Cool! But...
Is it dimmable? How long does it take to reach full
intensity or extinguish after dimmed?
I doubt it'll make its way into the market soon (LEDs have been around how long, and NY is just now testing them in street lights? I think the video is a tad too hopeful.). Despite CFLs
(shudder) and LEDs we still have our
incandescent lamps. We still are tentative about
LED fixtures, let alone these "new-fangled plasma whoozywhatzits." Until some legislation creates a black market for
incandescent lamps (I'm in California, and the beginning lighting class keep trying to explain they're going to "ban regular light bulbs and make you unemployed") I don't see the urgency to improve this technology being enough to inspire change throughout the industry.
If they are dimmable, it's more likely new fixtures that are designed for them will arise. Just like how we have
LED PARs and
LED Fresnels, as opposed to modification kits for our
current fixtures. They're smaller, and while they might eventually help a lot of the issues we have with the lack of a perfect
focal point, the amount of money and effort to get one into a
Source Four, and then try to recreate the traditional look of the
source four would be beyond what most spend on it. Assuming logistically it worked, we had it properly bench focused, the shutters and
gobo/
iris slot was still in the right spot, the
color temperature is quite different. Because we can make warmer LEDs, it's likely to be fixable, but if they couldn't be warmed up for one reason or another, it'd be interesting to see how new
gel colors would be created to mimic outputs of our other fixtures. I mean, some Hogs have different sections for choosing light colors based on how a
gel color appears using a
PAR can or
Source Four, which is a minute difference in comparison to this. I don't see too many people giving up on our
incandescent lamps in
conventional fixtures yet.
If they can't be dimmed, perhaps in intelligents, where we can douse the source without dimming, they'd be useful? But again, I doubt we'll see them in theater any time soon.
Wow, what a rant. I know it wasn't brought up specifically for theatrical lighting, but I started pondering and...
Thank you for linking that, it was interesting!
Edit:
While I was typing this rant someone already brought up the dimmable question.