Italy - The SIB 2010 international exhibition of entertainment, installation and broadcast technology, will be held at the Rimini Fiera from 18-20 April 2010. The expo's project manager Angela Bellavista explains: "The Light & Stage Technology area will host the latest products in terms of entertainment lighting, architectural lighting, technology and equipment for theatre, cinema and television scenography; in the Audio area, the new sound frontiers for the entertainment world and in the new SIB Integra section all the products for professional AV and system integration."

In 2010, the Festival of Light, the event that every year features a combination of art and illumination, will arrive on the Rimini riviera, thanks to SIB. A lighting design event dedicated to the exhibition's professional visitors (architects, lighting designers, installers, theatre, cinema and tele

USA - ESTA has announces the winners of its 2009 Members' Choice Awards, which were presented on Saturday, 21 November at the LDI and ESTA Awards Ceremony in Orlando, Florida. The awards recognise newly released, outstanding entertainment technology products in three categories: Expendable, Widget and Equipment. Voting on these awards was open to all employees of ESTA member companies who attended the LDI show.

The 2009 winners are:

Expendable Category
Robo Glue from Rose Brand: A fast-setting, non-toxic water based adhesive that dries clear. Great for bonding porous substrates to difficult to bond synthetic materials. Robo Glue remains flexible and is available in large sizes.

Widget Category
SRI ProPlus Crossover full body fall arrest harness from Sapsis Rigging, Inc: A full body fall arrest harness that meets the requirements of the ANSI z359.1-2007 st

USA - Wireless Solution Sweden presented the latest winners of the W-DMX Visionary Awards, held during LDI 09 in Orlando. Elation, SGM and Golden Sea were all awarded Swedish gifts at a special ceremony honouring W-DMX OEM partners for the first time.

"Our OEM partners are the backbone of W-DMX," says Wireless Solution CEO Niclas Arvidsson, "The fact that W-DMX is built directly into some of the most popular product ranges is a sign of trust that they have researched and found the best possible solution to achieve wireless DMX. It also ensures a wider range of compatibility among products overall. We wanted to show our gratitude toward Elation, SGM and Golden Sea for taking the lead of our OEM partners."

Toby Velasquez accepted the award on behalf of Elation, while Giorgio Radice represented SGM, and Jiang Wei Kai brought back the award for Golden Sea. A la

USA - Prism Projection's RevEAL Color Wash lighting fixture was awarded Best Debuting Product for Lighting at the LDI 2009 in Orlando, Florida. Products being unveiled for the first time at LDI are eligible for the award, and winners are selected by a secret panel of industry experts. The award was presented in ceremony at the LDI exhibit hall on 21 November.

The Color Wash is the first product released by RevEAL, Revolutionary Entertainment & Architectural Lighting.

After the awards ceremony, Prism Projection's president and founder Garrett Young commented, "The RevEAL CW is our first product for entertainment lighting and this our first time exhibiting at LDI. To have the industry welcome us with this award is truly a great honour. This award really has me energized to get back to the team in the lab and finish up the products we have on our roadmap for the line."O

USA - In front of a capacity crowd at the sold-out 2009 Parnelli Awards in Orlando, Florida, XL Video was announced as the winner of the Video Rental Company of the Year Award.

René de Keyzer, CEO of the XL Video Group and Phil Mercer, managing director of XL Video LA, accepted the award. Also on hand to celebrate was XL Video's president Marcel de Keyzer and Jo Beirne of XL Video UK.

Since 2001, the Parnelli Awards, presented by Projection, Lights & Staging News (PLSN) and Front of House (FOH) magazines has honoured the highest achievers and most admired innovators in the live event industry. The awards, named after the late production and touring manager Rick "Parnelli" O'Brien, recognise pioneering, influential professionals and their contributions to the industry, honouring bothAlso honoured at the Parnelli Awards was Stefaan 'Smasher' Desmedt who picked u

USA - Green Hippo once again received an award at the 2009 LDI Exhibition, scooping the Best Debuting Product for Projection for their new UberPan component. The award was received by marketing director James Ross Heron and Special Projects team member Tom Etra at the awards ceremony held on 21 November in Orlando Florida.

