Denmark - Neets A/S, a specialist in developing and selling control systems for AV-equipment has introduced introduce the Neets Control - Alfa.

Neets Control - AlFa is the company's largest and most sophisticated system as well as the first dedicated 19" rack mount AV controller in the Neets product range. Developed with ease of installation in mind, the AlFa provides comprehensive AV system control in advanced auditoriums and conference rooms with only one touch of a button.

Neets Control - AlFa is controlled from an Apple iOS or Android touch device or by computers with Safari or Chrome browsers. Using the Neets Project Editor software, users can create their own custom-designed graphical user interfaces. The system controls the connected devices through RS-232, IR, LAN and dedicated I/O. Integration of the touch device makes off-site control possible simply by accessin

Spain - Christie has announced the opening of a Spanish branch in Madrid. Christie's new office is located in Boadilla del Monte, a town just 14.5 kilometres outside Madrid, and right next to Ciudad de la Imagen, an office and audiovisual leisure complex which is home to many TV channels, audiovisual producers, multiplexes, postproduction companies, film schools, audiovisual industry associations and film archives.

With a total surface area of 500sq.m, the new branch hosts a large showroom displaying Christie's latest technologies and products, including projectors and videowalls. It also has several rooms set aside for staging live demos, commercial meetings, seminars and training courses, plus a space dedicated to technical services. The new facility is also available to Christie's clients and partners for their own use.

Christie's Iberic branch will be headed by Marcos Fern

UK - Earlier this year, Lighthouse LED screens were chosen by Carphone Warehouse Group (CPW), Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer, for its building at Portal Way in London. The building faces in-bound London traffic on the busy A40 and the screen is being utilised by the company as an advertising medium.

The installation comprises 24 x 5 panels of Lighthouse's new Impact 12 and measures 18.5 m (w) x 5.8m (h). This innovative solution has 6000 nits of brightness, which makes it suitable for viewing behind glass and in direct sunlight, as at Portal Way, and the large panel size (each one measures 768mm (h) x 1152mm (h)) made installation a quick and easy process.

"CPW has owned the building for a number of years," explains head of finance, Rob Murray. "It was originally occupied by TalkTalk, which was part of our group at the time, and they had a su

UK - LED screen brand Pixled has significantly expanded its range of portable, lightweight screen surfaces.

The P-6 is a high resolution lightweight dynamic tile, offering 2000 Nits of brightness, available with either white or black faced SMD's, and a true 6 mm, budget friendly product, suitable for rental and staging companies and fixed installations.

Flex-10 is a newly developed ultra-thin flexible display module, currently available in 6 and 10 mm resolutions for convex and concave fixed installations. The bendable Flex-10 LED display opens many new possibilities for LED usage, says the company. It can be bent and flexed to fit curved surfaces of almost any shape or form, both convex and concave as well as horizontally and vertically.

The F-50C/F-75C/F-150C Soft Curtain LED "makes ideal stage backdrops and has great imaginative potential including for the cladding o

UK - XL Video UK supplied specialist LED and IMAG projection screens plus control to the 2011 MTV European Music Awards, staged at Belfast Odyssey Arena, Northern Ireland, and broadcast live to 45 countries worldwide.

The live music video production specialist has been involved with this high profile event for several years, and XL's Chris Saunders was project managing for the third year running.

The show included a dynamic, star studded line up of artists performing live, including Lady GaGa, Coldplay, Bruno Mars, Jesse J, Justin Bieber, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Selina Gomez, who was also hosting.

Technical challenges included fitting an ambitious and visually spectacular stage set designed by Es Devlin - complete with integrated screens - into the venue. Also the XL team had to be flexible enough to accommodate specific requests from some artists late on as their ind

UK - Ross Ashton and The Projection Studio's Crown of Light projected artwork on Durham Cathedral- created for the 2009 Lumière - is back by popular demand for this year's four-day festival of light event, which is curated and produced by Artichoke for Durham City Council.

Lumière 2011 features the work of dozens of artists, lighting designers and community groups in 35 installations, bringing a "sparkle of magic" to the medieval city.

Says Ashton, "It's a real testament to the piece and very flattering to be asked back with the same show. It's also extremely rare for the same creation to be requested again in its entirety, offering those who enjoyed the experience the first time around the chance to do so again, a new audience the opportunity to see it for the first time plus real value for the producers."

