"When we first introduced the original RC4Magic system in 2007," says James David Smith, president and chief designer at RC4, "we brought the cost of wireless dmx dimming below the $1000 threshold for the first time. With 15 years of RC3 and RC4 experience behind us, RC4Magic performance has been excellent, but we did hear one complaint over and over again."
Users didn't like the bright yellow labeling. A design decision that helped the product stand out at tradeshows and demonstrations also made it stand out where it shouldn't - inside props and set pieces on stage.
In 2008, the company released RC4Magic Series 2 with purple labels. "Problem solved, I thought," said Smith, "but I was wrong."
RC4 Black Magic labels are darkish gray. And underneath those nice new labels, inside more attractive and sturdy cases, are a host of improvements and new features.
All RC4 Black Magic wireless dimmers are now fully protected against overloading and overheating. "These two safe-guards are interlinked and very fast acting," explains Smith, "making it virtually impossible to permanently damage a dimmer. Our larger dimmers have provided this protection for years, but we struggled with ways to reliably squeeze it into a very small space. Now, with RC4 Black Magic, even the tiny little DMX2dim is fully protected."
A growing international user base of customers in England, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Australia, Mexico, China, and Brazil has demanded world-voltage power supplies for the DMXio. RC4 Black Magic power adaptors operate from 100V to 240VAC, are UL, CE, TUV, and GS listed, and come with a variety of prong adaptors for use with outlets anywhere in the world.
The RC4 Black Magic DMXio also has an internal 9V battery clip. And, when running on battery power, the unit automatically preserves battery life by turning off after three minutes with no dmx data.
Until now, all RC4Magic systems have operated in the 2.4GHz band. RC4 now offers North American users the option to operate Black Magic in the 902-928MHz band. "Back in 1993, when I designed the RC3 system for Showboat, I chose the 900MHz band. Later, in an effort to make RC4Magic as small as possible, and to reach more customers, we moved up to 2.4GHz. But I have always been aware of the advantages of 900Mhz - signals propagate better, and the band is less crowded. Now that I've managed to shrink it down to Magic size, I strongly recommend considering 900Mhz where it's permitted," says Smith.
(Jim Evans)
