Australia - One of the most watched television programmes in Australia, the award-winning AFL Footy Show, delighted its audience recently with a flawless live broadcast of its 2006 Grand Final edition with the aid of LED video technology supplied by Lighthouse Technologies.

An estimated national audience of over 1.49 million viewers tuned-in to watch the show's 2006 AFL Grand Final broadcast which aired on Australia's Channel 9 (GTV-9) television network last month.To mark the occasion, the network created a spectacular studio set, located at the Rod Laver Arena in the heart of Melbourne's city centre.

As part of the set design, over 130 Lighthouse LED video panels were strategically deployed around the stage to create a number of R4, R10 and R16i/o high-definition video displays which were used to project vibrant images of the event. This included the showcasing of foo

The Netherlands - As the countdown to ISE 2007 continues to gather pace, the show organisers have today announced that Russound, a leading supplier of multiroom audio-video systems, multichannel amplifiers, and loudspeakers, is to sponsor a lounge dedicated for European distributors to network with their resellers.

Russound has teamed up with the show organisers at ISE to sponsor this unique offering. Situated in Hall 1 at the Amsterdam RAI, access to this lounge will be free of charge to all distributors and specially invited resellers. This new initiative offers distributors and resellers a chance to network in a quieter atmosphere and to allow intensive one to one discussions away from the bustle of the exhibition floor. Complimentary refreshments will be provided throughout the day.

Jon Le Blanc, director International Division for Russound says: "This is a pivotal st

UK - Flux Events staged and production managed the recent Secret Policeman's Ball at the Royal Albert Hall for Amnesty International, working in close collaboration with TV producers, Tiger Aspect.

The charity event featured Eddie Izzard, Russell Brand, Chevy Chase, Seth Green, Dylan Moran, The Mighty Boosh, Graham Norton, John Culshaw, Al Murray, Andrew Maxwell, plus live music from Natalie Imbruglia, The Magic Numbers and The Zutons.

"The design brief was to produce a simple and memorable set that effectively communicated the Amnesty message" says event producer John Farquhar- Smith. Two large LED screens flanked the organ; a satellite stage in the shape of amnesty's logo and large projection screen was added at gallery level for those sitting behind the satellite stage to see the faces of those performing on it.

The satellite stage at the centre of the au

UK - As the 'convergence' between lighting and video becomes ever more integrated, UK rental house XL Video, supplied 76 VersaTube LED lighting fixtures and a Catalyst digital media server system to the final leg of Maximo Park's A Certain Trigger Tour.

Lighting designer Stevie Marr specified the VersaTubes and the Catalyst, with the Tubes also forming the main architectural element of the performance space upstage of the band and stretching right out to the sides of the stage. The VersaTubes were attached to 18 vertical sections of A-type trussing - four per tube - clamped to the two onstage chords of the truss.

Marr produced all the video content used to drive the VersaTubes himself, as part of his masters degree in Graphic Design (specialising in Interactive Media) at the Arts Institute of Bournemouth.

The Maximo Park tour was project managed for XL by Jo Beirne, a

UK -Though it is still over ten months away, PLASA07 has got off to an amazing start with applications for space beating all previous records. To date, just six weeks after the 2006 event closed on a massive high, over 60% of the show space has been applied for and further applications for space are coming in daily.

On the back of the success of PLASA06, many companies have increased their stand size and several have literally doubled their space, setting PLASA07 on course to be the major event of next year.

Further new developments for PLASA07 will also bolster its appeal: the full management of the show has been taken on by PLASA - who recently launched an Events Division to support this move - making it one of the few shows actually owned and run by the industry.

Along with the change of management comes a change of look as the show is moving onto one level and expanding

Russia - The RUK university in Mytischi just outside Moscow has recently taken delivery of an InnovaSON Sy48 digital mixing console for its new multipurpose venue.

The console was supplied and installed by StudiTech, InnovaSON's Russian distributor which, as well as its distribution wing, also has a thriving contracting department that offers engineering and acoustic design, installation, servicing, training and consultancy services.

The university venue is designed to be a truly multipurpose space that will stage concerts, conferences, and AV presentations as well as acting as a TV bridge for video conferencing with other university facilities in Russia. The keyword was flexibility, and that was what dictated the choice of console, explained StudiTech's Nikita Stepanov. It also explained the slightly unusual configuration of the Sy48 where StudiTech opted to house all the I/O

UK/Holland - Large format projection specialists E//T//C UK is supplying 12 PIGI projectors and crew to production company Sightline for a series of major concerts by Dutch superstar Marco Borsato.

