What do you thing about BRITEQ Moving lights

[Shure1920]

Hi All,

 

I am going to buy 8 LED Moving Lights and 8 or 10 LED Wash Moving Head.

 

Some one offered BRITEQ and I want to hear from you guys . What do you thing about this company ? Do you use any of Briteq Moving heads.

 

Thank you

[paulears]

They are a Belgium company offering a range of fairly generic Chinese products, some with quite common components in a different plastic moulded case. I can't see huge benefits in dealing with a Belgian company, as you'll have the usual shipping hassle for warranty work, as people do buying from Thomann in Germany - however, if their prices are keen, shipping free and like Thomann, they're decent to deal with, why not? Before my first major purchase from Thomann, I simply phoned them up. Two minutes on the phone and I decided they were every bit as easy to deal with as a UK supplier, and frankly better than many. I've been a happy customer for many years now. Try the same with these people, and see if they impress you.

 

The products are exactly what they appear to be. Short shelf-life, interesting Chinese equipment. The usual caveats apply. If you are buying 8 with the intention of them lasting a while, then buy 9, and either use it as an 'over quantity', or keep it for spares. If you look at Briteq's discontinued page, you'll see the problem - quite recent items, no longer available - so spares dry up once they stop being used in the new ones. getting a new RGBW LED chip could be impossible when the design changes and the newer ones physical or electrically won't fit! Power supplies, drive belts, controller boards - suddenly make your product worthless. The Chinese kit manufacturers just don't keep piles of expensive boards hanging around, and often the actual suppliers abandon products totally and change direction, leaving you with a product that nobody even knows who really made it. The firm I bought some expensive microphones for for years no longer makes mics - they 'make' moving lights now. Ask them about mics and they shrug?

 

Briteq seem OK from the searches I've done, but until today, I'd never heard of them. If you google some of the descriptions and specs, you get pointed to Chinese sources who are quite a bit cheaper. You then face the choice of paying less and maybe getting more, or using a dealer in another country who may also end up powerless to help. Thomann, to use as an example receive your moving head light back for repair, cannot fix it because parts are not available, and they honour the guarantee by offering you the latest version instead. A 3 month delay in buying a mover nowadays usually means a slightly different white, slightly different beam quality, gobos that don't match, probably glued in the head in a different order, and colour wheels that contain similar but different colours. Replacements are rarely plug and play into your rig. Something that might sway your buying choices.

[Shure1920]

They are a Belgium company offering a range of fairly generic Chinese products, some with quite common components in a different plastic moulded case. I can't see huge benefits in dealing with a Belgian company, as you'll have the usual shipping hassle for warranty work, as people do buying from Thomann in Germany - however, if their prices are keen, shipping free and like Thomann, they're decent to deal with, why not? Before my first major purchase from Thomann, I simply phoned them up. Two minutes on the phone and I decided they were every bit as easy to deal with as a UK supplier, and frankly better than many. I've been a happy customer for many years now. Try the same with these people, and see if they impress you.

 

The products are exactly what they appear to be. Short shelf-life, interesting Chinese equipment. The usual caveats apply. If you are buying 8 with the intention of them lasting a while, then buy 9, and either use it as an 'over quantity', or keep it for spares. If you look at Briteq's discontinued page, you'll see the problem - quite recent items, no longer available - so spares dry up once they stop being used in the new ones. getting a new RGBW LED chip could be impossible when the design changes and the newer ones physical or electrically won't fit! Power supplies, drive belts, controller boards - suddenly make your product worthless. The Chinese kit manufacturers just don't keep piles of expensive boards hanging around, and often the actual suppliers abandon products totally and change direction, leaving you with a product that nobody even knows who really made it. The firm I bought some expensive microphones for for years no longer makes mics - they 'make' moving lights now. Ask them about mics and they shrug?

 

Briteq seem OK from the searches I've done, but until today, I'd never heard of them. If you google some of the descriptions and specs, you get pointed to Chinese sources who are quite a bit cheaper. You then face the choice of paying less and maybe getting more, or using a dealer in another country who may also end up powerless to help. Thomann, to use as an example receive your moving head light back for repair, cannot fix it because parts are not available, and they honour the guarantee by offering you the latest version instead. A 3 month delay in buying a mover nowadays usually means a slightly different white, slightly different beam quality, gobos that don't match, probably glued in the head in a different order, and colour wheels that contain similar but different colours. Replacements are rarely plug and play into your rig. Something that might sway your buying choices.

 

Wow! Huge thank you for this messege!! Can you offer different brand ?

