XL has also bought a fleet of the new High Definition Barco FLM 20 water-cooled 18,000 ANSI lumen projectors for assorted tours. XL's hectic touring and event summer schedule includes work with Foo Fighters, The Who, Roger Waters and Robbie Williams' Close Encounters tour.
Other projector purchases included new Panasonic XP12s, and a selection of lenses and lamps for XL's fleet of Digital Projection Lightning 35HD high-definition machines. Additionally, nine Digital Projection Lightning SX30s have been bought and installed onto the Sinatra show at the London Palladium Theatre. XL has bought more GV Kayak and Zodiac PPU systems to deal with the upcoming volume of work, plus Barco's Events Manager software system.
All Xl's Catalyst DL1 moving head projectors has been upgraded and all the Catalyst digital media servers have been upgraded to Version 4, with the Catalyst inventory doubling in size. High definition preview monitors have been bought to accompany the Barco Folsom Encore systems, and a fleet of 32" NEC monitors has been added to stock.
On the 'exotic' LED front, XL is the first UK company to invest in the new Lightengine Patch 560 LED surface from Lightengine, which is being used on the ITV 4 series World Cuppa. Lightengine Patch is a new rugged, waterproof, lightweight and hugely flexible low resolution display that can be used to wrap around complex structures very quickly - greatly speeding installation time and enabling previously impossible configurations.
Available in 1,200mm x 750mm elements, each weighing under 4kg and less than 25mm thick, the Lightengine panels and can be joined together to make up any required surface area. Other exotic LED added to the inventory is 4,400 Barco Mi-Strips. Measuring 1.5m long, these slim, high pixel-density LED strips are currently on tour with Bon Jovi.
Over 1,000 1.5m Element Labs VersaTUBES, an LED-based light tube with 16 pixels per metre, controlled by video signal, have been used on Mariah Carey, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and will support George Michael later this year. XL has also increased stock of most of its other modular indoor and outdoor LED systems - including Lighthouse and Barco, plus a quantity of high resolution Barco S10 XP LED screen for touring.
Additional Martin Professional MAC 700 moving lights and Hog 500 lighting desks have been purchased. On the audio front, Corporate has purchased new d&b Q7 loudspeakers and B12 amplifiers, Sennheiser radio mic systems and BSS Soundweb digital signal processors. XL Video's busy Business Events division is joined by project manager Terry Kerley, a lifelong AV technician latterly at London's ExCel Centre, to help maintain and grow its increasing portfolio of production companies.
(Lee Baldock)
