p.k.roberts Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk0bJz3ryv8&feature=youtu.be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 Really? Looks interesting, but who is it for? Every former Strand user has already bailed to ETC or MA, and for good reason. Nobody doing music shows will want this because they are already spoiled for choice in the console department. It does rather look like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Can it be that Strand just cannot bear to admit that they are not a major console manufacturer anymore?Looking at the spec sheet I am puzzled by a couple of things:Only 5 playback faders with full control button set. "A NEO lighting control console is purchased with 1 universe of 512 DMX outputs" Really? Okay, now we are beginning to see who its aimed at a bit more. "The NEO lighting control console is the closest that a designer can get to actually touching the light" Thats almost exactly what ETC are saying about the Cobalt. Fight! Too little too late I reckon, unless they are going up against Zero 88 in which case it could be appealing, but I doubt that they are planning on selling this thing for the same price as a Frog 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibbothegreat Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 Really? Looks interesting, but who is it for? Every former Strand user has already bailed to ETC or MA, and for good reason. Nobody doing music shows will want this because they are already spoiled for choice in the console department. It does rather look like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Can it be that Strand just cannot bear to admit that they are not a major console manufacturer anymore?Looking at the spec sheet I am puzzled by a couple of things:Only 5 playback faders with full control button set. "A NEO lighting control console is purchased with 1 universe of 512 DMX outputs" Really? Okay, now we are beginning to see who its aimed at a bit more. "The NEO lighting control console is the closest that a designer can get to actually touching the light" Thats almost exactly what ETC are saying about the Cobalt. Fight! Too little too late I reckon, unless they are going up against Zero 88 in which case it could be appealing, but I doubt that they are planning on selling this thing for the same price as a Frog 2 Makes a very pretty video, for sure, but given how they've fared with the ML250, this could make my tea just the way I like it (and it takes me weeks to train humans to achieve that) and I wouldn't touch it. The ML250 could have been a winner, filling a niche that only one other desk really covers, and they made such a song and dance about this being them back in the game, and they were going to support this and put resources into developing it. Well, my only excuse for falling for it was that I wasn't active in lighting around the time Strand died the first time round, but suffice it to say they've not come close to fulfilling that. I challenged them recently why, given there were known bugs, and a long list of customer requests which hadn't been implemented yet, there hadn't been a single software update since September last year; their response was 'Oh, our programmers have been busy with something else, but we'll get back to it soon.' Since when there has been one release which didn't address any of the requests, and not even all the reported bugs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 Strand might as well face it - their days at the top of the pecking order in terms of lighting console manufacturers are long gone, they're now little more than an 'also-ran'. It's sad, really, because over the years most of us working in theatres will have grown up with so many innovative Strand control products - my personal journey through lighting control, for example, encompasses JP, SP, MMS, M24, Gemini, Galaxy, LP90, and the 200/300/400/500-series, and they did so much over the years to push the envelope of theatrical lighting control in the UK and Europe and bring new innovations to the table. The same could be said of lanterns, too - you could arguably say that until the Source4 came along there was nothing quite as iconic and innovative as the Patt.23. But that's all in the past now - to my mind, their acquisition by Genlyte in the middle of the last decade was pretty much the end for the Strand Lighting that most of us knew so well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaareolai Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 It has been interested in reading the different remarks in this thread. This LightFactory - Strand Electric marriage have been kept secret to me also until now, so I have really no more clue than you about how, why and when this will lead to. I have also used Strand desks earlier, and sort of written them off in the list of desks in the movinglight/advanced range. Gareth has (very) good points there! But since I know the LightFactory software product very well, I am sure that the underlying lighting desk software machine and GUI is very powerful, and easy to learn from zero to quite advanced level in a few go's. Please donot put this software engine in same drawer as former Strand "OSs" and software engines and GUIs. The Strand part here, from what I have seen in the teasers, and my knowledge to LightFactory (LF), even up to next coming version, is a good hardware intergration with some Microsoft (probably embedded) OS (*1), and a tactile interface and some software adaptions regarding drivers and protocols. What you use is therefore very LF. And LF has good specs in capasity and usefulness. You might read about LF's specs, and even download it at LF's homepage to get a feeling. I _presume_ Strand maybe want to follow the LF licensing policy. But that is nothing unlike other brands either, to sell it almost (DMX) universe by universe. So what the future brings for Strand Neo, well, it will be very interesting to follow... (*1) I am not to keen on MS OSs etc etc, but we have had such discussions here earlier about underlying OSs in different desks before, so no need to bring _that_ up here ;-). I am biased in this discussion, as I have been a LightFactory user, betatester, and exhibiting on stands the product and hardware around it, here in Norway, for a decade. ;-) Regards Kåre Olai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 All reasonable points, Kare - but as far as Strand are concerned it's too little, too late. LightFactory may well be the most amazing piece of lighting control software ever written (I don't know, I'm not familiar with it), but no matter how good it is it's not going to get Strand their 'crown' back (nor anything like it, for that matter). That ship has sailed, and ETC are driving it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 I've got to agree with Gareth - I too had the same route, and I really wanted to support Strand, it was kind of a 'special' company in the past - you could trust them, and they seemed to listen (albeit in a rather distant way). Then it all went wrong, and old faces vanished