 control consoles and dimming for their fringe runs, with products being supplied from a spread of Zero 88 dealers, including Black Light, Northern Light, Stage Electrics, Hawthorn, HSL and Stage Lighting Services.

Products in use varied from the Level 6 DMX through to the ORB and ORB XF professional theatre consoles. The largest presence of Zero 88 products this year was once again at the Pleasance venues which utilised 23 Zero 88 control desks, plus 56 Betapack dimmers (including generation 1, 2 and 3 varieties). The smallest venues at the Pleasance feature just six ways of dimming and a Juggler console, whilst the largest, the Pleasance Grand, included an ORB and 34 Martin Mac 700 moving lights.

Chief electrician Dom Knight comments, "It was a logical

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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

UK - One of the fast emerging collectives on the UK festival scene are the Chai Wallahs, whose increasingly familiar marquees are dedicated to providing an eclectic blend of music appealing to different lifestyles.

Founded three years ago by Si Chai, today, Chai Wallahs attend a number of summer calendar events - including Green Man in the Brecon Beacons - and are quickly becoming seek-out destinations.

Inside the organic-looking structure Afro-beat, funk and reggae artists perform alongside DJs in a free-form mix, with the emphasis on acoustic music earlier in the day. It also provides its own chill area in the form of a café bar.

Green Man has become one of Chai Wallahs' more recent destinations, and after their debut last year, this summer they were again out in force, with London-based sound engineer Harry Bishop piloting a Soundcraft Vi4 in the 800-

UK - ShowCAD Artist 3 system controls DMX lighting and supports many other input/output protocols. The system can interface and integrate with many other AV systems, lasers, video and pyrotechnics.

Features include LED array pixel plotting, Autopilot (an automatic show generator), 365 day global scheduling and comprehensive controls for intelligent and conventional lighting. ShowCAD can also be interfaced with many peripheral control surfaces, touch screens, MIDI, Wifi and networked systems and can either be slaved by or can slave other controllers.

The company is currently working on an Apple Mac version. Artist is installed in many prestigious nightclubs around the world including The Mirage, Bellagio, Wynn's, The Hard Rock Hotel and the new City Centre in Las Vegas. Architectural installations include The Zain Bahrain Building, The Edinburgh International Conference Centre

UK - The Chatsworth House Attic Sale has caught the attention of the media and the public interest, with four days of public viewing preceding an auction lasting three days (5-7 October 2010). Aside from Chatsworth items, attic retrievals have been gleaned from the fine houses associated with the Devonshire family since the 16th century including Holker Hall, Hardwick Hall, Chiswick House and the massive London seat of Devonshire House.

Point Source Productions, working in conjunction with Fine Art Lighting, has supplied the lighting solutions to auctioneers, Sotheby's, for over 20,000 sale items. These are estimated to raise over £2.5m and are arranged in 1,400 lots within a series of marquees in the grounds of Chatsworth House.

The marquees were chosen specifically to give the ambience of a country house sale and arranged in a square around a central courtyard in which

UK - Comedian Les Dennis has begun a new series of the children's game show, Fee Fi Fo Yum which airs every Friday afternoon on BBC TV.

As games play out on Brian the Giant's table top, young contestants, or 'humunchies', compete for the chance to run off home and avoid being eaten for dinner by giants.

With computer generated assistance, giants, gunge, a fantastically designed set, a very dapper Dennis in a sequined jacket and catchy slogans (such as 'if you're not the winner you'll be Brian's dinner') it is sure to capture the imagination of the younger generation.

Brian the Giant's home-made studio was created inside BBC's TC3 at London's Television Centre. The set took up all but a few feet of the studio with the massive kitchen scales at the centre; giant books made up the steps and in the middle was a very big bowl which held the messy gunge games.

Tasked with

Brazil - Brazilian distributor Quanta presented a wide selection of the dBTechnologies' product range at the 27th Expomusic show in São Paulo last month, proving a solid commitment to the brand in a burgeoning market.

Import restrictions have made international trade difficult until recently, but Quanta director Augusto Gaia has every faith in the Italian manufacturer's potential in this territory. "With its great products, dBTechnologies promises to shake the Brazilian market. The sound quality in particular is really excellent," says Gaia.

