JSHAA News

I’ve been so busy the last couple months that I haven’t spread any news!

Here’s what I’m covering, just skip to what looks interesting!

1. ETC Discontinues Emphasis Control System
2. ETC Retires Expression & Express line of consoles
3. ETC Now shipping Unison DRd with SmartLink
4. Lots of lighting applications for the iPhone
5. Wybron’s Infotrace
6. New products at LDI 2008
7. Holiday Gobos from Rosco and Apollo

ETC announces the discontinuance of the Emphasis® Control System. We will no longer accept new orders or provide quotations for future sales of Emphasis 2D and 3D.

ETC Controls Product Manager Sarah Clausen states, “Emphasis provided a great bridge from our older conventional control systems to our next generation of lighting control offered in the SmartFade®, Congo™ and Eos® control systems. With the launch of the Ion® and Congo jr consoles, we believe we are now offering our customers a choice of flexible lighting controls ready for 21st century lighting technology.”

As always, ETC will continue to provide technical support and repair services for Emphasis Control Systems in the field.

Effective on July 18, 2008, ETC stopped accepting orders for the Expression® and Express™ line of control consoles. This includes the Expression 3, Insight™ 3, Express 250, Express 125, Express 72/144, Express 48/96, Express 24/48 and all Expression, Insight and Express Lighting Playback Controllers. As with all ETC products, they have reserved parts to service the units in the field for years to come.

ETC Marketing Manager David Lincecum comments: “The Expression family of consoles has had an incredible 22-year run, and thousands of these desks are running shows around the world. It should go without saying that ETC will offer the same high level of support we have always provided for these products for many years to come. We look forward to the continued success and growth of our incredible array of new consoles in the SmartFade®, Congo™ and Eos®/Ion® lines and we are already seeing that they will enjoy the same kind of success.”

Following a successful launch at Lightfair in May, we are now accepting orders for the newest SmartLink® product: the Unison® DRd!

The all-new Unison DRd dimming enclosure offers a large number of new features, while maintaining the quality and value you’ve come to expect from the Unison DR. The new DRd uses the same Sensor®-style dimming and switching modules you are familiar with, combined with an all-new dimming processor, to offer your projects the best dimming performance ever in a Unison product.

And now, with the new SmartLink Architectural Control Processor (S-ACP) becoming a part of the Unison family in DRd, you have access to plug-and-play architectural lighting controls and superior dimming in one package. Simply add a SmartLink Station Power Module, and you can use the 5- and 10-button SmartLink stations on budget-oriented projects, getting cost-effective preset and sequence control with powerful dimming capabilities and increased capacity.

Also available, the new SmartLink Timeclock brings low-cost, easy-to-use time-of-day control to ETC Unison®, Sensor®, and SmartPack® dimming, as well as to SmartSwitch™ relay systems.

With the increasing popularity of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, and the opening of their iTunes App Store, it was only a matter of time before apps were being written for our industry. Here’s a round-up of the ones that I’m familiar with along with a link to a recent article in Live Design.

Leading the way is Wybron with their LDI award winning Gel Swatch Library. I’ve got this one on my iPhone and use it frequently. It’s a great way to do a basic color comparison between manufacturer’s gels before pulling out the "analog" swatchbooks. Hopefully Wybron will add the Apollo gel catalog to the app soon….

Also from Wybron is the CXI Color Calculator and Infogate for the iPhone/iPod Touch. If you use the Wybron CXI unit, the CXI Color Calculator app is definitely a must-have, especially if you’re programming off-line. If you’re using Wybron’s Infotrace, then you’ll definitely want the Infogate for the iPhone app.

D!HV Productions has introduced two apps, the full-featured Light Calc and the free Light Calc Lite. With the free version, you enter some basic info about your fixture and calculate the beam spread. With the full-featured version, you can pick from a library of fixtures, beam spreads and lamps.

Still working with gear that uses dispswitches to calculate DMX addresses? Try the free app, appropriately named, Dipswitch. It does the math for you!