The projectors are creating an image covering a large rear cyc measuring 70 metres wide with a 12 metre drop for the multi-platinum selling artist, who is currently playing a sold-out 10-show run at Arnhem's Gelredome stadium. The enormous production has consumed 55 trucks worth of gear across all departments and will have been enjoyed by over 350,000 people by the end of the run.

E//T//C UK is once again working with scenic and visual designer Bart Clements, who has created the show's production design in collaboration with Stefaan Desmedt. This is based on a multi-layered architectural montage of complimentary and contrasting video and projected images.

E//T//C UK's Ross Ashton

France - At this year's Paris Motor Show, Lighthouse Technologies' R6 6mm LED screens added impact to the stands of Porsche, Nissan, Fiat and General Motors among others.

One of the most eye-catching stands what that of Porsche, which featured three R6 screens each in a 7 x 5 panel configuration. Two of the screens were used as portrait format backdrops, while the third was angled above the right hand upright screen and showed footage of the sky to create the illusion of the car, positioned directly in front, actually driving along a winding country lane.

"Car shows are always a spectacular affair," says Lighthouse managing director Mark Chan. "Each year the technology involved in the manufacture of vehicles becomes more sophisticated and the way in which companies market their products has become equally technologically advanced. LED screens are not only equal

UK - 5 Star Cases has supplied a selection of Tour Grade 'specification' trunks to Paragon Projection, specifically to house their stock of Pioneer PDP-50MXE 50 inch plasma screens. The cases are finished in a striking Royal Blue laminate.

The usual construction and hardware characteristics found in Tour Grade include 12mm birch ply, together with large recessed butterfly catches and sprung handles. Internally, polyethylene foam supports ensure complete equipment protection. Additional compartments have been designed into the base to allow for the storage of matching speakers, plus mounting brackets and other accessories.

Mark Davies of Paragon Projection says, "We've been using 5 Star for about 18 months now and have given them some tough projects to handle in that time - and they just keep coming back with excellent innovative design and build solutions."

(Jim Ev

UK - Large format projections specialists E//T//C UK created a 150 metre wide high-impact image across 350 metres of water onto Caernarfon Castle for a massive son et lumière event, Merlin's Magic Quest, a show celebrating Welsh history, heritage and community.

The event follows on from a pilot project staged in 2004, in which E//T//C UK projected onto a portion of the castle walls from the bottom of the hill on the town side of the Seiont River. This time, the projections - fed by five Pigi 6Kw projectors with double rotating scrollers - filled the entire side of the castle including three towers and two curtain walls facing the water - and were beamed from across the far side of the river.

The brown stone surface was a challenging surface on which to project, but the Pigi's cut through spectacularly, despite the long throw distance.

The 35 minute show involved over

The Netherlands - The Interactive Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance (IMCCA) will be hosting a Collaborative Conferencing Pavilion at Integrated Systems Europe 2007, which opens on January 30th 2007 in Amsterdam.

The Pavilion is designed for companies to showcase solutions and technologies in video conferencing, audio conferencing and data/web conferencing in a dedicated area. The pavilion will encompass a presentation room where participating companies will also have the opportunity to be included in the scheduled programme of seminars to visitors.

Carol Zelkin, executive director at IMCCA states, "Any form of business communication including business conference calls, web conferencing and video conferencing is a key market that unites the corporate business, IT and AV industries. By working together, Collaborative Conferencing can create the perfect plat

UK - For the sixth consecutive year, London-based event services company PSL has enabled the master coiffeurs of British hairdressing to show off their intricate skills at the Salon International exhibition at London's ExCeL.

The masterclasses of Vidal Sassoon, Trevor Sorbie and Tim Hartley provided the big draw to Salon Live, where, for £90 a ticketed session, hairdressers from around the world could watch their scissor-work on three giant screens in a purpose-built theatre, designed by PSL.

The auditorium featured a flat stage with catwalks, dominated by three 14' x 10.5' screens, coupled with double-stacked Barco ELM R12 projectors. PSL provided a 4-camera PPU to capture every detail of styling technique and relay it to the screens. Over three days of special events, the theatre also hosted presentations on products and techniques from leading brands in the hair indus

Austria - Austrian performance art company Lawine Torrèn used the natural beauty of the Danube Valley as a vast backdrop for Leviathan, an unusual piece of theatre. Robust Lighthouse Technologies outdoor LED video panels were deployed demonstrating the successful integration of art, nature and technology.

