UK - PSCo has launched the PSCo Training Academy, a new series of training courses designed to empower its customers to know more, and arm attendees with the skills to take advantage of the latest technologies. The first course completed in June was the Absen Certified Engineer (ACE) accreditation for rental partners.

As the only Absen authorised training house in the UK, PSCo trained 32 live events customers over a two-day period on product features, application scenarios, control systems, maintenance and troubleshooting. On completion of the training course, attendees took a test to be awarded Absen Certified Engineer status.

Ram Malocca, director of CMT Events, attended the course and commented, "I can't extoll enough how professional the training was and of course the training personnel. The PSCo team spent all day with us, and were excellent. They were able to answer

UK - West Midlands-based Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) returned to Glastonbury as part of the Arcadia Spectacular, for which the company provided Panasonic projection onto the legs of the giant spider.

The massive construction lurked ominously on what is now a designated area of the site set aside for the Arcadia team's immersive show. This year the new Arcadia 'Metamorphosis' show - complete with awesome technical production, radical aerial stunts and the very best dance beats - was one of the most talked-about and enjoyed events of the Festival.

After working with Arcadia last year, MD Matthew Boyce commented, "We were delighted to be back at Glasto this year and working with Arcadia's hugely ambitious new show and their wonderful team of people - all of whom ensured that the 'spectacular' concept thrilled and entertained record breaking crowds each night."

The

UK - Bristol-based lighting and visuals specialist Fineline Lighting renewed their long term working relationship with Glastonbury - at least 24 years to date - and supplied lighting for the Acoustic Stage, Astrolabe Theatre, Cabaret and Circus venues and also the WOW stage in the Silver Hays dance area, featuring some of the best underground DJs.

Says MD Rob Sangwell, "We all love working on Glastonbury and imbibing the spirit of the festival, and are very proud of our history with the event. I have seen many changes over the years, all for the better. The excellent line-ups plus the clamour to perform and be part of the community makes it even more special."

Fineline has built up the décor element of the Acoustic Stage over the years and especially more recently to include lush red drapes, and masking around the stage and in the ceiling, which really enhance

USA - Continuing their work with some of the world's highest profile EDM artists, XL Video worked with DJ/Producer Bassnectar to light up Colorado's legendary Red Rocks Amphitheater with an abundance of LED, as well as supply control systems and crew for two shows in late May.

This is the fifth year Bassnectar has played at the renowned outdoor venue and production manager, Marc Immerman, contacted XL Video to ensure the video for the show would match the spectacular surroundings.

XL Video's touring projects director, Gareth Jeanne worked with Bassnectar's team to specify over 300 tiles of XL's ROE Visual MC-7 high resolution LED for the multi-surface stage design.

Mimicking the shrinking perspective of the venue, LED columns were arranged each 2 tiles wide, and 9, 8, 7 and 6 tiles high on each side of the stage.

Surrounding the performers, a 16x8 tile LED screen was flown

UK - Live video and production specialist Central Presentations Limited (CPL) has launched a new tablet and smartphone App version of their Black Book product catalogue.

It's been developed specifically for the fast moving world of live events and as a more convenient and environmentally friendly alternative to the 150 page printed rental catalogue which is renowned for its wealth of useful information including technical specifications and data for over 500 products, together with all the latest CPL hire rates.

The CPL App is designed to allow technicians, account handlers and production managers quick access to all the information they need wherever they happen to be - whether it's in the middle of a greenfield festival site, up a mountain or even in a regular venue or in their offices.

Says CPL's Matthew Boyce, "The book has been a huge hit and is well loved b

UK - Lighting designer, Tim Routledge, has employed a quantity of Ayrton MagicBlade-R and MagicPanel-R LED fixtures on Take That's Live 2015 tour.

One hundred and twenty-eight Ayrton MagicBlade-R LED fixtures and 54 MagicPanel-R units play a vital role in Routledge's design where they form an inherent part of the rig, delineating the outlines of production designer Misty Buckley's creative set design and providing a spectacular and versatile backdrop to the band centre stage.

Creative director, Kim Gavin, devised a show that exhibits a high degree of theatricality with artists performing across a large multi-level main stage that loops right out into the arena. Routledge's brief was to produce a very theatrical look in keeping with the design but overlaid with a huge "pop punch". "The MagicBlades certainly gave me this," he says.