Gel Swatch Library		Light Calc Lite		Dipswitch

For more apps, check out the recent Live Design article.

Now that the ACN and RDM protocols are being implemented by equipment manufacturers, Wybron’s Infotrace looks like it should be implemented in any new facility design.

It’s a lot easier for you to read about it on Wybron’s site than for me to try to explain it. Take a look. It’s an amazing system.

Quick roundup of some of my favorite new products shown at LDI:

• Apollo’s MXR Color Mixing Scroller
• Apollo’s DMX Iris (coming soon!)
• Altman’s SPECTRA-CYC 100 LED cyc fixture
• Fun stuff from BlissLights
• City Theatrical’s new DMX Artificial snow hopper (coming soon)
• Rosco’s DMX Iris
• Rosco’s new double rotator, which uses EITHER DMX for control or dimmer power!! (to be released beginning 2009)
• Robe’s new DigitalSpot 3000 DT and DigitalSpot 7000 DT. Digital moving yoke projectors with RGBW LED lights!
• PixelRange’s PixelMax Wash
• Pathway’s Pathport Touring Edition
• ETC not only showed their award winning Unison Paradigm system, but also showed the beta release of SmartSoft v2.0. SmartSoft v2.0 now includes offline editing for the SmartFade line of consoles, not just the SmartFade ML! Download the beta release by joining the ETC user forums.

The good folks at Rosco were kind enough to provide some special content for our website. Just click on any of the buttons to open that page.

The buttons are also active on our Tech FAQs page.

Keep in mind that we do have the ImagePro and various gobo rotators in our rental stock. We’ve also got a full stock of Roscolux gel!

As always, for more information and pricing, contact your nearest JSHAA sales office:

Today is an “All Apollo” newsletter!

First up, an interesting article from KC Hooper, Apollo’s Product Specialist, about video projectors and color temperatures:

Alas! My backdrop’s got the BLUES!

Author: KC Hooper
Date: Friday, August 11, 2006

I use an InFocus X2 video projector for small projections on stage. The lamp is 6000 degrees Kelvin (or 6000k for you purists) and when used with normal incandescent stage lighting fixtures, there is a HUGE difference in color temperature.

When you run into this issue in your designs, you have two choices to try to match or blend the two sources. One, you can color correct the video projector to match the stage lighting. To match an Altman Shakespeare, I use an AP 2120-1/2 CTO and AP7900 Kiss Me Tint on the video projector to match the warmer leko. This would also bring the projector closer to the other stage lights. Or two, you can also consider “cooling off” the stage to match the cooler color temperature of the projector. While this can be a fairly complex design solution and in the case of some very high output projectors that can toast gel, it may be your only option.

To match the various color temps of the projectors (discharge lamps change color temperature with age and ambient temperatures), you can start with the color correction filters in the Apollo Gel book (AP2000 through AP2280). Go into the light lab (or dark room) and start trying various gels and combinations of colors until you find a good match.

Next on the Apollo news front is the release of Gel Packs.

Apollo now offers Gel Packs. Twelve, 12″x12″ assorted color filter sheets inside a re-sealable plastic bag with a colorful graphic slip sheet including gel tips and ideas. Four different sets available. Each pack is priced at $21.95.

And last, but certainly not least, for a limited time, Apollo is offering its customers the opportunity to upgrade from old technology to new technology and save big in the process.

Trade in those old, worn out, used and abused Roto-Q gobo rotator products for any Smart Move product and receive a 25% discount off current Smart Move prices. They’ll even extend the trade-in offer to any comparable competitive product that is no longer making the grade.

Take advantage of this opportunity to replace that aging rotator. The time is right.

This offer is only good until September 30, 2006.

Contact one of our sales associates for details.

Don’t forget, LDI is coming up in October! Let us know if you need passes to the tradeshow floor. If there’s any product you’re interested in seeing while you’re there let David know; he’ll be there, and will make sure you see everything you need!