UK - 'James Valpy - The Hippotech' by Bruce Schwartz (Electrosonic SA's Entertainment Lighting Manager) . . .

"James Valpy's nickname is 'The Hippotech', but he's not a hi-tech game ranger. This South African born, English trained, lighting and video technician trots the globe providing stunning visuals with Green Hippo Media Servers. I caught up with James backstage at the Johannesburg leg of Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour.

"Born in Cape Town in 1988, James left South Africa for England when he was four. He studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and completed his BA (Hons) in Theatre Practice. James initially specialized in production lighting but soon gravitated to video as a medium. The knowledge of both proved invaluable.

"James was working as an associate to the production designer Tupac Martir, when he met Ed Prescott on the Be

Australia - Situated on level 3 of the Tattersalls Club, Doltone House Hyde Park is a new meeting and events venue boasting 5m high ceilings with an abundance of natural light via floor to ceiling spectacular windows and uninterrupted views of Sydney's Hyde Park.

The Hyde Park Ballroom is the main room which can be divided, via operable walls, into four smaller rooms, or any combination thereof, if required. The Manhattan and Avenue Rooms are smaller meeting spaces often used as pre-function rooms.

Fredon designed, supplied and installed all of the audio visual requirements for the venue working closely with inhouse AV company Microhire to design and develop a solution that would not only meet the needs of Doltone House's banquet staff but also Microhire.

When designing the system, Fredon took into account the venues main markets; weddings at the weekend and corporate events

USA - Two Avolites Media Ai Infinity 8 Servers and one Ai T8 server have powered the video mapping, projection, and LED screens for the Billboard Latin Music Awards in Miami - watched by more than 30 million people.

Avolites Media Developer Ciaran Abrams worked closely with US-based lighting design and media presentation company DMDS7UDIOS on the 2013 Awards, held at the 7,972-seat BankUnited Center.

"Avolites Media's Ai kit was used to run every bit of video that was seen at the event - including the projection on the triangles and the video mapping for the 4 LED Screens placed in unusual geometry around the stage. We also video mapped MiStrip Led Strips at the back of the stage and several thousand MiPix designed into the set," says Abrams. "There were multiple systems outputting to 10 HD projectors and 4 HD LED setups, all controlled from one lighting desk. T

UK - Avolites Media's industry-leading Ai Servers and Sapphire Media consoles have exhibited their flexibility and processing power handling multiple live input streams alongside playback of custom designed media content for this year's Secret Garden Party - main and second stages.

Almost 30,000 revellers attended the popular independent music and arts festival in Abbots Ripton, Cambridgeshire, to see headliners including Faithless, 2ManyDJs, and The Ladykillers.

Two Ai Infinity Servers with two black magic capture cards in each were stationed on the main stage (one for service, one backup) and controlled by the Sapphire Media console. A second Ai server was placed to serve the second stage.

"The festival organisers wanted something different from the standard wall of LED screens," says design company Immersive's Ralph Lambert, who was in charge of all main stage v

UK - Sennheiser has won the coveted Audio Installation of the Year at this year's AV Awards for its contribution to the audio system for the David Bowie is exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

This latest accolade follows hot on the heals of being honoured for Temporary Installation Project of the Year at the inaugural Pro Sound Awards for the V&A's fastest selling exhibition to date, David Bowie is which ran for five months between March and August this year. The exhibition was one of the museum's most successful exhibitions with around 312,000 visitors and pre-booked ticket sales reaching more than 67,000 prior to opening. The exhibition was the first international retrospective of the extraordinary career of David Bowie, exploring his creative processes as a musical innovator and cultural icon.

The sound experience was integral to the exhibition desig

UK - Christie reports that AVC Live, a leading technical production company based in the UK, have invested in a number of the latest Christie Mirage WU20K-J 3-chip DLP projectors and a Christie Spyder X20 video processor.

AVC Live provide production services to corporate clients, event agencies, production companies, PR & communications agencies, hotels and venues. The company's reputation is based on quality and experience. They propose, design, plan and execute innovative live event solutions across numerous sectors irrespective of size and scale.

For almost two decades AVC Live have had a close partnership with Christie (formerly with Electrohome). Past purchases have included many Christie Roadster HD10K-M projectors and Christie MicroTiles. Due to the tough environments associated with staging large events, quality and reliability are of prime importance to AVC Live, and

UK - PLASA secured a significant lobbying success last month when the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee published its report into 'Supporting the Creative Economy'. The Committee roundly endorsed PLASA's position regarding the Olympics 'No Marketing Rights Protocol'.

