Industry Standard in 5 years

[No1_Moose]

I think it is pretty clear that for mid to large scale shows the Strand 500 is the current standard. However, the desk is now getting a little old. With desks like the GrandMA what do you think will be the standard by which others are judged in 5 to 10 years. I personally think the MA is well out in front in terms of ease of use and sheer power.

[Tomo]

Over in the USA, the Wholehog II (and now III) appear to be the standard.

 

Personally, I think that a desk based on the Jands Vista's 'timeline' paradigm will be the 'industry standard' in five years, if not the Vista itself.

 

Although I would much prefer it if there wasn't an 'industry standard' at all, as diversity breeds improvement - if there is lots of competition between the different brands then each company will be forced to produce a better product.

If Strand had simply 'won', we wouldn't have the Wholehog, the Vista, the MAXXYZ or the GrandMA, and the Strand 520 wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it is.

 

One thing I'd love is greater interoperability - it would be great if you could just export a show programmed on one desk in some common format, import it into another console and have it just *work*.

This would take a massive effort so design the common format though, as it needs to keep palettes, timings, multiparts and more intact (macros are probably impossible to take from one paradigm to another). I very much doubt that this is something that manufacturers are very likely to implement, as the purpose is to allow a show to change to a different manufacturer.

[SparkySteve]

Industry standard for what...?

 

Live music, concert, rock n roll, theatre, corperate, tv, film, fringe theatre... it's endless but all require different aspects from a desk.

[mac.calder]

I am assuming you mean in theatres and touring houses. In five years time I believe that we will see a shift from proprietary desk specific show file types and a shift into a more universal area. Or, rather, proprietary show formats optimised for the specific desks, but with the ability to import from, and export to a standard show description format like WYSIWYG files and no true standard desk in touring houses. We already seem to be seeing a large shift from plotting on a desk to plotting using visualisation software and OLE's then bunging a disk into the drive on the console mere hours before the show/tech rehearsal or plot.

[No1_Moose]

Sorry, I did mean theatres.