(Jim Evans)

Canada - DJW has supplied, installed and programmed a wealth of equipment at Fort Edmonton Park, Canada's largest living history site on the bank of the North Saskatchewan River.

Thanks to the production team led by Rob Wyatt of Artisan Design, visitors to the park are able to gain a much better understanding of how Edmonton developed through the ages; from the ice age, man inhabiting the planet, Canadian first peoples to the arrival of early settlers and coming up to the date of the Capitol Theatre on the 1920's street and life in Edmonton in the 1920's.

The project is centred around the park's re-creation of Edmonton's original Capitol Theatre. Walking through the theatre's lobby, past framed pictures on the wall, which in fact show '1920's moving pictures', hearing the voice of a 1920's actress over the speaker, guests are ushered into the 250 seat theatre, complete with lu

Russia - Summer 2011 has seen the rise of the new Green Centre in the city of Orël in Russia, a multi-purpose building that aims to be a major point of congregation for the city.

The structure is designed to accommodate sporting events, concerts, exhibitions and theatrical performances. Therefore the lighting had to be versatile to adapt to different types of events.

The technical requirements of the client regarding the lighting design, foresaw several important points that had to be met. The choice of equipment was carried out through a careful selection, comparing various brands of projectors, made available by the Russian retailers.

The choice fell upon Coemar products, including 20 Infinity Wash XL 1400W, with zoom range from 5° to 84°, to ensure a uniform illumination throughout the hall; 12 Infinity Spot M, which scored the highest in the weight, compactness

China - ArKaos has been instrumental in the Centenary Celebrations of Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Tsinghua University, China's famous school of higher education and internationally recognised as one of the leading universities in mainland China, is located on the west side of Beijing and surrounded by beautiful scenery.

The university is well known in China for its famous alumni, such as the President, Hu Jingtao, the Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Yang Zhenning, and many other scientists and writers.

To mark 2011 as the centennial anniversary for Tsinghua, a ceremony was staged on 24 April in Beijing, which was attended by most of the Chinese political leaders.

Lighting and stage designer Mr. Sha Xiaolan contributed to the celebration by setting up a huge stage with a spectacular visual show driven by ShowPower's MTL media servers running ArKaos MediaMaster Pro.

It was the f

Germany - wysiwyg software suite from CAST Software of Toronto was recently the 'steering force' of the creative vision behind the 125th anniversary of the first car. Autosymphonic was held on 10 September, 2011 in Mannheim, Germany, the birthplace of the car, invented by Carl Benz in 1886.

The event was a g kaleidoscope of lights, video, sound and lasers delighting approximately 17,000 visitors. The multimedia-based event told the story of the development of the automobile and provided a glimpse into its future.

The celebration featured 80 automobiles with an accompanying orchestra, choir and the Söhne Mannheims pop group. The young singers, amongst them Xavier Naidoo, opened the evening with their own songs and accompanied the SWR Baden-Baden and Freiburg Symphony Orchestra and the SWR vocal ensemble throughout the symphony.

The automobiles, representing a variety

UK - Buckinghamshire-based Universal Event Productions (UEP) has recently invested in a batch of the new i-Pix Satellite MkII LED fixtures as well as i-Pix' popular BB4 LED wash lights to service its busy on-going schedule of corporate and live events.

UK-based specialist LED manufacturer i-Pix launched the new Satellite Mk II LED 'brick' lightsource at the 2011 PLASA Light & Sound exhibition in September.

This was five years after the launch of the original Satellite, which was the then new company's debut product, and rapidly became a trend-setting massive best seller worldwide.

Universal Events purchased 24 of the original Satellite products when they came to the market in 2006. They have been in constant use - and are still going strong today, "They have been an absolutely essential element and a constant workhorse product in our hire inventory," confirms UEP's

UK - The UK government has more than doubled the budget available for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies - from £40m to £81m.

The increase, which was announced in the latest London 2012 quarterly economic report by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), comes from the £9.3bn public purse, which is in theory meant for building, infrastructure and security, while the ceremonies is paid for from the privately-raised funds of the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games - money raised from the IOC, ticket sales and sponsorship.