The report was the culmination of an inquiry which was launched just over a year ago with a call for evidence from the Committee, which is made up of MPs from across all political parties. PLASA made a detailed written submission as to how the creative industries can be better supported, with a particular emphasis on the value and importance of the Entertainment Technology sector. PLASA's evidence focussed on issues around allowing companies to promote their involvement in the Olympics, tax relief for apprenticeships, improving protection for intellectual property and helping SMEs in the sec

Germany - CT's recently introduced lightweight LED system has been used on three spectacular projects since its introduction in September.

The first application saw 363m2 installed as an LED ceiling for the Audi booth at the Frankfurt IAA car show. The ground-breaking stand design featured an inverted city with buildings, trees and other architectural elements suspended within the purpose built exhibit hall. The LED ceiling displayed graphical content representing traffic and movement on the roads between reflected tower blocks.

This project would have been impossible with any other LED product as the entire 363m2 system weighed less than four tonnes including purpose built super modules which allowed the display to be transported and installed in pre-fabricated sections each measuring 1.5m x 3m and weighing around 100kg.

Immediately following the Frankfurt show the system w

South Africa - An Avolites Titan Training Course was hosted at DWR Distribution's new premises in Laserpark, Johannesburg, from 21 to 23 October 2013. Due to high demand from rental companies in and around the Durban area, the same workshop will be held in KwaZulu Natal from 28 to 30 October.

24 delegates attended the Johannesburg event and DWR Distribution's Nick Britz, presenter of the Avolites Titan Training, was delighted with the response.

Topics covered included workspaces, patching, groups, controlling fixtures, palettes, playbacks, basic timings, chases, shapes and running the show.

Interest in the training event was heightened thanks to Avolites' Emma Thompson presenting a similar seminar in South Africa in 2012. As Britz and his assistant Gareth Chambers regularly train Avolites users on a one-on-one basis and provide daily technical support, the workshop was infor

UK - Window on Wild Lindisfarne, run by the Holy Island Community Development Trust, presents visitors with an introduction to the island's wildlife. In particular, it highlights the migration of light-bellied brent geese to the island every year. The building itself offers a unique vantage point to observe the geese and other birds through a 7m wide full height window.

With the need for the display to include audio visual content, exhibition designers Conibear Design Associates (CDA) commissioned Integrated Circles to find the best solution.

Given the large amount of light streaming in through the large north facing window, Integrated Circles' technical director, Simon Beer, opted for a high grade front-projected dnp Supernova Blade, provided by the Danish manufacturer's UK distributors, Paradigm AV. He explained, "The choice was really driven by contrast ratios a

The Netherlands - Vivitek Corporation has announced four new projectors to the D5000 range, which was introduced in 2012. The large screen projections are suited to the simultaneous display of video conferencing, presentations and graphic data such as charts and graphs.

The Vivitek D5010 features native XGA resolution, the Vivitek D5110W comes with WXGA and the D5380U with WUXGA resolution. The Vivitek D5190HD offers Full-HD resolution. With a contrast ratio of 2000:1 and a brightness ranging from 4,700 to 6,000 ANSI Lumens, the new D5000 models effortlessly light up boardrooms, auditoriums as well as conference halls. Due to the integration of the Texas Instruments DLP BrilliantColor chip technology, they also all deliver crystal-clear pictures, with deep blacks and rich engaging colours.

The new models are designed with the installer in mind. The four large venue projectors

India - London based projection artist Ross Ashton designed and specified the large format projection elements of a new permanent immersive multi-media spectacle in Delhi, at the Guru Tegh Bahaur Memorial on the NH1 highway at Singhu Border.

Ashton and Himanshu Sabharwal, his business partner in TricolorIndia, were commissioned by the Delhi Tourism & Transportation Development Corporation (GTDB) to create the piece, for which Sabharwal was the overall show director.

Their brief was to create an immersive experience that had a universal spiritual appeal to people of all faiths, and that could work harmoniously with the new age minimalist architecture of the monument.

TricolorIndia delivered the entire technical infrastructure involved including projection, lighting and audio. Hailed as the largest installation currently in India, the challenge was to ensure that the substanti

UK - Each year, before the start of the official NBA season, a selection of friendly pre-season games are played. This year, ahead of the season opener on 29th October, eight international games have been held in Europe, Asia and South America.