Routledge outlined the ou

UK - Analog Way has announced a new partnership with the AV rental specialist company Paragon Projection in the UK. Effective 1 July, Paragon Projection will have Analog Way's LiveCore systems available for rental all over the UK.

Analog Way, based in the Midlands and Central London, provides high-end projectors and professional display equipment for exhibitions, conferences & training seminars. Paragon Projection is adding Analog Way's LiveCore series of Premium Presentation Mixers to their inventory. Several Ascender 16-4K and Ascender 48-4K units will be available for rental from 1 July.

Mark Davies, sales manager at Paragon Projection Ltd states, "We have been looking into investing in high-end switching equipment for a while now and when Analog Way launched their LiveCore series we realized it was the perfect solution. One of the key factors' when making our decision

Finland - In a different approach to indoor arena lighting, Finland's Hartwall Arena features an innovative LED video system integrated with its ice hockey rink. The arena, which is home to the Jokerit of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and Finland's National Men's Hockey Team, was recently modernized to enhance the fan experience with significant upgrades to its lighting, video displays and digital signage.

As part of the arena's modernization ice hockey rink equipment designer, manufacturer and supplier, Icepro OY, created a concept to integrate lighting within the stanchions supporting the rink's glass safety dividers. To realize their vision Icepro worked with Finnish A/V Integration firm, Studiotec, to develop a lighting design that included more than 940 of Martin Professional VC-Strip LED video fixtures.

The system is built into the stanchions between the glass divi

UK - Panasonic has launched a new series of glass-free 4K displays aimed at the rental and staging market.

The glass-free versions of the 98" and 84" LED LCD panels (TH-98LQ70L & TH-84LQ70L) sit alongside the company's existing large 4K displays. The decision to add the LQ70L models was based on requests from the rental industry for a lighter and brighter version, gained by the removal of the protection glass.

Like the existing models, the displays offer 3840 x 2160 resolution and include Panasonic's new generation of image enhancement technology, for fine, life-like images.

They have inbuilt 3D-LUT colour correction and 6-axis colour correction, a special latticed aluminium frame to resist twisting, while portrait orientation is also possible without any effect on the screen.

The displays can up-convert non-4K sources to a higher level of image quality and movin

Azerbaijan - A spectacular two hour opening ceremony featuring US pop star Lady Gaga, inspired by Azerbaijani culture and starring more than 6,000 athletes from 50 countries in front of 68,000 enthralled spectators, launched the inaugural European Games in Baku.

The Ceremony, held in Azerbaijan's ancient city Baku, featured the history of the nation, its paintings, poetry and industries represented by images and shape shifting scenes using special effects on the stage set designed as the shores of the Caspian Sea.

The opening ceremony is the latest in a long list of major ceremonies delivered by Creative Technology (CT) which includes the last three summer Games alongside Commonwealth, Asian and Arab Games in India and the Middle East. The opening also represented the culmination of over a years' work for Creative Technology in the negotiation, planning and ultimately delivery

UK - A.C. Video, a sales division of A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) - and the exclusive UK distributor for the Hippotizer media servers range - will be hosting a Hippotizer V4 UK Open House event on Friday 14 August 2015, in conjunction with the manufacturer at their headquarters in North London.

The occasion will showcase the new V4 range alongside other leading video brands available from AC-ET, including AViary Video Tools, Prolights, Luminex, Philips Signage Solutions and Christie Digital.

The informal event consists of a choice of morning (10:00am - 2:00pm) and afternoon (2:00pm - 6:00pm) classroom-style sessions providing hands-on training with the completely redesigned line of Green Hippo Hippotizer media servers running the new V4 software, which is designed to meet the demands of shows today and tomorrow. The previous Hippotizer V3 range received multiple awa

The Netherlands - Albert Deltour has been appointed commercial director at Creative Technology Holland.

Deltour's career has included senior roles at De Hallen Studios in Amsterdam, Backbone International, Natura Artis Magistra in Amsterdam and as founder and owner of the Amsterdam Convention Factory and the events communications agency; Deltour & Waerts.

"Throughout his impressive career Albert has proved to be an experienced practitioner and manager who fits in an organisation like Creative Technology," said Christ Elsten, managing director CT's Holland operation. "We are very excited that Albert is joining our company."

