I can only assume that this is a record attendance year for LDI. I happened to be standing on the show floor when the doors opened on day one and haven't seen a crowd barrel through doors like that since The Who tickets went on sale. It was quite impressive.?
There are definitely some notable products being shown this year. Coemar's showing their new Infinity Wash XL fixture. It's nice to see that we haven't run out of pieces of glass to stick in front of a light beam. They've used a prism system in the optical train that allows for splitting the beam into three with rotation. The effect is similar to an array of ACLs, and it's pretty cool. It's also got a new type of color mixing system that produces some truly rich hues and a red that's closer to what most LDs desire.
The chaps at Green Hippo are showing Hippotizer V3, which is a drastic upgrade to an already great product. Talk about listening to a market! These guys are all about implementation. They've listened to what their users wanted and made it a reality. V3 has full network capability that allows for remote control of any number of machines on a network. One of the most notable features is the introduction of onboard video encoding. You no longer have to toil over video codecs. You can basically give the thing any content that you want and Hippo will re-encode it to the format that works best.
Element Labs has their new Versa® Tube HD, Cirrus, and Stealth products on display. Stealth gained some serious notoriety on Madonna's latest tour and is an absolutely beautiful, low-resolution video display. Cirrus is along the same lines but the LEDs are on a wider pitch and mounted to a translucent web of vinyl-like curtain. The curtain allows for viewing objects behind it as well as taking light beautifully.