XL Video, working for event producer, STS Touring Productions, supplied LED screens for the Oklahoma City Thunder v Philadelphia 76ers game at the Phones4U Arena in Manchester on 8 October.

The four flown screens were situated in the centre of the arena, allowing the audience on all levels to have a great view of the fast-paced on-court action. The screens not only showed live action from the courtside cameras, but displayed score graphics, player profiles and other game information.

XL Video selected Pixled F-6 LED for the screen as its high resolution offered the audience excellent picture quality. The product is also lightweight an

UK - London based Eclipse Services is offering a new high quality advanced videoconferencing solution providing secure, reliable, cost-effective, fully supported HD resolution communications and taking advantage of exclusive non-public high bandwidth internet services ... available only through Eclipse.

With this new managed service, Eclipse Services - part of the Eclipse Presentations Group - can offer clients the flexibility of fully supported multipoint video meetings at maximum quality and efficiency.

The concierge and bridging service can be tailored exactly to client requirements in terms of the number of participants, required points of connection ... and wherever their location around the world.

The service is secure, stable and provides seamless integration between VC and TelePresence units, codecs, laptops, desktops, iPads and other tablets, all with real-time audi

UK - The 2013 CEDIA AGM will take place at the London Transport Museum on Thursday 28 November where Wilfried Van Baelen, CEO of Auro Technologies and Galaxy Studios will be delivering the special keynote address on 3D Audio.

"With the AGM event growing in popularity year on year, we wanted to make sure that those attending walk away energised, informed and keener than ever to get involved," says Wendy Griffiths, CEDIA Region 1's executive director. "Wilfried will set the tone perfectly with a presentation looking at the 3D Audio format and its likely resonance on the future of home cinema design. The AGM itself will provide an insight into CEDIA's activities and initiatives, and will also see the results of elections for the new CEDIA Board revealed. Afterwards, we hope that as many people as possible will stay behind to make contacts and generally talk shop with

USA - Saskatchewan Roughriders fans enjoy more than a winning football team upon entering the 45,000-seat Mosaic Stadium in Regina each game day. In fact, home and visiting team fans alike are treated to professional in-venue, large-screen video productions that further enliven the atmosphere - with instant replays and highlight packages from Tightrope's ZEPLAY slow-motion system playing a major role.

"We have the challenge of keeping our fans entertained and engaged, and our philosophy is that we're not simply competing with the at-home TV experience - we want to improve on that experience within the stadium atmosphere," said Bill Wright, director of partnerships and game day operations, Saskatchewan Roughriders. "So we show more replays than viewers get at home, along with more close-ups and stats. We create as much on that screen as we can, at the best possible

USA - Marshall Electronics, manufacturer of rack-mount LCD monitors and broadcast solutions, has announced a free warranty extension on all its professional LCD monitors. The offer extends the regular one year warranty to two full years from the purchase date. The extended warranty is an added value to Marshall owners and prospective buyers.

"The extended warranty lets customers know we're confident in our products and we are backing that up by doubling the warranty protection for our customers. Our commitment to quality has never been greater and we're willing to back it up," says Russ Walker, Marshall director of strategic planning & business development. "As we move into 4K and other higher end monitor technologies, we want customers to have peace of mind when making Marshall purchases. The extended warranty program is also another way to give our customers mor

USA - From the people who created the entertainment industries first powerful UV (UltraViolet) based effects and powerful UV lighting in Hollywood in the late 1980's, the first day to night, dual image and complete invisible scenery and scenic effects in the mid 1990's, now comes the next generation of UV based signage. Welcome to the latest venture from Ultra Vista Systems.... interior signage for brands in need of serious attention!

The first product in a series of planned products is ISIS 3D (The Illuminated Suspended Image System). This sign systems allows for glowing brand names, logos and art to shine in a slim, low voltage, lightweight profile that has never before possible before, says the company.

UltraVista Systems is the latest collaboration between Leslie Pringle and Richard Green, a collaboration that began in the 1988 when they brought Wildfire over from Europe,

UK - Christie has announced the expansion of its Mirage Series of high-performing 2D and 3D projectors with the launch of the Christie Mirage WQ-L, an LED-based 1-chip DLP projection system with WQXGA (2560 by 1600) resolution and 800 ANSI lumens for sharp images and exceptionally accurate and lifelike colours. Offering a stable and reliable LED light engine rated at 60,000-hours (approximately 6.5 years) life cycle, the Christie Mirage WQ-L includes Christie ArrayLOC for synchronised colour and brightness management, which reduces calibration requirements.