Albert Deltour added, "I am looking forward to working with Creative Technology. The company produces fantastic audiovisual projects around the globe many delivered from its Dutch base. The challenge for me - along with the CT coll

UK - PSCo, the trade only rental house and distributor of display products, has extended its rental offering, providing the only 3-2-1mm LED experience available in the UK.

Being introduced to the PSCo rental fleet are the Absen A1.9 and Absen A2. Both displays deliver higher resolution in a smaller display size, allowing a shorter viewing distance, and creating greater impact. The screens can be provided with hanging beams, or PSCo ProStack ground stack system included, or PSCo TrackStack, or custom mount options available on request.

"We are constantly striving to offer our trade partners the best possible choice and service," says PSCo managing director Stuart Holmes. "The 3-2-1mm LED Experience emphasises our commitment to offer our partners the very latest technology with the best possible trade support. Partners we have spoken to are already extremely exci

UK - Panasonic has launched a new hybrid lighting solution, which combines the functions of traditional lighting and video projectors, for use in retail, museums and restaurants.

The Space Player possesses both lighting and laser projection functions in a single spotlight-shaped design, which attaches to standard lighting rails via a single cable, to make installation and relocation easy.

The Space Player can project in all directions below its horizontal axis and can be used in conjunction with SD cards, PCs, and tablets for play back of contents. The use of a laser light source means 20,000 hours of maintenance free operation.

"Panasonic wants to create a new market of 'projection lighting' that utilises video for lighting," said Hartmut Kulessa, European marketing manager for projector products. "We see the Space Player creating appealing exhibits in museum

UK - Following a successful event at last year's festival, XL Video, working with technical producer, Nick Diacre, has once again produced a significant achievement in 180? live mapping for Shangri-La's Heaven Stage at the Glastonbury festival 2015.

The Heaven structure was built organically by Andrew Cross and his team, onsite at the festival, only a few days before the event, and the construction is different every year.

The wide, wooden structure consists of 419 tessellated triangles, which were mapped using photogrammetry and stitched into two composites - one a 2D map and a second 3D model.

XL's technical team, led by Christian Dickens, collaborated closely with Nick Diacre, and together they selected XL Video's Avolites Ai media servers for the project. Their plan was to explore Ai's abilities and to test its live mapping skills on an organic structure. In addition, th

India - Barco hosted its entertainment & corporate partner event in India on 25 and 26 June. Over 70 business partners gathered in Goa to get an overviews of the latest developments in entertainment and corporate visualization.

The Radisson Blu Resort Goa Cavelossim Beach traded its holiday atmosphere for one of hi-tech visualization and industry-leading projection. Throughout an action-packed two-day event, Barco offered its local business partners a series of workshops and hands-on product demos. "Staying abreast in a fast-evolving industry is not always easy," says Mandar Gupte, Barco E&C sales director. "Hence we took this opportunity to give our business partners a comprehensive overview of recent trends and new product launches."

Barco along with High End Systems turned the venue into a blank canvas onto which several of its newest solutions could shi

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) provided effects lighting and video projection for the British Racing Drivers' Club's (BRDC) annual British Grand Prix party at Silverstone racing circuit.

Staged every year - within the grounds of the BRDC Farm - as part of the F1 British Grand Prix weekend, the occasion attracts high-profile members and personalities from the world of motorsport. The main party on Saturday night is held in aid of Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and features an auction of motor racing memorabilia and experiences.

AC-ET, who are a Patron of the British Racing Drivers' Club's Rising Stars Programme, supplied indoor and outdoor effects lighting systems featuring nearly 200 fixtures - including some of the very latest LED technologies from Chroma-Q, ProLights and GLP. The company's in-house production manager, Andy Walne Smith, oversaw the project.

"O

USA - With winners chosen by the fans, the K-LOVE Fan Awards brings together the biggest names in Christian music, sports, books and movies. Held at the Grand Ole Opry House, the annual awards show is produced by Go Live Productions and each year has grown in both size and popularity. Production manager and show director Scott Moore strives to capture the spiritual significance of the evening through a dynamic yet functional lighting and video package which was supplied by Elite Multimedia.

"I've been involved with the K-LOVE Fan Awards since its inception three years ago and the design process for the show is all about function as opposed to form," began Moore. "There are a lot of specifics that we have to accommodate such as the production schedule of the Grand Ole Opry that we must work around, the artistic desires of the 20 bands that will be performing, , and

UK - Controllable LED specialist and design/manufacturing house Light Initiative (LI) is the creative force behind the bespoke LED structured screen on band of the moment Years and Years' UK tour and summer festival dates.