Celebrating 20 years of business in the industry, Quanta prides itself in being a leader in distribution and marketing solutions for digital technology. dBTechnologies sales & marketing director Michael Herweg - who was also present at the show - celebrates Quanta's dedication. "We have the advantage of a highly motivated c

France - Indochine's Météor tour took in the Stade de France in Paris where 80,000 fans celebrated the band's 30 years in the music business. The tour officially kicked off on 6 October 2009 at the Zénith in Rouen and ended in a grand finale on 15 September 2010 with a final concert at the Palais Omnisport in Paris Bercy.

Olivier Payen, the tour's lighting designer, who also worked on Indochine's previous Alice&June tour, succeeded in creating a breathtaking light show. However, according to the team managing the project, it was no easy ride. Apart from the challenge of an enormous stadium, from the outset specifications were determined by the video layout. With five 16:9 screens occupying the entire north curve of the stadium and covering a total area of 720m2, there was little space left for the lighting. The design used lighting to surround

UK - Kinesys has supplied 160 of its new DigiHoist motor controllers to Production Resource Group (PRG).

The new units will replace all PRG's existing motor control stock in the UK, standardising the control platform across its substantial rigging department which has over 2000 motors.

Kinesys were one of three companies that pitched for the design commission of this project which was managed by Dave Weatherhead for Kinesys, and for PRG by PRG's UK head of asset management Paul Weaver and Summit Steel's Jon Bray - who have co-ordinated an overall upgrade for all equipment in PRG's rigging department.

Together, they came up with a list of requirements and a basic spec from which the DigiHoist was developed as the most suitable product for concert touring and systems for shows and events of all sizes.

Following the product's official launch at the recent 2010 PLASA exhibitio

Lebanon - Vicoustic's flagship Wave Wood acoustic panel has featured in a major installation at the St Gabriel Church, Ajaltoun, Lebanon. Led by Movses Balabanian, a team from Vicoustic's Beirut-based distributor 21dB installed over 650 Wave Wood panels on the ceiling in order to address acoustic problems in the venue that included long reverberation times across the frequency range and poor speech intelligibility.

Wave Wood is specifically designed to control excessive and unwanted frequencies while maintaining a bright, ambient sound. The panel's design, which includes a series of non-linear cavities set into an elegant wood finish, has proved highly effective in the treatment of medium and high frequencies while also enhancing the appearance of room interiors.

"The whole installation project took eight days to complete, with the team having to work almost continually a

France - Having launched ACP (Agence Centrale de Presse), the first BtoB editorial marketplace in the world of newspapers, ACP Group is to join forces with Digigram for the next stages of its development.

A statement says, "The new entity aims to ensure the acquisition, storage, transportation and management of content for the media in order to improve their productivity and responsiveness. This proposal is consistent with the transformation of traditional media to a new model of 'convergence' and aims to reposition 'content' as the engine of growth for its customers."

"This merger is a fantastic opportunity for Digigram because it combines the pursuit of development in the areas that, historically, are the heart of our business and associates us with the ACP project launched by ACP Group. It will enable us to add value as well as being highly motivating for our

France - Robert Juliat reports that its new Aledin LED profile has been adopted by one of France's most popular news channels. i>TELE, a subdivision of Canal+ Group, the leading pay-TV Group in France, has installed 24 cold white Aledin profiles in its broadcasting studios where they are in daily use on live news broadcasts and weather reports.

i>TELE studios has changed all its lighting from incandescent sources to LED or fluorescent. Technical director Laurent d'Auria says, "There was too much maintenance, too much energy consumption, too much heat being produced at i>TELE studios, all of which was just not compatible with our new lighting infrastructure."

i>TELE quickly decided on Robert Juliat Aledin on the advice of Canal+, pioneers in the new uses of television, who were already investigating low energy solutions. Aledin's new technology provides the answer to

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies audio and lighting divisions have supplied an extensive inventory of stage production equipment for the auditorium of the Hawth Theatre in Crawley as part of an upgrade to the venue's technical facilities.

The Hawth Theatre is one of the south's liveliest arts venues, playing host to a diverse mix of theatre, dance, music, comedy, concerts, film and visual arts. The theatre has been host to hit West End and worldwide musicals including West Side Story and Saturday Night Fever, comedy acts including Eddie Izzard and Jack Dee, and visiting companies including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Following a competitive tender, single source supplier AC-ET was selected to provide the complete order of leading brand entertainment technology products, accessories and custom manufactured items from its

UK - Jon Thornton, head of sound technology at the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts (LIPA), has recently taken delivery of two new Audient ASP8024 consoles. LIPA students have been learning on Audient desks for almost a decade.