A powerful but cost-effective and flexible display solution, the Christie Mirage WQ-L is designed for a wide range of markets, from aerospace and automotive to oil and gas, government, academia, and entertainment. Its solid-state LED light engine delivers years of worry-free operation without compromising image quality.

&qu

UK - Projection and digital art specialist Ross Ashton of London based The Projection Studio created two spectacular projection works in Wolverhampton, west Midlands for the inaugural Wolverhampton Enchanted City event, which attracted up to 8000 people each evening into the city centre

Ashton was commissioned to produce the works by Wolverhampton City Council following his work at the first ever Enchanted City 'pilot' event at Horncastle, Lincolnshire earlier in the year. Ashton is developing this event concept together with Brighton based Robin Morley of Magnetic Events, who also produced this show.

The giant 15m tall images were beamed onto two well-known local landmarks - the 1920s style Barclays Bank building in St Peter's Square, and the Wulfrana Street entrance to the University of Wolverhampton around 100 metres away.

The Oldest Place - This was the title of t

USA - Madison Square Garden - New York's iconic indoor arena - has unveiled its new state-of-the-art centre-hung multi-media display. The display serves as the centrepiece of The Garden's new LED video display system, known as GardenVision, which debuted 25 October, as part of the third and final phase of The Garden's unprecedented, E7.2m, three-year transformation.

This cutting-edge system, manufactured by video display specialist Daktronics, includes more than 20 individually produced LED displays and provides attending fans with an enhanced visual experience.

Hank Ratner, president and ceo, The Madison Square Garden Company said, "With the completion of our historic Madison Square Garden transformation, 'the world's most famous arena' has also now become the world's most state-of-the-art arena, ensuring that we continue our tradition of providing fans with the very bes

UK - In 2009 XL Video started XL Events as a specialist division to focus on supplying the corporate and events industry with its technical AV equipment and services.

Since that time XL Video and XL Events have seen continual growth in the corporate video solutions market.

With this success in mind, and with XL Video's renewed focus on innovative video technologies and providing excellent customer service, the parent company has decided to re-brand XL Events, bringing it in line with the corporate identity across the entire XL Video group of companies. This change is effective from 1st November 2013.

Rich Rowley director of XL Video commented, "It has been an incredible journey over the last four years building a Corporate division for XL. The reason for the XL Events name in the first place was to show the industry we weren't just Rock 'n' Roll. I believe it has now se

UK - XL Video's new Hybrid 18mm LED screen made its touring debut on the recent UK leg of Ellie Goulding's Halcyon Days tour, where it was specified by lighting and visuals designer Cate Carter of Bryte Design and integrated into her vibrant production design for the tour.

The Hybrid 18 screen panel features a standard medium 18mm pitch comprising 32 x 32 pixels per panel, with 4 x 4 higher brightness (7700nit) low-resolution pixels also embedded in the same panel.

For the Ellie Goulding tour, 19 TAIT produced touring frames to make up a rear video screen. Each frame contained 2 x 2 panels of Hybrid 18 (four in total) giving a surface of 64 x 64 medium resolution pixels and 8 x 8 low resolution pixels per touring frame. The touring frames were flown at 45 degree angles so they were an attractive diamond shape mosaic surface upstage.

The idea of using something new app

UK - Creative Technology (CT) has formed a new creative team within its London business. The Media Solutions team will focus on managing the increasing demand for specialist media management and delivery systems. Media Solutions will be responsible for the development and promotion of ideas and innovation whilst enabling the Company to engage further with clients and creative partners in a more pro-active manner at the earlier stages of project development, the company says.

Mainly comprised of existing CT personnel that already have a rich experience and skill set in media technology and services, CT has also appointed David Mulcahy as Media Consultant. Mulcahy, who joins the company as a full-time employee this month, brings with him extensive experience of working with clients and creative teams in the media and visual world. With a background in theatre, corporate and music

Latest Issue. . .

Save
Cookies user preferences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline
Advertisement
If you accept, the ads on the page will be adapted to your preferences.
Google Ad
Accept
Decline