JSHAA News

Hall Stage Limited, the 100-year-old British theatre rigging manufacturer, has joined forces with top US distributors and manufacturers to form “Hall Stage North America Incorporated”, and has commenced shipping selected ranges from its extensive catalogue of over 1,200 products.

Products will be available from stock via a network of high quality suppliers and installers across the continent from late March. Launching the venture at the USITT expo in Phoenix this month, HSNA announced the deal, with an initial roll call of 10 key dealers including John S. Hyatt & Associates, already confirmed. HSNA will be accepting applications for new dealerships until later this year.

Charles Haines, Hall Stage owner and UK CEO says: “We have been planning an entry into the North American market for over two years but could not have imagined such a positive response – the reception has been truly amazing. Our initial shipments have sold 100% in advance and we’re accelerating our production programme to meet the demand for these great quality, great value products.”

Hall’s theatre scenery flying systems, drape tracks and hoists have been installed in Canada since the 1950s, in venues such as the National Arts Center in Ottawa. Both Opera and Theatre stages have Hall Stage systems, which are described by David Ship, NACs technical director, as: “the ‘Rolls Royce’ of the counterweight rigging world…”

Rick Boychuk, who heads up the new venture adds: “We were drawn to the Hall Stage brand as we were continually seeing these superb products in everyday use. To be involved in this fantastic growth is unbelievable…and we’re all looking forward to some great opportunities ahead.”

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

ETC has published this statement regarding how Daylight Savings Time will affect their product line:

The United States has planned a change to its Daylight Saving Time (DST) observance beginning in 2007. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that DST will start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November. In 2007, the start and stop dates will be March 11 and November 4, respectively. These dates are different from previous DST start and stop dates. In 2006, the dates were the first Sunday in April (April 2, 2006) and the last Sunday in October (October 29, 2006). A listing of dates and a history lesson on DST can be found here: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html

Products that have time capabilities:

• Expression/Insight II/III Family, Express, and Obsession 1 do not auto change for Daylight saving. Please make any changes to time manually as required.
• Congo/jr, Emphasis servers, and Eos use the clock setting in embedded XP. Eos does not have the option to auto adjust for Daylight Saving Time and is already disabled. Once Eos develops real time events it will be a selectable option with user-defined dates. We suggest you disable the DST feature and manually change time as required.
• Obsession II and Unison auto change for Daylight Saving internally in its software. Here again we suggest you disable the DST feature and manually change time as required.
• For Global Time Settings in an ETC Net2 Networked System, please refer to the end of the Unison section.

Click on the following links for instructions to edit times in ETC products:

Congo/Congo jr

Emphasis

Eos

Expression 2/3 and Express Families

Obsession/Obsession II

Unison CME/CMEi and CMEd

For further assistance please contact ETC Technical Services at (800) 775-4382.

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