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ETC Relevé


Bryson

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The long awaited Revolution replacement, I guess:

 

https://www.etcconnect.com/ReleveSpot/

 

Notably, it uses a Colorsource Deep Blue engine, not an x7 as I might have assumed. Iris and frost, but no shutters.

 

Not shipping until the end of the year. No info on list or street price yet but I'll ask around and see what I can find. EDIT: Apparently, in the region of $7k, so that's probably UKP4000ish. Or more like UKP5000 if your currency continues the way it's going.... That means it's coming in at significantly above the $6k or so you need for a VL1100LED which it's going to compete with...

 

Apparently it's homing procedure is more...discreet...than your average moving head.

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I must be reading the spec. sheet incorrectly. It says that the light source, not the fixture, produces 6,000 lumens. That must be a typo, surely? Mac 500s put out more light than that!

 

Hi

 

No, it does say 6,000 lumens. But you're comparing a dirty great discharge lamp to a bunch of LEDs. I expect the optical efficiency to be better than a MAC500 somewhat.

 

Personally I'm a little disappointed in it; no shutters, only a 5-position gobo wheel and it doesn't do 16-bit dimming, which is what I would have expected for a fixture that costs this much. The no-move reset is a cool idea though but practically it's not something I would even bother thinking about, especially when someone (inevitably) crams it into a tiny corner and it overheats through lack of ventilation.

 

All the best

Timmeh

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I'd swap a 'discrete reset' for framing shutters in a heartbeat. The lack of framing is a massive disappointment from a fixture which has been so eagerly awaited. Sadly, for this reason alone I can see it losing out to the Encore Performance and VL1100LED
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I must be reading the spec. sheet incorrectly. It says that the light source, not the fixture, produces 6,000 lumens. That must be a typo, surely? Mac 500s put out more light than that!

 

Hi

 

No, it does say 6,000 lumens. But you're comparing a dirty great discharge lamp to a bunch of LEDs. I expect the optical efficiency to be better than a MAC500 somewhat.

 

 

No doubt the ETC optics will be better than Martins efforts, but according to the spec. sheet a Mac 500 outputs 3,000 more lumens than ETCs light source...

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The 8-bit dim thing is an interesting one. It says it does 15-bit smoothing internally, which is probably all you need, if it does it well - the only point of 16 bit dimming is to avoid visible stepping, nobody needs to be able to set 65000 dimmer levels from the console.

Regarding the lumens, a normal halogen source 4 profile does about 9000 lumens out of the lens in open white. Lustr+ does 2726 in warm white according to their figures. Which is interesting as I have used them side by side and not noticed such a large difference in light output.

 

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The impression I got at PLASA was that they were aiming at a similar market to the colorsource range and that a unit using the lustr engine and with shutters was in the pipeline. Did seem a bit pricey though for a small feature set.

 

Output wise, I have to say they were great for saturated colours due to the additive mixing which is something the CMY units struggle with.

 

The optics were great and you could get some lovely sharp animation effects. Definitely brighter than a Mac 500! The standard white was OK if not a little pink but easily solved with a bit of dial wiggling.

 

It was interesting now that they have the High End fixtures on the same stand. They did outshine the ETC ones by a mile. Punchy, big feature set and the new Solaframe 750 (a co project apparently) was very impressive for its size. Ugly though ;-)

 

Some units had a 1000watt white LED chip in to achieve the output though. I think this begs the question of why not just stick with a discharge lamp? A chip of that size is giving off a lot of heat, takes a huge heat sink and a fan and often colour output is inconsistent. The only benefit is lamp life but it makes servicing trickier and costlier and is mining an awful lot of the earth's resources.

 

Good to see the buyout having positive effects on both sides though. The Hog Consoles are benefiting from some investment and ETC have some moving lights that don't resemble or weigh the same as a tank.

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One of the things that appeals to me most about LED source fixtures is output consistency - arc lamps typically have a considerable reduction in output over their life and if (as is often the case) you have lamps of different ages this can be very noticable. That and the reduced operating costs (particularly removing the direct heat that causes so many failures in arc units).

Sure technically speaking you have some degredation in output over life with LED too, you probably have very limited/expensive options if the emitters fail and they are not immune from other faults (almost always LV PSU in my experience) but, on balance, I have found these to be significantly better than arc.

 

The Source Four Revolution was almost unique in having a tungsten source (along with the VL 1000 and later 1100). Whereas the LED profile party has been in full swing for some time now and they seem rather late. However, I can see this being attractive to theatres already equipped with other ETC LED fixtures where everything would be nicely matched.

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When I spoke to the guys on the PLASA stand, they said that it wasn't really a replacement for the Revs (unfortunately). They were indeed discreet - would love to hear them in a quiet room to see how noisy they actually are, but they were going in for photometrics, etc testing this week. They just wanted to have the beta models to display what is in the works. It is annoying that there are no shutters, but the rep said this would push up the size and price considerably, which was not the market that they were aiming for. Like the Rev, it's intended for theatre, not necessarily effects. The colour rendering was lovely, and at £5k, it's sort of the same price our Revs were when we first got them with all the accessories.
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