In the DCMS report, Hugh Robertson MP, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, says: "The ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are a unique opportunity to portray a positive image of the UK to a huge potential global audience - an estimated 1 billion people watched the openi

Denmark - In October 2011, Legoland in Billund, Denmark, offered a variety of Halloween-themed activities, competitions and special shows. As part of the spooky fun, Legoland dressed up its King's Castle in Halloween-themed colours and graphics, including animated images from energy-efficient, LED-based Martin Professional Exterior 400 Image Projectors.

Projected onto the King's Castle's turrets were a variety of themed images - ghosts, skeletons, jack-o'-lanterns and bats - up to six images per luminaire with creative options such as image rotation, dynamic focus and dimming. The Exterior 400 Image Projector's interchangeable colour slots allowed each image to change colour up to eight times, adding a further dynamic element to the ghostly atmosphere.

At over 7000 lumens of power, the Exterior 400 Image Projector had no problem handling the 40m projection throws, and the fixt

UK - Paradigm AV will have a powerful presence at BETT 2012 (11-14 January, London Olympia).

After securing the contract to provide well over 200 dnp Supernova Core optical screens for primary and secondary schools in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, the company will be showcasing the power of this front projection platform - possibly in 3D as well as 2D.

Paradigm AV also represents GestureTek, gesture-controlled technology in the UK - which is proving increasingly popular in schools, particularly those with special educational needs.

One of the more recent innovations has been the GestureTek Cube, which will be on display at BETT. This is a compact, turnkey, 'plug and play' interactive portable interactive floor. The latest version projects entertaining games and special effects in a larger, higher resolution image, onto virtually any floor, enabling children to

UK - Tom Etra has joined Green Hippo's sales team as technical sales manager for the EMEA region.

As of Monday 21 November, Etra has started looking after key accounts across this territory and he has already added his own touch, by implementing a few new strategies. Green Hippo's sales director James Heron comments, "We are very pleased to be welcoming Tom into the team full time and feel that his skills and knowledge of Hippotizer will be a great asset to the department and a driving force in generating new business for the company."

Etra, has been with Green Hippo for the past five years. His previous role entailed working closely within Green Hippo's special projects and support department. Special projects have been closely involved with a variety of high profile multimedia events which allow customers to think outside the box when it comes to designing their sh

South Africa - Multi-Media used their 12 new Robin 300 LEDs for two prominent events, Herbalife Southern Africa Extravaganza and the PICA Awards.

Some 2 500 guests from across the country attended the Herbalife Southern Africa Extravaganza, a three day event hosted at the Emperor's Palace Conference Centre in November. Multi-Media were the technical suppliers and used their Robin 300s, hiring a few additional units from MJ Event Gear, for the show. "The units were very responsive, bright, power efficient and the saturation in colour," commented Tim Fish from Multi-Media.

The 42nd PICA Awards, presented by the Magazine Publishers Association of South Arica (MPASA), was held at the Sandton Convention Centre on 17 November. Multi-Media once again provided the full technical for the event, hosted in the Pavilion Room.

"This was quite a large show and the room will

UK - Electrosonic was recently awarded the AV systems integration contract at JP Morgan's new Canary Wharf site in London. As a result of this appointment, on Thursday 10 November Electrosonic and Skillsmatch jointly held a recruitment and selection event to appoint young, local 'Apprentice Installers' to take part in a six month audio-visual apprenticeship programme with Electrosonic, working in-part at JP Morgan. Following a six month placement it is Electrosonic's intention to offer six individuals a full time 'junior AV installer' position.

Skillsmatch is the flagship job brokerage service for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Supported by Canary Wharf Group and working with a range of strategic partners, it offers innovative recruitment solutions to companies looking to source new staff and to job seekers wishing to secure sustainable employment. JP Morgan has made a com

Europe - Roland Systems Group has announced the immediate availability of a system update for the popular Roland V-1600HD Multi-Format Video Switcher. Addressing the requirements of using the V-1600HD in a live production environment - especially with LED walls - this new update includes additional scaling functions to both the Program and AUX outputs in all modes.

Common LED video wall aspect ratio presets are included, such as 4:3, 5:4, 5:3 and 16:9, as well as a manual pixel accurate mode allowing any wall size or aspect ratio to be inputted. Using this setting, the source material can then be scaled within the output space with additional crop, zoom and position adjustments to hand.

