Business

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Spain - With the development of three major commissions in the last few months, the Barcelona- and Madrid-based audiovisual service company Unitecnic, part of the Mediapro group, has become the year's most successful RTS / Telex distribution partner in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Eumóvil is a production company with one of the largest fleets of outside broadcast vans in Spain; just under thirty Eumóvil truck can be on the road at any one time, gathering news from all over Spain. The nerve centre of each of the three newest outside broadcast vehicles - which will be utilised at the 2006 World Cup Finals in germany - comprises a system from RTS / Telex - whether an 96 x 96 Advanced Digital Audio Matrix (ADAM), as is the case in two of the vans, or a Cronus.

España Directo is a flourishing Spanish news production company that now communicates by means of RTS / Telex KP-3

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UK - Stagetec Distribution has recently supplied Compulite Vector lighting control systems to three major TV Companies: RTE in Dublin has purchased a Compulite Vector Blue system with iControl and WYSIWYG; BBC Northern Ireland has purchased a Vector Green and Vector Blue system with iControl, WYSIWYG, two Ethernet nodes and a Fader Wing, and Granada Television in Manchester have invested in a Vector Green and Vector Blue system with iControl and WYSIWYG.

The Vector systems in Northern Ireland were immediately put in to use on the BBC Proms in the Park. There were outdoor concerts in several of the main regions, all contributing to the main network show, including a live link between all the regions in turn. The venue was the grounds of Belfast City Hall with performances from the Ulster Orchestra with conductor Kenneth Montgomery, along with the City of Derry Youth Choir

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UK - London's latest major live music club KOKO picked up the Best Live Venue Award at this year's British Dance and Entertainment (BEDA) Awards at the recent awards dinner, held in the Birmingham NEC Metropole Hotel.

The 1500 capacity venue in Camden Town features an integrated Harman Pro audio reinforcement system, incorporating JBL, Crown, BSS, and dbx brands, and providing all speaker cabinets and arrays, signal control, processing and amplification throughout. At the heart of the system is a 28 kW front of house JBL Vertec Line Array system.

Famous throughout the 1980s as The Camden Palace, the venue was reopened by the Mint Group in September last year as KOKO, after undergoing a major refurbishment, which saw the former Victorian vaudeville theatre restored to its full former glory and lavish style.

A major part of the work involved designing an integrated sound syste

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UK - LD Andy Hurst specified 48 James Thomas PixelLine 1044s and 10 PixelLine 110s for M People's Another Night in Heaven! tour. The 1044s were arranged in four specially made frames each holding 12 fixtures and the 110s were used to upright a large silver upstage drape.

The frames were hidden behind the backline and then lifted into view half way through the performance of Open Up Your Heart for maximum impact. Hurst created a series of pulsing hearts across the PixelLine wall by first making the heart shapes in PixelDrive and then applying a zoom chase to animate them. The fixtures were then used as a high-impact effects surface, with Hurst crafting very specific PixelLine looks and patterns for each relevant song via his PixelDrive software.

All lighting equipment was supplied by PRG Birmingham and the crew were Nigel "Skippy" Monk (chief), Pat Fitzs

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USA - Home court to the NBA's Detroit Pistons and WNBA's Shock, the 22,000-seat Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan has been considered one of the best-marketed facilities in the US since opening in August of 1988 and is one of the country's top-grossing arenas of its size. The facility has been voted 'Arena of the Year' eight times by Performance magazine and presented with the same honour by Pollstar magazine on two occasions.

KLA Laboratories of nearby Dearborn has served as the Palace's sole audio systems contractor from its inception and recently undertook a revamp of the 17-year-old sound system. Working closely with the Harman Pro Group, KLA recommended that a full Harman system be specified - JBL loudspeakers, over 150,000 watts of Crown power, and a 32-mono-/4-stereo-channel Soundcraft Series FIVE mixing console.

Between basketball games, major concerts,

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UK - Noise Control Audio (NCA) has consolidated its position as preferred supplier to the Barfly Group by installing a complete sound system at the Group's newest live music venue in Birmingham.

Officially opened on September 15, Barfly Birmingham incorporates two rooms, both of which have been equipped with Noise Control's proprietary speakers. The company was also responsible for adjusting the venue's acoustics to improve overall sound quality and for specifying and supplying all other audio equipment used throughout the club.

Steve Stavrinides, director of sales for Noise Control, says: "For this particular venue we installed our new NFA concert system, which has gone through several revamps over the past few years and has now had its final jacket fitted. Barfly Birmingham is the first club to have the new NFA Series installed as a permanent installation."