Leviathan - staged in association with the Austrian Army - took place at various scenic locations along the valley. The story is based on the spread of the philosophical ideas of Thomas Hobbes and seamlessly combines art and technology to create an exciting choreographic deployment of heavy military machinery and people. This was interweaved with film and photographs of local history, all delivered from a huge Lighthouse R19 19mm LED video wall built on a military ferry, which cruised up and down the Danube.

The screen with dimension 8.5 x 6.4m (55sq.m) was con

UK - One of the UK's leading media agencies WWAV Rapp Collins recently sensed that they had not upgraded their multimedia infrastructure since moving into their impressive Riverside Building in Hammersmith eight and a half years ago.

"The whole experience is contained in our four showcase rooms, where our pitch work and presentations take place," said Group IT manager, Darren Watts. "The need for a new infrastructure was driven by our senior management." At the same time, he said, in order to impress clients, ease of use of any new system was of paramount importance."

A Plus Services were awarded the contract largely on the strength of work their project manager Martin Cowling had undertaken previously on the third floor of the building for one of the incumbent companies. "I decided that if the engineering and services side measured up, then A Plu

UK - Vision Systems has announced that its PA/VA brand - Millbank - is initiating a major product development strategy aiming to launch a new series of Millbank products in 2007.

With the legislation re: RHOS and WEEE coming into force from July 2006 an assessment of the current products confirms that the best course of action is to withdraw products that do not meet these requirements. The costs of meeting these requirements was so substantial that Millbank has taken the brave step of concentrating the time of its engineers on its future developments rather than re-building the old products to meet these legislative issues.

Millbank will fulfill its duty to all its end users with their present technologies and is therefore committing to support these systems for up to seven years.

Millbank's sales director, Neil Voce says: "We're very excited about the new technologies

UK - James Ussher wanted to produce something totally different on the dancefloor at Oxford's most popular clubbing destination - The Bridge - when he was asked to co-ordinate a recent technical revamp. His decision to do this with Element Labs VersaTiles, supplied by Projected Image Digital has resulted in the first UK club installation of the product.

Ussher and his company Ussher Productions have been capacity, independently owned venue for some time. He keeps a keen ear and eye to the ground vis-a-vis industry trends, aiming constantly to keep The Bridge one step ahead in terms of looking, sounding and feeling interesting, fresh and contemporary.

The dancefloor now features three sections of VersaTiles a 6 x 1m strips of VersaTiles along the end wall of the dancefloor, flanked by two, 2m by 0.5m strips on the side walls. Ussher specified, designed and installed this new sc

USA - On October 19, the much-anticipated international communications standard E1.17 Architecture for Control Networks (commonly known as ACN) received certification from ANSI (the American National Standards Institute), achieving the last needed step in its full ratification process. The Board of Directors of ESTA (Entertainment Services and Technology Association) approved ACN on October 5, 2006. The Control Protocols Working Group and the Technical Standards Committee of ESTA approved the new standard on July 15, 2006.

Like DMX, ACN allows equipment from different manufacturers to operate together and function seamlessly within the same control network. Unlike DMX, ACN works over Ethernet, using Internet standards, greatly increasing opportunities for product innovation and performance. ACN has already arrived in lighting control systems. Manufacturers like ETC debuted ACN-e

UK - XL Video UK is supplying FOH scenic video projection and via Blink TV a three camera PPU for the Scissor Sisters UK arena tour - the first time the band have featured video incorporated into their live show.

The hi-octane pop show is characteristically action-packed with flamboyance. Into this mix, video director Phil Woodhead is bringing his own unique touch of "videosyncrasity".

The pressure was on for Woodhead to come up with something, new, original and non-conventional in terms of IMAG aesthetics, which is beamed onto two 16 x 12 ft side screens via Barco SLM R12+ projectors. The band were very specific that they didn't want to see themselves onscreen during the show, and neither did they want the audience looking at a TV.