and the new people were totally unaware of the company history and they were absolutely certain everyone would wait and then buy their next product. It was a pile of poo, and their business just washed away and they didn't seem to care. ETC had what theatre people wanted and Strand will never get it back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ynot Posted March 15, 2014 Share Posted March 15, 2014 Add to that the fact that ETC have delivered, certainly in recent years, an unparalleled customer service attitude and you'll find another reason why they didn't just overtake Strand (and pretty much all the rest) the SCREAMED past them in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junior8 Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 I've got to agree with Gareth - I too had the same route, and I really wanted to support Strand, it was kind of a 'special' company in the past - you could trust them, and they seemed to listen (albeit in a rather distant way). And it was really a very long time ago when you think about it - so fast does time fly! It makes you wonder whether the brand has any value left at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 "makes you wonder whether the brand has any value left at all?" Thats certainly an issue. The older members of this community who remember when Strand made good desks have long since moved on. The younger ones will have never experienced Strand as a real player in the first place, so why would they be interested now? It looks like one of the things Strand is trying to do is to make a big noise about the fact that this desk has native control of all the Philips Luminaires "Every NEO lighting control console also benefits from the all new Philips Advantage DMX model. This concept allows you to patch Philips Entertainment and Color Kinetics brand luminaires without consuming the console’s purchased DMX outputs.With Philips Advantage DMX, you can control thousands of Philips luminaires at no additional cost or output license limitations." This is just wack. No other desk has a limit on DMX universes other than a physical one, so that is hardly much incentive is it? If it is really based on the Light Factory license model then they charge around $200 per universe. No word yet on the Strand pricing arrangements, or how much they will be charging per extra universe. Its going to be more than that though. I just really object to people selling gimped hardware. And then telling you that it isn't gimped if you use their lamps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceecrb1 Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 This is just wack. No other desk has a limit on DMX universes other than a physical one, so that is hardly much incentive is it? If it is really based on the Light Factory license model then they charge around $200 per universe. No word yet on the Strand pricing arrangements, or how much they will be charging per extra universe. Its going to be more than that though. I just really object to people selling gimped hardware. And then telling you that it isn't gimped if you use their lamps. That still sounds like all the strand gear left over at my ex-employers.He was spains main vendor of strand, and as such has a warehouse full of kit.. both well used and BNIB (all be it older models).ALL of the desks from the 300 and up, all had only a certain number of DMX channels available untill you bought more...The 520i with just 100 channels (iirc) was laughable I tried many times to sit down and get into them and their mentality.. but as much as I tried, they just never grew on me.I know that in this city there are MANY MANY strand operators due to the legacy of my ex-boss and all the theater installs he has done over the years... But I just leave them to it... good or bad, I just didnt *click* with it. Onto the new.. the MAIN thing I didnt like from the videos is the aparent number of "key" (screen) presses neccessary to do something so simple as change the colour of a VL.... Mostly that he had to select the colour tab.. then open the rgb window.. select, then close th window again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianknight Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Limited channel numbers "out of the box" was an American idea I think because traditionally a lot of American theatres used small numbers of dimmers with massive pairing. I think Strand hoped to make money on the back of European idea's moving stateside and becoming one lamp per channel and by the time GeniusPro appeared on the 400/500 series it was the US side of Strand that drove the console business. It seemed a nice way (to me) of letting small venues buy an advanced desk but I could never reconcile the high initial expense of the 400 series and the relatively small sum to expand channels for a little theatre. What eventually did for the market that Strand were looking at (I believe) were the likes of Zero88 with Illusion and ChamSys with MagicQ who gave small venues the "advanced" features that the GeniusPro family offered but at an "all in" cost (which was also lower than the basic Strand console). Neo looks nice and I can guess who at Strand is driving it forward with the same passion and enthusiasm he had for his previous employers products, as many folk have wondered though "Is it too late?". I don't think Neo will appeal to small venues/users 'as is' - certainly the promo video doesn't go out of its way to show that Neo is anything but a moving light desk - there are no graphics of Cantata Fresnels being dimmed with scrollers attached or Patt 223's or even of just three lighting bars over a stage with 24 circuits of dimming. Certainly it would be a hard sell to some of our customers against things like MagicQ, Limelight or ZerOS on Solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 "The 520i with just 100 channels (iirc) was laughable" Well, thats a decent amount of dimmer channels for a small to medium theatre - and that was back then. But yeah, still not right.Now Light Factory will sell you the basic model of their software with a whole 128 channels!Yup, not even a single universe. Good work chaps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaareolai Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Onto the new.. the MAIN thing I didnt like from the videos is the aparent number of "key" (screen) presses neccessary to do something so simple as change the colour of a VL.... Mostly that he had to select the colour tab.. then open the rgb window.. select, then close th window again... There are many ways to to this, and other things, probably as you are used to on other desks. From selecting by palette - in different ways, by wheel, by commandline, and by that fixture detail window... ;-) While I am responding here, I do agree about most comments Strand get here. Let us just hope they are reasonable in their expectations about this new product, both saleswise and pricewise. Regards Kare Olai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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