The V-1600HD now enables all video sources to be connected, converted and mixed directly to the LED video wall display. Two configurable outputs make it possible to drive both LCD/plasma/projec

Norway - Vestad Lighting of Norway recently supplied a large Martin lighting and video screen package for Get Focused, one of the largest Christian youth festivals in Norway and one of the first events to incorporate visuals using Martin's new 10mm pixel pitch EC-10 LED video panels.

Vestad focuses on lighting rental for television, concerts and events and through the years has also supplied a number of large-screen video productions.

"When we were looking for an LED solution, it was important for us that it could be used creatively as well as a video wall capable of delivering crisp video images with good color and low latency," comments Thomas Voilås of Vestad. "We've had good experience with Martin Professional products and support and felt that the EC-10 was a product that could fit our needs."

Held in the city of T°nsberg in early November, Get

The Netherlands - At ISE 2012 Crestron will be introducing "a range of breakthrough technologies that lay the foundation of audio visual technology for the future". The company will be displaying many products ranging from the latest developments in the DigitalMedia and HD solutions through to control systems, audio, cabling and lighting control solutions.

The DigitalMedia range continues to evolve and grow. With a solution for every budget, the new DigitalMedia 6X6 Distribution Center delivers high-definition audio and video signals to multiple rooms and produces the highest quality HD picture quality available, says the company.

The unit features next generation DigitalMedia 8G+ technologies and is able to distribute pure uncompressed digital and analogue audio/video content, plus Ethernet, control signals and more over long distances to up to six rooms, all over a

UK - Adlib supplied a full technical production package of sound, lighting, AV, staging and crew for the recent John Barrowman tour.

It's the fourth JB tour that Adlib has supplied. Having the resources and flexibility to offer all the technical elements in a single source operation enabled a very cost-efficient package to be tailored to the client for the successful six weeks of sold out shows around the UK.

FOH engineer Walter Jaquiss once again specified a Coda Audio LA12 system, following its performance on the last tour. Systems tech Kenny Perrin explains that their standard configuration was 12 x LA12 cabinets per-side with a variable amount of LA8 down-fills.

For subs, they used two sensor controlled Coda SCPs per side for the standard set up, boosted to four columns of two SCPs along the front of the stage for the arenas. The in-fills were normally four LA8 speakers.

Belgium - Barco has appointed AED Display as official distributor of its projection and image processing products in the Benelux market. Through the partnership, which becomes effective on 1 January, resellers, system integrators and mid-sized rental companies will have easier access to Barco's products and support services. The agreement fits neatly into Barco's new strategy to increasingly rely on trusted channel partners for the distribution, installation and support of its products, in all markets, in order to raise customer service levels, says the company.

Over the past few months, Barco has significantly expanded its network of distribution partners. Instead of selling, installing and supporting its products itself, the company relies on its trusted channel partners to ensure the availability, delivery and pre- and post-sales support for its wide range of high-quality pr

UK - A number of schools in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham are in the process of being equipped with giant Supernova optical front projection screens from Danish manufacturers dnp.

This is designed to boost learning and provide better data referencing from sources such as Visualiers, computers and portable touch screen whiteboards, which provide the ability to control lessons from anywhere in the classroom.

The order for over 200 of the Supernova Core screens in 16:10 aspect ratio, placed with Supernova's UK distributors, Paradigm Audio Visual, was sanctioned by Sheyne Lucock, Education ICT Strategy lead for the council, after his Strategy team had reviewed all the options.

Paradigm AV supplied 105 of the 100" displays to the primary schools alone via project consultants and fit-out specialists, REDS10. All the ICT equipment is being fitted by RM Education,

South Africa - The first season of the new television musical competition, Varstrap, aired on KykNet (DSTV), has just come to an end. It is set in a cellar at Lourensford Wine Farm in Somerset West where contestants compete for the best boere orkes (band).

Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier designed the set and lighting, which had to be appropriate for television viewing. Travis Yeatman programmed and operated the show on an Avolites Tiger Touch. He flew to Cape Town every weekend where rehearsals were followed by a recording of the show.

Four bands competed every week. Two stages were erected on either end of the cellar with the judges and audience seated in the centre of the room. The lighting comprising of Robe Colorspot 575s, parcans, Philips Selecon Profiles and LED strips, was fairly simple and mostly to light up the props and create the warm, traditional type atmosp

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