Volume 4, Issue 3 — March 30, 2010
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Spring Forward
By Joel Rollins, CTS-R Well, the spring we were all waiting for is finally here. The trees are budding, the snow (for those of us who get snow) is melting, and hopefully the rental market is thawing out a little, too. For most of us, it was a pretty cold winter in that regard, and we’ve all been looking forward to a spring thaw.
But along with the budding of the trees, we’re seeing the budding of a lot of new “sprouts” in the rental industry. This comes about mostly from our economic times, as companies look to expand business lines and make additional revenue from existing assets.
Among them, as predicted by so many of our industry pundits, are two types of new growth: new forms of rental and staging events, and new competition coming from other types of companies.
The new types of meetings and events for the rental industry mostly revolve around the economy’s current imperative to reduce costs, and the world’s current imperative to go “green.” Both are accomplished by the biggest trends I’m seeing — the regionalization of meetings that must be done in person, and the virtualization of meetings that are discretionary or optional.
Firstly, the “regionalization” movement was already afoot before the current economic crisis. The “green” revolution, and the threat of terrorism, already had companies cutting back on travel. Many of the clients I work with had already started paring back attendee lists for large, national or international meetings, and supplementing them with regional events, videoconferences, and web-based meetings, often tying them all together with distance communication tools. The early outcry about this from “traditional” meeting planners got drowned out when the economic crisis added to the din, and, frankly, this spring’s events have been well received. Add to this a new generation of executives who are used to web-based events and social media, and much of the early prognostications of doom have fallen by the wayside. And it has provided corporate management with the cover necessary to be perceived as “environmentally conscious” and “forward-thinking” — instead of just “cheap.”
What has this done to the rental and staging industry? Well, first, it has made us broaden our definition of the “meeting.”
On my first job as Staging Manager, at the old Southam organization in Canada, I shared an office with the company’s Convention Services Manager, Mike Schilz. I remember one morning telling him I liked my job better than his, because at least in a “main tent” staging gig everything was in one room, where I could see it, whereas his job usually involved meetings often scattered all over a city. Well, no more. Now, a “staging” gig may well take place in several cities — or even several countries — simultaneously.
So the biggest change, to the staging company, has been logistical. Shipping has changed — because it used to be that you pulled everything required for a show and shipped it to site. Now, you essentially pull for several “shows” at the same time — with more duplication of gear, and more shipping containers, required.
Another big change has been alliances. Obviously, with regionalized meetings, the national and international companies have the advantage of multiple crews and locations. However, these types of meetings are new even to those organizations (I know — I’ve run a couple) that are mostly still used to operating as separate units, even if they have “national” departments. So, although they have a theoretical advantage, working these types of events will still involve a learning curve even for them. The local companies are competing by forming alliances, using each other’s locations, inventories, and crews to create the ability to serve these regional types of events.
These types of alliances, both those already possessed by the national organizations and those that are being formed by the local ones, will also come into play soon with new competition — which we’ll be discussing in our next issue.
Until then, enjoy the spring thaw. rAVe Rental [and Staging] contributor Joel R. Rollins, CTS-R, is General Manager of Everett Hall Associates, Inc. and is well known throughout the professional AV industry for his contributions to industry training and his extensive background in AV rental, staging and installation. Joel can be reached at Joel can be reached at joelrollins@mac.com
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Elite Screens Goes Retro with New Tripod Screen Elite’s new Tripod Pro was designed with the rental market in mind. The Tripod Pro has a black tube casing that will protect the screen material and is coated in a velveteen material that absorbs glare from projectors as well as bears the brunt of hard handling in rental and staging applications. It is available in a (1:1) aspect ratio with viewing sizes that range from 85" to 99", 113" and 119" diagonal measurements.
The screen material is Elite's MaxWhite 1.1 gain matte white front projection material with black masking borders. They vary in weight from 15 pounds to 35 pounds, making the tripod a highly portable and versatile product. Lastly, each tripod has a keystone eliminator to accommodate angle distortion or "keystone effect" during forum presentations. List price is $189.00.
To learn more, go to: http://www.elitescreens.com/index.php
Ah, the “classic” rental tripod screen returns — athough, I dont think it ever left.
–JRR Back to Top Planar Announces New Clarity LED Video Wall Series Planar announced at ISE last month the Clarity LED Series rear projection video wall displays, meant for control room video walls that require 24/7 reliability. The displays provide what Planar says is "maintenance-free solid state illumination," with up to eight times the life of traditional lamps
The Clarity LED Series includes the 70-inch c70HD-LED (1920X1080 resolution), Clarity RP-LED (SXGA+ resolution) and Clarity RX-LED (XGA resolution) rear-projection displays (available in 50” and 67”). All displays within the Clarity LED Series utilize DLP® technology and are available with Open or Indisys image processing electronics options.
Planar says the series' illumination system has a rated life of 60,000 hours and has no consumable parts such as a color wheel or lamp, yielding a lower total cost of ownership.
The video walls are expected to ship in Q2 of 2010. For more information, go to http://www.planarcontrolroom.com/
Once again, we see the LED, once just the humble component used to create red-charactered digital watches, make its way into being the illumination for high-end products, something the rental industry is always interested in — although no matter how modernized they are, rental has virtually completely moved away from rear-projection cubes of any type in favor of tiled LED and now LCD walls.
–JRR
Back to Top Samsung Launches 1000-Lumen LED Projector So far, this is the brightest (if you believe the specs) LED-lit projector on the market. The LCD-based, SP-F10M is XGA resolution (1024×768), has both analog (VGA) and digital (HDMI) ports and weighs in at just under 10 pounds.