Commissioned by the band's lighting designer Squib Swain, the screen is based on the vibrant album artwork for their debut offering Communion. The striking image comprises lines branching and intersecting at different angles from a central 'Y' shape.

"As the album artwork is such a strong visual image, it was fairly obvious we had to create some sort of 3D version of it for the live shows," says Squib. "Light Initiative created a unique set piece that turned my vision into a reality. It makes such an impact with the crowd."

Light Initiative expanded the album cover outwards and extrapolated the lines to create a wider screen that

USA - If LA had a town square it would be Grand Park, 12 beautifully manicured acres in the middle of America's second largest city, where Angelenos gather to celebrate festivals and special occasions.

Not surprisingly, thousands of people from throughout Southern California decked for the most part in lavish red, white and blue stream into the park every Fourth of July to take in the city's largest rooftop fireworks display. This year, in addition to the pyrotechnics, a collection of 20 Next NXT-1 panels from CHAUVET Professional also tickled the eyeballs with an intensely bright and fast moving lighting display.

Kinetic Lighting of Glendale, CA positioned the moving LED panels on the truss structure at one of Grand Park's two music stages. Powered by 25 pixel-mappable RGBW LEDs, and producing razor sharp beams with an illuminance of 22,780 lux at 5 meters, the Next NXT-1 had

Germany - Engineering and automation specialist WIcreations designed and built the six moving video pods which are the major structural element of the current Herbert Grönemeyer tour, which features another innovative and interesting stage design by Gunther Hecker of Cue Design.

Grönemeyer's music and message for this tour is straightforward and uncomplicated, so Gunther's design was based on the Bauhausian principals of simplicity with clean lines and clear definition, all the time keeping the understated - and sometimes reluctant superstar - as the focus onstage.

The six pods (in the full rig format) are initially in their 'home position' in the roof and move to various different looks throughout the show - completely changing the dynamics of the stage space and also creating an impressive high-impact wow factor. The first time they come into their full vertical positions

UK - Calibre has launched its latest major innovation utilizing award-winning HQUltra single-channel 4K presentation switching performance technology.

The powerful HQView770 scaler-switcher utilizes in-house developed virtual-ASIC video processing technology that provides three functions in one product.

In Projection Mode, HQUltraWarp offers real-time adjustable 4K warp & blend for fast easy screen calibration.

In LED mode, HQUltra provides extremely powerful LED-optimized 4K scaling with a pixel-accurate algorithm that preserves image detail even with significant downscale, a key requirement for driving LED videowalls with good quality images.

In Presentation mode, HQUltraFast gives the user unprecedented switching speeds, changing visually instantly between input channels in 0.25 seconds. HQUltra technology promises to dramatically change current video scaling and switch

Europe - British electronica trio Years and Years are touring summer festivals and venues with an ingenious bespoke LED strip screen mapped by an Avolites Ai Infinity EX8 server.

The concept for the LED screen was the idea of Years and Years lighting designer Chris 'Squib' Swain. It reflects the cover artwork for the band's debut album Communion, with coloured branches of LED strips intersecting at different angles from a central 'Y' shape.

Years and Years have played some of the summer's biggest festivals, including Glastonbury, BST in Hyde Park, and T in the Park.

London-based controllable LED specialists Light Initiative created the screen. It is freestanding at almost 5m high and constructed in sections of LED which makes it easy to install, dismantle, and travelwith short festival turnarounds in mind.

"Avolites' Ai Infinity EX8 can take an LTC timecode inp

UK - Once again Green Hippo were invited down to Worthy Farm in Somerset by our compatriots at Bryte Design to join the John Peel Stage production team for this year's Glastonbury Festival.

This was the first Glastonbury visit for Hippotizer V4. For the production on the John Peel Stage, Hippotizer V4 drove video on nine vertical columns of LED, supplied by Vortex Hire along with their Hippotizer V4 Karst.

"After our recent investment into Hippotizer V4 we were excited to test drive our Karst Server at Glastonbury on the John Peel stage." said Matt Gourd of Vortex Hire

"Knowing that many of the acts would be broadcast live, we needed a stable media server solution to show content on our custom stealth LED screen setup. The LED strips were used as an eye-catching backdrop to this year's bands/artists and was received well by all."

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