Actually I m looking for some Martin but These are too expensive

 

Thank again

 

 

[paulears]

I'm not speaking totally in sympathy with many members here - so I can tell you that the advice to buy Martin, Robe and Clay Paky and a few others is many members absolute opinion, and it's countered with the fact that these people also believe Chinese gear to be simply junk, poor quality, short lifespan tat - sold on the sweat and tears of the design teams at the big name brands. My usual counter is simply that for the price of one Martin or Robe 1st ring touring circuit or, big budget TV you can buy LOTs of Chinese gear and throw beams around in the air, and wash a stage with a brightness unimaginable a few years back, in pretty well any colour you fancy. I have failures of course - I have about 30 odd Chinese sourced LED lights bought over the past 4 years in clumps. I have had 3 power supplies, a few plastic case sections when I banged them hard, an LED driver board, a DMX control board and a gobo. One of my washes has a sticky zoom and another has a failed chip. One of the rotating eye type fixtures has it's rotation 1 step out from the others, something I could fix, but I cheat in the programming for laziness. One with a Chinese powercon connector needed a new chassis connector when it wouldn't mate without arcing. That's it. People will cite this proof they're rubbish. However, in panto, I have a rig full of big ticket brands hired in - and one panto usually results in far more kit waiting to be repaired. Personally, six grand of fixture that can't manage to do what it should do for a couple of hours makes me positive I shall never use my own money on expensive kit of this kind - I can buy 15-20 Chinese movers for the price of one well specified branded mover. With a full warranty and spares on the shelf (thank God).

 

If you buy from China - then there is of course a risk. Warranties are rarely worth using as a decider. At best, you might get a discount of another different one, if you cannot fix them yourself. My experience is that they use Google translate - so I use video and photos to show the problems - a meter on a connector reading 2V when it should be 5, or the lack of any voltage at all - I draw rings around the problem parts and they send a new bit. If you can't settle for that, then you need a proper dealer. Quite a few around, but Thomann is pretty decent and have a 3 yr warranty on everything.

 

Brands don't exist in Chinese kit - the batch I'm waiting on at the moment for a giggle have my ears logo on them. A nice Chinese lady said send me a logo and we will print it on the yoke. Silly really.

 

If you want to buy direct from China - visit AliExpress.com. You will find all kinds of LED kit there. However, many of the sellers have no clue whatsoever, and it's common for a light to contain blurb relating to a totally different product. It's up to you to talk to them, ask for extra pictures, measurements - anything you find important and they will respond. One of my LED lights was described as having a dynamic capsule for good sound - you have to be nosey. They'll email you manuals and DMX info if you want it, and you will find numerous versions of your product being sold under dozens of silly names.

 

Have a look at Thomann, Showtec, American DJ, chauvet and kit like that - all cheap, Chinese and cheerful.

 

My final tip for first time lighting buying from china - make your first order the price you could afford to lose. I have only ever lost money once - on a product that was so cheap it was too good to be true. I have no qualms now spending 2 to 4 grand on AliExpress. They use a good system and you can pay with a credit card for extra protection. I bought a big order last week - and my credit card checked with me before releasing funds - had I really tried to spend this much with china - text yes for ok or no for a problem, I text back yes - I got the confirmation from china in two minutes!

 

You MUST read other people's opinion too. Many Blue Room members hate Chinese kit with a passion because it isn't as good as Martin, Robe and the others. This is true - features are trimmed in many cases, and corners cut to make them cheaper. Some features are difficult to get - iris and zoom for instance on a spot mover. These are rarer from china.

 

You can buy most of the lights in flight cases if you want. These are quite well built and the only downside is the freight costs.

[Jivemaster]

My issue with Chinese kit is that there are NO spare parts available, So if your intended use is one show buy Chinese cheaply, If your intention is long term usage then buy from a big name brand. The only way to get spares for old Chinese kit is to have one or more to canibalise. Even months later, if the same product is available it's actually different and usually in an obvious way when used so you NEVER get a pair with anything you already have.

 

Look at disco level kit in disco shops for the cheaper prices.

[themadhippy]

How times have changes,many moons ago when vari lite was hire only and spent most of there time suing the likes of high end and martin a little known czech company sneaked in the back door with there little 250w movers,many noses were turned up,claims of copying another manufacturers product,reliability issues and lack of spares were often given as a reason to avoid them like the plague,wonder how that little,unknown Czech company is doing 20+ years later?

[johnhuson]

Whilst I totally see the arguments towards buying cheap Chinese products, and I think Paul makes some vary valid points. What we do have to remember is if the 'more expensive' manufacturers with a significant proportion of their costs in R&D, are priced out of the market, where does the innovation come from? Without that where do the Chinese get their inspiration from?

 

Whilst the direct counterfeiting of products is still rife in China, and something better left for another discussion. Leaving that to one side, even products that are not a direct copy, I don't see any products that are unique or innovative.

[gyro_gearloose]

I don't see any products that are unique or innovative.

Does there need to be constant innovation? I'm sure a lot of people just want washes, spots, and these days, beams.

[timsabre]

I don't see any products that are unique or innovative.

Does there need to be constant innovation? I'm sure a lot of people just want washes, spots, and these days, beams.