Thornton comments, "Eight years ago we came to replace two split analogue consoles in our studios. We wanted something intuitive, clear and simple - yet flexible. Fortunately, that was just after the Audient ASP8024 had been released. What attracted us was the clarity of the desk, which is ideal for training purposes. It has a nice big centre section, so you can get four students around it comfortably and they can all see what's going on."

Audient is an established player in the education market, with Thornton explaining, "In teaching basic principles - signal path, equalisation, signal routing - analogue is easier and better t

USA - After a year of planning, and following several other momentum-building events, the North Texas Super Bowl Host Committee staged its spectacular XLV Countdown Live from Cowboys Stadium on Friday10 September. A 60' Daktronics LED video display, provided by Argyle, TX-based GoVision, served as the main backdrop for the jam-packed evening of entertainment.

With more than 200 stars on hand to speak, sing, play or perform during the evening's festivities, every one of the nearly 37,000 attendees wanted a close-up view of the stage. Corporate Magic, the official event producer of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee, enlisted the expertise of GoVision to construct and provide the LED centerpiece to do just that.

"Only the lower tier of the stadium was used during the event to provide an intimate feel in the massive venue," said Chris Curtis, president

Australia - After more than two years in development, ENTTEC has innovated its signature DMX networking tool, the Datagate, by adding a Web-based, user-friendly graphical interface, Gigabit-speed Jumbo Frames, Remote Device Management (RDM) on-demand, and more.

A key upgrade to the original Datagate is that the configuration is all performed via Web browser. A utility no longer needs to be downloaded to a computer. Instead, users set their browsers to the Datagate Mk2's Web address, and there they will find a unique graphical interface that's as easy to use as dragging and dropping, says the company. The simplified display screen allows users to create a flow chart easily and then the Datagate Mk2 will perform what is drawn. This enhancement not only eliminates steps, but makes the whole process easier to understand and manage.

"As compared to a conventional Art-Net frame

UK / USA - With plans for the merger between ESTA and PLASA now in their final stages, the elections for places on the new North American and European Regional Boards, and the over-arching Governing Body, got underway on 1 October.

The elections are a unique milestone in the merger of the two Associations, as this is the first time that ESTA and PLASA Members will vote simultaneously to elect representatives to the new Board structure. The month-long ballot, in which over 1,000 companies and individuals will have the opportunity to vote, pre-empts the New Year merger date when the Associations formally unite under the PLASA name.

For PLASA, one of the major developments to come out of the merger is the move to a more representative Governance system. The new 12-member Regional Boards will better mirror the diversity of regions, market sectors, business types and technologies a

USA - Due to the demand for its use in aesthetically sensitive installations, Community's R.25 all-weather loudspeaker is now available in an all-white enclosure, with white grille and yoke.

The R.25 is the most compact model in Community's R-Series, measuring just 11.3 x 11.3 x 13.3 inches.

Designed to be visually neat and simple to install, the R.25 is designed for short to medium throw fixed and portable applications, including theme parks, sport venues, arenas and cruise ships. It can also be used in distributed indoor systems in medium to large spaces like conference, exhibition and shopping centres and swimming pools. The all-weather moulded enclosure has integral points for vertical or horizontal mounting with the supplied yoke, and a built-in pole mount for portable use.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Following a highly successful PLASA show where SES Entertainment Services received orders and enquiries for its range of 19" rack distribution, the company will now include a USB charging socket if required on its extensive range.

Several customers that placed orders at the show, insisted that we fitted USB sockets in order to charge the crews' mobile phones, as during longer shows they often run out of power and it is often difficult to find a suitable and secure place to charge them.

"This has been very well received by several crew members who need to keep in touch when away from home on tour, and does away with the need to carry different adapters for different countries, as all phones now come with a USB charger," says Gordon R Cooper. "The USB socket is available on all new racks as of 1 October, and can be retro fitted to older racks if required

UK - Following on from the major industry and consumer interest at the PLASA show, the new HK Audio compact PA system, Elements, has also proved itself a big hit with both users and resellers, says distributor JHS.

There are now eight Elements dealers UK wide, all of which have been impressed, not only with the systems performance and practicality, but also with the impressive 'silent salesman' POS Interactive Workstation, an essential part of the HK Audio Elements dealership package.

Alastair McFarlane, of KLS Entertainment in Falkirk says, "Without doubt this is the most versatile system that we've ever seen - so compact and so easy to set up. You always get quality from HK Audio, but this exceeds all expectations."

A completely adaptable, modular PA system, ELEMENTS provides all you need to configure the perfect solution for any situation, and thanks to its uniq

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