The P

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WorldwideDesigned by Patrick Woodroffe, the lighting for A Bigger Bang features different and distinctive looks for the tour's stadium and arena venues. The stadium show uses 695 fixtures, including 66 MAC 2kW spots fitted with the Woodroffe collection of gobos. Other fixtures include 82 MAC 2kW washes, 36 VL5 washes, 22 VL5 Arcs, 256 Par ACLs, 28 Molefays, 28 Molemags, 24 atomic strobes and 30 Syncrolites. For the arena dates, Woodroffe added a 30ft circular truss and hung the fixtures in Low Pro lighting pods.

To streamline the logistics of moving two shows simultaneously, PRG created a detailed equipment management system. Colour-coded packaging helps th

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UK - A contemporary arts event based on the works of Spencer Tunick, a controversial American landscape installation artist, was held in Newcastle & Gateshead recently and broadcast on BBC3.

Naked City: Spencer Tunick in 'Newcastle/Gateshead featured a series of installations on the north bank of the Tyne, on a Newcastle street, alongside the Sage Gateshead Complex, and adjacent to the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. The finale to the live broadcast was when 550 naked participants assembled on the Gateshead Millennium Bridge under Spencer's instruction, at dusk.

Lighting designer Mike Le Fevre was commissioned to light the project. Lighting rental and crew supply was by AFM Lighting's Broadcast & Events Division, based in London, and included five Martin Wireless DMX-512 and three Martin Wireless DMX-512 Pro Diversity devices.

"It was the first installation t

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USA - High End Systems' new DL2 digital light fixture makes its US debut on Sheryl Crow's Wildflower tour which starts next week. LD Paul Guthrie specified four DL2s and is using them to project onto an aluminium mesh curtain. He's also using three HES Catalyst Pro media servers to drive other parts of the show including the projection and some LED fixtures.

"I was impressed with the brightness [of the DL2s]," Guthrie says. "The fact that the server is self-contained appealed to me, too." Though DL2 has on-board content, Guthrie says 95% of the show's media is supplied by his own company Toss Film & Design of Minneapolis. He's also supplying 98% of the Catalyst content as well. "I'm using Catalyst because it is an easy way for me to manage my content," he notes.

XL Touring Video of Los Angeles is supplying five DL2s, the three Catalysts, tw

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Ireland - Cork, Europe's Capital of Culture for 2005, has launched a brand new visitor's attraction to the public - a sustainable city campus entitled 'Lifetime Lab'. Lifetime Lab was opened by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government Dick Roche T.D., who unveiled a plaque and had a tour of the facility as well as meeting some of Cork's school children.

Set on the banks of the River Lee, 'Lifetime Lab' has been created by design and communications company Imagination Ltd. Built on the old Waterworks site, which Cork City Council decided to restore and revitalise, the campus facilities include: a schools resource centre, information centre, conference suites, an interactive visitor exhibition and a future adventure playground. Following a procurement process Imagination was invited by Cork City Council to participate in a multi disciplinary project, which w

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UK - Bandit Lites is supplying full lighting production and crew in the US and Europe to the 2005 Donny Osmond What I Meant to Say tour, with lighting designed by Mike Frogge. The tour is currently in the UK where Bandit Lites UK project manager Lester Cobrin observes: "After all these years Donny still delivers a charismatic, entertaining and theatrical performance and with Mike at the helm it's one of those perfect collaborations."

Mike Frogge has been working with Donny Osmond for the last four years and wanted to make the rig look as big as possible, so he introduced two raked onstage trusses forming a V at their most onstage point, framed from behind by an upstage truss. The front of the stage was kept well clear with the backline and band tucked upstage and lit with 60 Par cans from the front truss. The rear truss and the two trusses making up the 'V' cont

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USA - Stage Lighting Super Saturday, a full-day of seminars, workshops, and "inspiration" for stage lighting designers and technicians will take place in New York City on January 7, 2006 at Pace University's downtown New York campus, now the home of the Bravo Network's Inside the Actor's Studio.

Strand Lighting has announced that it will underwrite Ken Billington's presentation at the event. Tim Burnham, president of Strand says: "Strand Lighting is pleased to participate in Super Saturday. We are particularly honoured to sponsor Ken Billington's keynote address."

Pace University will host the seminar sessions in its Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, opposite City Hall. The intensive programme will consist of a full day of training in stage lighting and equipment.