UberPan is a multi-server screen management component allowing multiple Hippotizers to create a single virtual canvas. Connect as many displays as you have outputs and in as many different sizes and configurations as you like. Screens can be a mixture of different physical sizes and resolutions. Once configured, the 'herd' of Hippotizers are seen as one single server allowing easy realtime control and live manipulation from Green Hippo's ZooKeeper control centre.

The setup uses real-world measurement and importantly, all realtime functionality found on any H

UK - On December 9 and 10, PRG Distribution are inviting lighting professionals to the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden, to see if they can tell the difference between a traditional incandescent or halide fixture and the next generation Nemo Li-FI Plasma source from Seachanger and the VLX LED Wash Luminaire from Philips Vari*Lite.

With a menu of numerous pastel and saturated colours, PRG Distribution challenge you to tell the difference between incandescent, halide, plasma and the phenomenal output of the LED VLX.

Sessions are available on both dates at 10.30am, 12.30pm and 14.30pm. If you'd like to attend, please visit the web address below for more details, or email sales@prgdistribution.com to book your place.

The Royal Opera House are also offering a unique opportunity to the first ten guests to confirm their attendance to get a behind the scenes tour and look

UK - Adlib Audio is supplying The Specials with sound equipment and the crew of James Neale and Richy Nicholson for their current UK tour.

Adlib was chosen to be the audio supplier by tour manager Mike Darling, with whom they have worked on several seasons of Ibiza Rocks and other projects.

Neale and Nicholson are working with the band's engineers Marcos Ferrari (FOH) and Pete Abbot (monitors) on a tour that ranges from small arenas and to provincial theatres. So the primary requirement of the system was that it be exceptionally flexible.

The main FOH speaker system is L-Acoustics V-Dosc (specified by Ferrari), however Adlib are also carrying some dV-Dosc and Arcs cabinets for the larger shows. In the largest configuration, this is set up as main left and right flown hangs of 8 V-Dosc cabinets and a under hang of three dV-Dosc per side.The flown side hangs consisted of six d

USA - Martin Professional scored a hat trick at the second annual ESTA Rock Our World Awards coming away with two best in category accolades and a special recognition award. Martin's P3-100 System Controller won Best Product of the Year while the Grand Mosque won for Best Project of the Year. The judging panel, headed by Mike Wood, also voted a special award to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

The 2009 Rock Our World Awards were presented at ESTA's Annual Dinner on Thursday evening 19 November in Orlando, Florida, just prior to the opening of the LDI show. The awards recognize groundbreaking achievement by ESTA Members in new products, product applications, or projects. According to ESTA, the awards were created to acknowledge the genius of both the creator of technology and the designer or integrator who applies the technology in a real wo

France - This December, French designer Sonia Rykiel launched her new range with a fashion show in the heart of Paris and Stageco built the specialist structures required to create a Parisian themed set.

The Grand Palais in Paris welcomed 2350 guests when it was transformed into a fairytale village for the launch of one of France's biggest fashion icon's new H&M range.

Stageco was approached to design and build the structures for the show working closely with the show's production manager Piet Winten. Stageco started work on the project a month before the show designing the custom built support structures.

The 26 strong Stageco team worked to a time and venue sensitive brief, building the set in three days ready for the international media, celebrities and special guests to watch the show.

Stageco designed the 400m² base upon which the replica version of the Eiffel Tower

UK - The only entertainment and installation technology show in the North of England, PLASA Focus: Leeds 2010 has launched its website with news of a near sell-out show. The success of the first ever PLASA Focus event this year has already seen next year's event fill two exhibition halls and now you can check out the brands bringing their new technology to Leeds, on Tuesday 27 - Wednesday 28 April 2010 at www.plasafocus.com/leeds

April 2010 will be the second time that venue owners, consultants, show designers, producers and technicians working on the North's leading events, installations and venues have a dedicated event where they can meet and find the new technologies to use in future facilities and productions.

Over 100 manufacturers from all over the world will be on show and the free Education and Learning Programme that runs alongside the exhibition brings

Argentina - The sixth Edition of the Personal Fest took place on 16 and 17 October, with Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys as headliners and with many national and international bands including Nile Rodgers & Chic, Zero 7, Cafe Tacuba and Tahiti 80.

More than 60,000 people attended the show which took place in the famous Club Ciudad de Buenos Aires. As in previous editions of the festival the sound and lighting was provided by Buenos Aires Live Show, who chose to use 15" stage wedges from the Proel Edge series.