Although the specs are impressive, the reason we’re covering this is that it’s spec’d at the brightest level ever for an LED-projector – 1000 ANSI lumens. Even if this isn’t totally accurate, it still means that the bright, LED-based projectors are coming — soon! We actually saw this at the DSE 2010 show and it looked pretty good (and bright).
Check out Samsung’s official PR on it here: http://www.newswire.co.kr/newsRead.php?no=454944&lmv=A00
Again – a breakthrough. It's too dim for rental situations, but the handwriting (and the projection) is on the wall.
-JRR
Back to Top Barco Announces Two Products for Stagers At this week's 2010 Pro Light and Sound expo, Barco unveiled two new products aimed at the high-end rental and staging markets – the SDI-DMX Mixer Pro and the intellaspot XT-1.
The SDI-DMX Mixer Pro, what Barco is calling a "hybrid switcher" that offers users the ability to switch, mix and matrix four video inputs to four video outputs — is capable of being managed directly from any DMX lighting controller (that's cool). Barco claims this is to simplify the overall control of the Mixer Pro's functions. The new SDI-DMX Mixer Pro places the power of video switching and crossfades directly into the lighting designer's hands.
Dubbed the intellaspot XT-1, the second product Barco launched at the Pro Light and Sound expo is an advanced lighting fixture that's designed to — as Barco puts it — set a new benchmark in price and performance for mid-market staging customers. As the industry's newest professional moving luminaire, the intellaspot XT-1 follows last year's launch of Cyberlight 2.0. According to Barco, the intellaspot XT-1 offers some new innovations in optics, lamp configurations, high lumen output, energy efficiency, zoom range, and overall feature set — all at what they are saying is a "highly economical price point." The intellaspot XT-1 is slated for release at the end of Q2.
For more information, go to: http://www.barco.com/events/pressrelease/2502/
Barco continues to lead the market in these types of “hybrid” products for stagers. No longer a projection company, a lighting company, or a switching company, they’re becoming something new altogether… and it’s interesting to watch.
–JRR
Back to Top JVC Adds 4K D-ILA Dubbed the DLA-SH7NLG, JVC's new D-ILA claims 5,000 ANSI lumens, a 10,000:1 contrast ratio and a native resolution of 4096×2400 using a reflective LCD technology. Using dual 330W ultra-high-pressure mercury lamps (they can be operated simultaneously or one at a time), the new D-ILA is aimed at super high-end staging, digital cinema (although JVC is not an approved digital cinema projector vendor), large-venue projection as well as multi-image projection (it's capable of projecting four native 1080p images in a 2×2 grid).
It's a power hog though – using 1.1kW or power, it's certainly not a "green" product. But, it's bright. It's priced a little over $150,000. See all the specs at http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101793
I havent seen this yet, but this kind of resolution and brightness is what makes windowing processors really sing, so I’m looking forward to it. The “power hog” feature will be an issue with some companies and some clients – but the capabilities may justify it.
–JRR Back to Top NEC Launches 70" LCD NEC's newest LCD monitor is in the form of the P701 – a 70", 1080p pro-grade flat-screen that's designed for commercial applications. Capable of being tiled (10×10) for staging applications, the P701 is network-controlled or RS 232, includes DVI, VGA and HDMI ports, can be mounted horizontally or vertically and is specified at 600 cd/m2.
Check it out at: http://www.necdisplay.com/Products/Series/?series=acf118d3-a8b2-4f83-964c-bbff00a7a497
The tiling feature on these looks interesting – and 10×10 becomes a size that makes this truly staging-viable for companies who do this kind of work occasionally and want to be able to dual-purpose their flat panel inventory.
–JRR
Back to Top Sanyo Launches 4500 Lumen 7-Pound Projector The new XGA resolution (1024×768) 3LCD projector, dubbed the PLC-XU116 from Sanyo, is specified at 4500 ANSI lumens, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, and is aimed at education installs – although we can see a projector this bright being used for rental applications.
Integrated with both wireless and wired network connectivity, the 7-pound PLC-XU116 isn’t the quietest LCD projector on the market at 30dB, but it is far quieter than any DLP version with similar specs. The PLC-XU116 includes DVI and VGA connectivity as well as Component Video input and has the capability to project HD video wirelessly via 802.11n networks.
For more information, go to: http://www.sanyo-lcdp.com/english/products/xu106/feature.html
Not bad – and I’m glad to see that these mid-range models keep coming down both in weight and price.
–JRR
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For all you REGULAR readers of rAVe Rental [and Staging] out there, hopefully you enjoyed another opinion-packed issue!
For those of you NEW to rAVe, you just read how we are — we are 100% opinionated. We not only report the news and new product stories of the rental and staging industry, but we stuff the articles full of our opinions — in this case, it’s industry-veteran Joel Rollins' opinions. That may include (but is not limited to) whether or not the product is even worth looking at, challenging the manufacturers on their specifications, calling a marketing-spec bluff and suggesting ways integrators market their products better. But, one thing is for sure, we are NOT a trade publication that gets paid for running editorial or product stories. Traditional trade publications get paid to run product stories — that’s why you see what you see in most of the pubs out there. We are different: we run what we want to run and NO ONE is going to pay us to write anything good (or bad).
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rAVe [Publications] has been around since 2003, when we launched our original newsletter, rAVe ProAV Edition. rAVe HomeAV Edition, co-published with CEDIA, launched in February, 2004. rAVe Rental [and Staging] rAVe Ed [Education] rAVe DS [Digital Signage]
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Back to Top Copyright 2010 – rAVe [Publications] – All rights reserved – All rights reserved. For reprint policies, contact rAVe [Publications], 210 Old Barn Ln., Chapel Hill, NC 27517 – (919) 969-7501. Email: sara@ravepubs.com
rAVe Rental [and Staging] contains the opinions of the author only and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of other persons or companies or its sponsors. |
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