There will also be a manufacturers' showcase with technical personnel on h

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USA - Widely regarded the birthplace of the New York City punk rock scene, CBGB & OMFUG has served as the launch pad for the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith and countless others over its nearly 32 years. Now that the legendary East Village nightclub has recently been issued an eviction notice by its landlord, the Bowery Residents' Committee, CBGB is in the midst of several months of benefit shows to drum up public support and, hopefully, a legal decision that allows the club to remain in its original location at 315 Bowery Street.

The list of artists stepping up to assist the intimate 260-capacity room is quite impressive, including many old-school acts like the Misfits, Dead Boys, Circle Jerks, and The Exploited mixed in with newer talent like Ted Leo, Thursday, Chevelle, and numerous others. As expected, all benefit shows so far have been completely sold out with

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Spain - Pro3&Co supplied the sound system for the newly refurbished Casa Bonaventura Ferrer in Barcelona. Built in 1905 as a family house, this six story building was later bought by Deutsche Bank. It has now been completely restored, with the top three floors as offices. The large ground floor is now a reception area for functions, while the basement area has been transformed into a private bar and nightclub.

RCF Monitor speakers were specified for the project. In total, they used 34 MR55 and 14 MR88 in white plus 4 MSW subs. The designers had specified a lighting system that would "literally shed a new light on the building's interior" so any loudspeakers were required to blend in with the environment.

Pro3&Co's Xavi Oliver commented "We were very proud to be involved in such a prestigious project. In bringing the building back to life, the design team had set

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UK - Unitek Displays have supplied a 4 sq. metres V9 LED screen, with DVI processor to Gatecrasher for use outside the company's new £3m late-night development, Discotheque in Leeds. With a 17.5mm pixel pitch and impressive viewing angle, the V9 system is a direct descendant of Unitek's award-winning MS17 screen.

Gatecrasher managing director, Simon Raine, said the idea of beaming moving images out on the Leeds City Centre Loop came to him once he realised that 12,000 cars drove along the road every day. "You drive through London, New York and Tokyo and you get hit by moving images everywhere. It's a good form of advertising, particularly in the current climate where local authorities are clamping down on printed material being handed out. We needed a new idea, and this is it."

His production team reviewed the market alternatives, and many of the routes they pu

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UK - Following the popularity and professionalism of last year's show, Stage Electrics once again worked with Dave Roxburgh and his team at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) to present the Stage Electrics Tradeshow in Cardiff on 5 October. This year there was almost a 40% increase in the number of visitors. The RWCMD Bute Theatre was transformed with the help of a team of hardworking students. The students' work is assessed and contributes towards one of four production placement grades for the second year of their studies.

Stage Electrics' major suppliers were on hand to demonstrate their latest products and services. Exhibiting at the show were Martin highlighting their new MAC700, Rosco / DHA whose stand was manned by Ron Knell and Steve Ramos on his inaugural exhibition for Rosco, Zero88, Strand, ETC, Pulsar, Selecon, RCF, Audio-Technica, Sennheiser, Lee Fil

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UK - One of the UK's longest established audio product manufacturers has announced the sale of its business to new owners. Stockport-based Formula Sound - which manufactures a wide range of mixers and noise control equipment - has been acquired by London-based General Electronics Services (GES) Ltd.

The sale comes 33 years after the company was established by Tony and Sandra Cockell. However, it does not mark Tony and Sandra's exit from the business. "We are delighted to say that both Tony and Sandra are going to stay with Formula Sound and that the company is to continue unchanged," says Barry Penaligon of GES, who will now take up the position of General Manager with Formula Sound.

"Sandra and I felt it was time to bring some new blood into the company, and the plans which GES has for the future of Formula Sound form a natural continuation of all the work we h

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UK - Barco received the Manufacturer of the Year Award at the 2005 AV Awards ceremony held in London last week. Barco collected the award for its work, in conjunction with Innovative Design and rental partner XL Video, in designing and creating the MiSphere LED modules for U2's Vertigo tour.

The judges stated that Barco's technological innovation and the way it worked with the U2 tour designers to develop MiSphere was a good example of a manufacturer working with its clients to develop the market as well as an engineering feat.

Lee Spencer from XL Video comments: "The experience of working with Barco on this project was refreshing, as their professionalism, dedication and commitment to every aspect of the MiSphere 's production was inspiring."

Stephan Paridaen, President of Barco's Media and Entertainment division adds: "For the U2 tour, we have worked

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China - The 4th Music China and 3rd Prolight + Sound Shanghai open this Wednesday - 19 October - at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre in Pudong, Shanghai.