The monitoring system consisted of Proel Edge15CXPB wedges amplified by Powersoft Q4002 and processed by the Proel DSO26 processors.

All involved were very satisfied with the high power, punch and intelligibility of the Edge monitors throughout the event.

(Jim Evans)

USA - The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's 25th Anniversary Concert brought together some of the most legendary names in music, including Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, Dion, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Smokey Robinson, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Aretha Franklin, Lou Reed, Ozzy Osbourne and U2.

The concerts took place over two nights, 29 and 30 October 2009, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and were broadcast on HBO. Creating a consistent sonic context for such a wide range of performers was the challenge faced by Music Mix Mobile, a New Jersey/California-based remote facilities company. The Music Mix Mobile team includes industry veterans John Harris, Jay Vicari, Joel Singer, Mitch Maketansky and newly added West Coast-based partners Bob Wartinbee and Mark Linett. For this concert, they relied on plug-ins from Waves Audio.

Th

UK - Audient's newest mixing console Zen will be showcased at London facility, CW[Pro] Cream Production Studios on Thursday 10 December, giving visitors a chance to meet the Audient team and get up close and personal with the high resolution desk.

Advertised as An Evening of Zen, demonstrations will start from 6pm and continue throughout the evening, allowing guests to hear the Zen and start to discover some of its many features, at the recently reopened studios in Park Royal.

Siobhan Paine heads up the 18,500sq.ft facility, which comprises six production suites and a stunning 850sq.ft live room. "The vibrant and productive environment at Cream is the perfect backdrop to present Audient's Zen," says Paine.

Zen is a compact, classic recording and mixing console, combining analogue mixing technology with flexible DAW integration, seamlessly blending the two fo

Royal News - The Queen has been entertained by a host of stars at the first Royal Variety Performance to be held in Blackpool since 1955. The town's illuminations had lit the way as the royal party made its way to the Opera House in the Winter Gardens. The charity event's host, comedian Peter Kay, welcomed the Queen to "the entertainment capital of the world". The show's performers included Lady Gaga, Bette Midler, Whoopi Goldberg and Britain's Got Talent winners Diversity.

Blackpool's Opera House, which seats 2,900 people, was used to host the show in the 1950s era of acts such as Morecambe and Wise, Arthur Askey and George Formby. The annual event was first staged in 1912 and the proceeds go towards the Variety Artistes' Benevolent Fund. The show's staging in Blackpool comes in the wake of BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing being staged at the resort's Tow

Russia - Christie is attending ISR (Integrated Systems Russia) held in Gostiniy Dvor, Moscow from 8 to 10 December. Christie takes part as the Gold Sponsor of ISR, cited as the number one Pro AV show in Russia.

Christie will be showcasing the award-winning Christie M Series range of three-chip DLP projectors. M Series is already recognised by professionals as one of the most feature-packed pro AV systems on the market today. The most compact in its class, this dual mercury lamp platform range now includes 11 models with powerful functionality and provides a wide selection of projectors with an equally wide range of brightness and resolutions: SXGA+ (1400x1050), HD (1920x1200), WXGA (1366x768) and WUXGA (1920x1200).

Another solution that has received the recognition of rental & staging companies is a line of high brightness three-chip DLP projectors: the Christie Roadster. At I

UK - GLP's new Impression 120 RZ Zoom has made its touring debut this month on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' high profile UK theatre tour.

The first 10 fixtures (each combining 120 RGB LED's) were supplied to Lite Alternative by GLP dealers, AC Entertainment Technology. And with LD Matt Arthur inheriting the pre-existing American stage set (which included the original GLP Impressions on the technical rider) he took the opportunity to upgrade to the automated optical zoom function, with 10° - 26° light distribution angle, principally to accent the set design's unusual eyeball feature with minimum spillage of light.

Each show featured six Impression Zooms, suspended from the mid truss for maximum stage versatility, with a further two used selectively as ground effects.

Jon Greaves, hire director of the Lancashire-based rental company, said that GLP's Mark Ravenhill had been ins

Russia - According to the results of the official survey, around 97 % of industry visitors were satisfied or very satisfied with their visit to Interlight Moscow and said their expectations had been met.

The 15th International trade fair for lighting, light technology and intelligent building technology drew to a close with plenty of optimism and an outstanding atmosphere, say the organisers. 305 exhibitors and 20,224 industry visitors enjoyed "excellent contacts and promising discussions" and are looking to the future with great confidence.