So why are the chinese copying innovative designs like the B-eye and the Jarag?

[ImagineerTom]

Does there need to be constant innovation? I'm sure a lot of people just want washes, spots, and these days, beams.

 

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

 

Henry Ford

[paulears]

So why are the chinese copying innovative designs like the B-eye and the Jarag?

The same way that Furse did it to Strand years ago - actually it's very similar - they copied the style and the obvious things like Fresnel lenses and barn doors, and then shutters and PC lenses - they didn't bother spending much time on the reflectors and beam adjustments so they never quite performed, but the basic idea was the same. The Chinese 'eye' type products are completely unlike the results of the real product - the significant feature simply being a rotating lens disk. No colimation or clever optics, just a moving lens moving over a cluster of LEDs. By and large, the project squares of light that open and close - the cool beam patterns the real ones produce are very variable - the Chinese ones far. far less so - but equally, they produced night effects.

 

 

 

They do the same with audio systems, especially loudspeaker boxes - they mimic the shape, but never copy the internals, so those benefits are lost. Now I have had quite few Chinese movers through my hands, I'm starting to see shared components an awful lot. Shared chassis with missing modules. Servo boards with unused outputs and modular sections. Need a colour wheel - by an off-the shelf module and bolt it in. One gobo wheel or two? Rotating or not? Dimmer shutters are the same. Just a few mouldings for the case parts change, and 'unique' movers can be built quickly and simply using off the shelf parts. One of the people I buy from fairly regularly told me that they are in a huge building - they have a small office, workroom and everything needed is in the building. They can have an idea, and produce it in 24 hours. Source the modules you need from another source in the building, fit them, get another business to programme the controller board, buy the PSU from somebody else, pick a plastic shell that fits the things you built in, and then pass it onto another business who boxes it, wraps it and ships it. This is why spares are tricky - they probably won't even remember which of the in-house suppliers they used - so you might get a PSU with 3 terminals or 4, or a shutter that works backwards, or the gobos in a different order - or totally different gobos. I got a packet since containing 20 because they couldn't remember which I had in my units.

 

The big brands have huge r&d teams and very long lead times. If you wanted a Chinese mover with TWO rotating gobos, and could live with no dimmer - they'd happily put it together for you. If the dimmer physically would fit, you could have that too! This is also why two identical spec products can have different DMX attribute lists, because that's just how the thing was burned in the programming unit in the factory. Ten features = ten attributes. The order, unless specially requested is just how the guy did it. If you wanted a mover with something special - just ask. They do exactly the same with mics and guitars, and of course radio mics. The advertise what they 'think' people will want. if they buy them that's fine, if not, they make something else. The ones I ordered were held up a few days because they couldn't source the LEDs - they advertised originally RGBA, and what is coming is RGBAUV - this meant a reprogram of the boards they had in stock. Mr Hippy's comment about the Eastern European brand made me smile - Coemar and Futurelight were quite well respected brands, and then they suddenly stopped being exclusively OEM manufacturers and started selling them under their own brand - a real shame they didn't pick a brand name that everybody would pronounce the same, even their staff. Trantec sold Sure branded radios for a long time, and then started selling their own.

 

Chinese mover R&D is like building with lego - only a limited number of shapes making all sorts of different end products. Martin and the others don't do this, and by God, we pay for it. We don't get cross when Vauxhall, Opel, and Nissan all make cunningly similar vehicles from common parts, yet maintain they are separate companies - and they're cheaper than a Merc or VW. In a hire fleet, spares and lifespan are important, but for individual purchases, You can do an awful lot of stuff with loads of kit that you cannot do with one at ten/twenty times the cost. No comparison. Sure, you need to buy for spares, but you can also use the spares as over an above the number needed, dropping down when one dies. 3 years is about the right write off time for the product - if you get longer, that was a good deal.

[MrBoomal]

Have a look at Thomann, Showtec, American DJ, chauvet and kit like that - all cheap, Chinese and cheerful.

 

 

 

-Not sure chauvet would appreciate being called cheap, Chinese and cheerful. Have you seen the new Maverick ?

[paulears]

One of the dangers in trying to grow upwards, when people remember the lower end products - I think Chauvet are trying hard to go upmarket, and that's not a bad thing - but they've fell into the trap of labelling the cheaper products as DJ, which kind of slaps the face of the better end of the DJ market by adding 'professional' as a tag for the more expensive and complex kit?

 

Difficult to add cheap to an expensive range, and doing it the other way around can shoot you in the foot too.

[timsabre]

Chauvet do have 2 distinct brands, DJ and Professional - even different websites for them. The Pro gear is pretty solid in my experience. Plus they now own Chamsys...

[gyro_gearloose]

Does there need to be constant innovation? I'm sure a lot of people just want washes, spots, and these days, beams.

 

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

 

Henry Ford

Good point, but what I meant was what else is there to improve/innovate in a moving spot, for example?