Jands has launched several new products during Entech.
As well as a strong team of Jands personnel on hand there was a host of international factory representatives available from Shure, JBL, ETC, Varilite, Crown, BSS, Soundcraft, dbx, Lexicon, Optocore, ClearCom, ASM, Slinco, Spotlight and Serapid.
Whilst every brand represented by Jands had offerings, there were several new products too: the new BSS BLU products, two new Chroma-Q LED fixtures, the ETC Eos and Jands’ own Vista I3 console.
Jands were representing Optocore, specialists for optical fibre network solutions, and Luca Giaroli, Optocore’s product manager was delighted by the interest shown in their products at the show.
“We’ve met many potential customers especially some designers/specifiers for fixed installs,” he remarked. “We’ve also met some existing customers such as those that are installing our products into the New Zealand Parliament. So for us it has been a very good show.
“Our system is very well known as a strong and powerful network system based on fibre optics. We find that all the production companies and broadcasters are increasingly interested in our products because the digital domain is taking over the old fashioned analogue copper cable.”
Four new additions to the BSS Audio Soundweb London family were on show: the BLU-800, BLU-320, BLU-160 and BLU-120. The models are based on existing devices but also feature four times the DSP and they have BLU-Link, a 256 channel, fault tolerance bus which is connected in a ring.
“You can break the connection anywhere in the ring and still get access to the 256 channels,” explained Iain Gregory, product manager for BSS Audio.
“It’s connected on standard Cat 6 cable so you can go 100 metres between devices or, if you need to go further than that, you can use single-mode fibre media converters to add extra kilometres.
“There are also new features in the software such as dynamic metering which allows you to hover a mouse over particular cables and you get a representation of a metre. It’s a very useful tool for debugging a system.”
An added room-combine feature cuts programming time down by hours.
“The show has been great, really busy,” said Iain. “We’ve had lots of interested in the BLU-Link and new software.”
ETC were showing four new consoles: Smartfade, Smartfade ML, Eos and the Eon.
“The Eos has proven very popular because it’s a perfect blending of a board that does both conventional and movers,” commented Mike Griffith, director of sales for ETC. “It’s the board that people have been looking for a long time; it does the two functions very well.
”The reception that our boards have had at Entech has been fabulous. In fact whilst we were here at the show we got orders for two Eos boards for the Melbourne Theatre Company and I know that it is being evaluated by most of the big performance venues throughout the country. It’s been a great response form everybody and we’ve been flat out.”
Neil Vann, technical product manager at AC Lighting, was rushed off his feet as interest in the two new Chroma-Q LED products was intense.
”We’re showing the new Color Punch and equally new Color Block,” he said. “It’s been a good show, lots of quality interest. Lots of people have been impressed now we have to hope it turns into cash!”
The compact Color Punch provides 1230 Lumens output, is IP65 rated, features convection cooling for completely silent operation and a tough machined aluminium and high impact plastic casing.
The Color Split is a modular LED fixture whose dual RGBA cells provide lighting designers with the opportunity for single colour or dramatic split colour. The advanced split beam technology enables a smooth colour wash from top to bottom of a surface - the wide-angle lens in one cell evenly washes the lower portion of a surface while the narrow lens projects the beam higher.
Meanwhile Jands’ lighting specialist Alex Mair was busy demonstrating the new Jands Vista console: the Vista I3, a compact, portable, economical version of the Vista T series. Including an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, the I3 puts all the features of the Vista T series into a desk you can fit under your arm.
Simply connect a monitor, keyboard and mouse and you have got a fully-operational and highly-portable Vista console for way less than the price of the full-scale console.
”The Vista I3 completes the Vista family by giving us a mid-level console that doesn’t require an external PC and is priced attractively for smaller to mid-sized production companies,” commented Alex.
“The reception the I3 received at Entech was very good and I know we took at least one order at the stand. I spoke to many people from the smaller to mid-sized production companies and they were all very excited by the Vista I3.
“One person said to me that I showed them the Vista two years ago and that they had been waiting for the price to be right. Now the price is right they are going to buy one.”
During the tradeshow, Jands produced fourteen expertly staged demonstrations including new product demos, such as the Vista I3, BSS BLU-Link, Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash and the latest JBL powered speakers, as well as technical topics to help benefit their clients’ businesses.
Topics included navigating the wireless jungle, demystifying the world of dimming, and understanding sound system performance criteria and specifications.