Music China will house around 750 manufacturers and suppliers of musical instrument and accessories. Prolight + Sound Shanghai, with around 170 exhibitors, will show a good range of pro-audio and specialist lighting equipment. Together the events are expected to attract well over 35,000 retailers, wholesalers, dealers, distributors and musicians.

Music China 2005 will house "the largest offering of musical instruments and accessories to be found anywhere in Asia". As well as national pavilions from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Taiwan, Spain and the UK, some of the world's leading names in MI will be at the show.

Prolight + Sound Shanghai will feature exhibitors from eleven countries & regions, includ

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Poland - Located in the heart of Warsaw, the InterContinental Warszawa hotel provides an architectural landmark as one of the highest buildings in the city. It has 326 guest rooms and suites, and 75 residential suites, all of which fully equipped with the latest technology. In addition, there are three restaurants and two bars, and eleven banqueting rooms with room for 700 guests.

The hotel has installed the Bosch Praesideo Voice Alarm System. Most of the installation work was carried out by local reseller, ANB which has been operating in Poland since 1992. A spokesman for Bosch said: "IEC60849 certification and compliance with the even more stringent Polish regulations underscore Praesideo's high standards.

Praesideo demonstrates flexibility and user-friendliness in several ways. It allows the hotel to route messages to one or more zones, depending on the emergency situa

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Finland - Martin's new MAC 700 profile spot debuted at the recent IAAF World Track and Field Championships, the world's largest sporting event this year, held at Helsinki's Olympic Stadium.

Lighting designer Jussi Kallioinen used 34 of Martin's new 700W fixtures for the Opening Ceremony on 6 August, alongside a host of other Martin equipment including loads of MAC 2000s (135 Wash, 68 Profiles and two Performance fixtures), eight MAC 600 washlights, 54 Atomic strobes (24 with Atomic Colors) and 24 Jem ZR33 Hi Mass foggers. Other fixtures used by Kallioinen included Studio Due City Colors, ETC Source Four profiles, and Lycian and Strong Gladiator followspots, while control was looked after by a pair of Wholehogs. All the Martin gear was supplied by Eastway Sound & Lighting of Helsinki through Lightinen Ltd - Martin Scandinavia's sole distributor in Finland.

Kallioinen, lighting designe

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UK - Slingco has installed the largest Cablenet tensioned wire grid system in the world to date at the newly refurbished Bournemouth International Centre (BIC). The 2,500sq.m installation, covering the entire roof space of the BIC's main Windsor Hall was part of a £22 million refurbishment project for the building, undertaken by construction contractor Warings for Bournemouth City Council.

It expands the seated capacity of the Windsor Hall to 4,500 and the standing capacity to 7,200, making the BIC a truly world class multipurpose venue suitable for all types of productions - from conference to arena sized stage shows. The Cablenet installation pips Slingco's previous world record, held by the IFEMA venue in Madrid, by approximately 100sq.m. The installation was completed in just seven weeks.

The Cablenet, which uses 36 miles of steel cabling, is an elegant, practical solution

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North America - Martin Professional Inc, the wholly owned subsidiary of Martin Professional A/S, has been appointed the exclusive distributor in North America for the BigLite product series. BigLite products feature high powered Xenon lamp sources in a single arm moving head format and is the most technologically advanced large format intelligent xenon fixture on the market today. This revolutionary fixture was developed and is manufactured by ZAP Technology in Paris, France.

Available for immediate delivery, the BigLite 4.5 offers lighting designers real-time color mixing and diffusion with electronic strobe effects and energy saving standby modes - improving bulb life, fan noise, and heat output. The fixture will generate a spot to wash effect three times per second and moves effortless at speeds up to three times faster than the competition. The space-aged plastic shells are

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UK - PSCo were awarded the AV Award for Rental Company of the Year at the ceremony in London last week. The judges commented: "PSCo's commitment to technical training and industry certification, allied to its use of customer surveys and performance measurement, helped it win this category - as did its introduction of new products to the trade rental sector."

Stuart Holmes, Director of PSCo added: "The 2004/2005 period for PSCo has seen a complete change in our business strategy which has set us apart as an innovative and service led company. The CASVP Gold Award recognised the work the whole team has put in to improve their technical knowledge and this award is a brilliant accolade for all their work this year."

PSCo will be showcasing its whole portfolio at Tech Event 2005 held at Reading Football Stadium Conference Centre on October 27.

(Jim Evan

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