Gio fills the mid-range position in the Eos family, between Eos and Ion. It offers the power of full Eos functionality, but in a smaller footprint; it has already been used by programmer Andi Davis on the UK tour of Dirty Dancing, which recently started in Bristol.
Visitors to the ETC stand at the PLASA show queued for a demonstration of the desk, with many going away impressed at the desk's power and versatility; plus, the lower cost of the desk compared to Eos means more budget to spend on other aspects of the lighting, such as fixtures.
On display and available for demonstration were the new ultra bright, high colour, energy efficient Selador Desire LED fixtures - including the D40, D40XT and D60 lines, and the unique Studio for broadcast work. Desire is already earning high praise for its ability to blend beautifully with conventional tungsten colour and light in today's greener hybrid lighting rigs.
Desire was joined by Selador Classic in an LED fixture shoot out in the STLD demo area, in which fixtures from a number of manufacturers were compared to traditional tungsten and HID lighting. In addition, ITV Daybreak's lighting director Matt Carter held case study seminars, where he discussed his use of Selador Classic for the Daybreak studio.
New to ETC's Unison Mosaic controller range, and being demonstrated to stand visitors, was the wall mount Tessera Panel Controller with integrated 4.3" touchscreen interface. Capable of controlling 512 channels, it offers similar functionality to the Mosaic MSC1 Controller, but in a neat flush mount package and with Ethernet-based DMX output.
Also on display was a new addition to the ETC Sensor range: Sensor3. The Thru~Power modules, which allow free mixing of 'dim', 'switch', or 'manual bypass' on a circuit by circuit basis without replacing the hardware in the Sensor power system.
(Jim Evans)