The Sony D50 cameras are stationed at FOH and two in the pit on tripods. There's two mini-cams onstage which are clamped into a variet

UK - London-based event services company PSL has been taking advantage of the surge in popularity of the recently refurbished Roundhouse; in a single 10-day period, the venue staged three significant entertainment awards shows, and PSL was on hand each time to provide visual display technology - for the BT Digital Music Awards, the British Academy Video Game Awards, and the Vodafone Live Music Awards.

Staged by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), the British Academy Video Game Awards ceremony was nominated by PSL's Pod Bluman as the most technically adventurous of the three events. Working to a brief from producer Lucy Smail of West Design & Production, PSL was able to create projection in the round for the first time, exploiting the Roundhouse's unique architecture to build a 300 degree screen, using a central cluster of projectors suspended from a speciall

UK - When in late 2003 STV (part of SMG plc) decided to vacate its cramped city centre location in Cowcaddens in favour of the new Pacific Quay development overlooking the River Clyde, great care had to be given to the design and ergonomics of the new facility.

The task facing the station as it relocated, would be replacing 120,000sq.ft with just 65,000sq.ft of real estate, into which they would force an expanded infrastructure.

Project director, Tom Gallagher and head of broadcast technology, Gary Welsh, weighed up their options - knowing that in applying advanced connectivity via a Cat6 copper fibre cabling infrastructure they had the opportunity to future-proof the facility at the dawn of the new era of high-definition.

The plan for Pacific Quay was to allow offices and newsrooms to intermix with post-production, dubbing/editing suites and rest areas, while included in th

The Netherlands - In the early 1990s, the city of Almelo in The Netherlands anticipated the volume of traffic on its roads would significantly increase. The solution they decided to implement to allay the problem is a demonstration of both forward thinking and innovation.

At the behest of traffic management specialist Vialis, part of the VolkerWessels group, Dutch system integration specialist Hecla Professional Audio & Video Systems were called in to develop a full colour city DRIP - Dynamic Route Information Panels - on Almelo's main arterial roads. Lighthouse LED video screen was chosen as the display solution.

On 13 of October 2006 a 4 x 2 panel 25mm Lighthouse screen, measuring 4.88 metres wide by 1.82 metres high, was set up on the Henrietta Roland Holstlaan. This LED screen was the latest addition to this system that is designed to manage both existing traffic and futur

UK / Italy - AIM listed Screen Technology has announced a major commercial order with Sambers Italia SPA - Hantarex, a leading manufacturer and supplier of flat screen displays.

Under the terms of the initial €1.7 million deal, Sambers Italia SPA - Hantarex, which is based in Milan, Italy will purchase Screen Technology's proprietary ITrans tile components which it will use to create high resolution modular displays and supply them into its own customer base. Sambers Italia SPA - Hantarex is anticipating a significant increase on this initial order during 2007.

The ITrans modular system offers customers displays that can be configured to any size or aspect ratio without any compromise on image quality simply by seamlessly bolting together modules. Incorporating the features of Screen Technology's standard large format displays - high resolution, high brightness and image qua

UK - Advanced Audio & Vision Ltd (AAV) has completed the latest phase of an audio visual project for BBT Thermotechnology UK in Worcester.

Part of the Bosch Group, BBT (better known for its Worcester, Bosch Group brand) is the largest supplier of heating products in Europe, with an estimated turnover of approximately €2.5 billion. Around 1,800 personnel work for the UK division, many at the headquarters, based in Worcester.

Last year, as part of a £3.5m expansion project, the company commenced work on building an 'Energy Atrium' to showcase high efficiency and renewable energy products, as well as develop meeting room and conference facilities. By the time AAV Ltd were invited to take over the project at the start of the year, the AV fit out had become something of a fast track proposition. Tasked by BBT's IT and Network Project administrator, Gary Whenman with equippin

Eastern Europe - Over 400 visitors attended four ISE Roadshow events in Eastern Europe which concluded at the Istanbul Hilton last week. The organisers reported that attendee levels exceeded all expectations and the events attracted positive and enthusiastic comments from both visitors and sponsors alike.

Mike Blackman, ISE managing director was delighted with the results, which justified the decision to take this event beyond the existing European frontier. "Attendance was excellent and initial feedback has been extremely positive. We had visitors who came ready to talk and were prepared to do business. They brought with them an optimistic approach to the exciting opportunities in the AV and electronic systems industry. These events have demonstrated to us how influential and exciting the Eastern European and Turkish markets are for our industry. In every location attendee

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