As in 2008, the extensive supporting programme at proved a major attraction. Around 300 attended LED Forum Moscow, which was held in parallel.

The 16th Interlight Moscow will be held from 16-19 November 2010 at the Expocentre Fairgrounds in Moscow.

(Jim Evans)

UK - When Alice Cooper embarked on his current UK and European Theatre of Death tour, his long-serving sound engineer Randy Meullier was finally able to bag his first choice digital console - the Soundcraft Vi6.

And he says he largely has Pete Russell at the SSE Audio Group to thank. Taking over the European sound production duties from Phoenix-based Precise Corporate Staging (PCS), by the time Russell suggested that Meullier try the Soundcraft platform (with the Vistonics II interface), the sound man - who has been piloting the legendary rocker's front-of-house mixes for the past seven years - had already served his baptism on the Vi6 in Norway and Cyprus.

"Earlier in this tour I did a fly-in show at the Skaanevik Festival in Norway and it was a joy to use the Vi6," he said. "I was delighted when Pete told me he could make one available.

"I

UK - Manchester-based DBN Lighting has completed the design, supply and installation of lighting for the new Da Vinci - the Genius exhibition at the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester.

DBN was working for Grande Exhibitions from Melbourne Australia and also for MOSI, and the project was designed and managed for them by Nigel Walker. The Da Vinci Exhibition occupies most of the top floor of The 1830 Warehouse, a Grade 1 Listed timber frame building, originally completed in 1830 as the Manchester terminus of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway.

Da Vinci - The Genius features four rooms, some sub-divided and a small theatre space that the DBN team created with rigging and drapes, plus a separate area devoted solely to the Mona Lisa.

The major challenge was in rigging all the equipment without actually attaching anything directly to the building's superstruc

USA - Pyro and special effects company Le Maitre exhibited at the recent LDI show in Orlando. It was Le Maitre's first major foray into the US market since setting up Le Maitre America earlier in the year.

Rick Wilson comments, "It gave us an opportunity to exhibit many of the new products now available and perhaps more importantly meet up with many of our American customers. The whole exercise proved an enormous success for Le Maitre presence in the US and we look forward to building on this."

(Jim Evans)

The Netherlands - Tannoy will again be out in force at the Integrated Systems Europe show in Amsterdam, between in February 2010. The Scottish based company will be exhibiting an extensive range of its loudspeaker solutions ranging from cutting-edge digitally steerable arrays through to high end home cinema audio systems.

At the forefront of Tannoy's recent innovations is the QFlex range of self-powered digital beam-steering array loudspeakers specifically designed to overcome intelligibility problems associated with highly reverberant surroundings. QFlex will satisfy a host of audio installation requirements such as airports and other transportation hubs, shopping malls, conference facilities, museums, houses of worship and many other locations with problematic acoustics, says the company.

After just over a year on the market, QFlex has already proven its worth across the wo

The Netherlands - Swiss digital signage hardware manufacturer, SpinetiX will showcase their HMP100 Hyper Media Player in a variety of digital signage configurations at Integrated Systems Europe 2010 in February, 2010 at the Amsterdam RAI.

As part of the InfoComm Education programme, Serge Konter, marketing manager at SpinetiX will present Digital Signage - an exploration of embedded systems versus PC based solutions for use in digital signage networks which will take place on 4 February 2010.

Serge Konter, marketing manager says: "At SpinetiX, we pride ourselves in offering open-standards hardware for digital signage applications and ISE is the ideal opportunity for the European professional audio community to view our enhanced SpinetiX HMP100Hyper Media Player, which offers a cost effective, dedicated and stand alone alternative to traditional PC-based distribute

USA - The ETCP Council reports that paper and pencil test administrations are scheduled for 2010 at the USITT Conference and Stage Expo in Kansas City, MO and at InfoComm in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Many major venues and employers across North America are now requiring ETCP Certified Technicians for lead positions.

All three ETCP examinations will be offered at USITT in Kansas City, MO. The application deadline for this administration is 1 March 2010.

The Arena Rigging and the Entertainment Electrician examinations will be offered at InfoComm in Las Vegas, NV. The application deadline for this administration is 7 May 2010.

(Jim Evans)

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