ETC Enters LED market with purchase of Selador

SteveB

Well-Known Member
[IMGR]http://www.etcconnect.com/img/news/NEXTnews_Selador_glam.jpg[/IMGR]ETC announced their purchase of Selador, a move that thrusts ETC boldly into the LED lighting market. ETC purchased Selador's product line, including the Lustr, Paletta, and the newly announced VIVID, which combine the 7x Color System with K2 emitters from Luxeon for an incredibly bright output.

Selador is known for their innovative LED products, most notably for using seven LED colors (7x Color System) to give incredibly smooth transitions from color to color and excellent saturation.

The ETC/Selador agreement means that ETC with now own, manufacture, and distribute the Selador product line and will retain Selador co-founders Rob Gerlach and Novella Smith as exclusive consultants to develop more products for the line.

UPDATE: Rob Gerlach has posted on ETC's Blog an incredible article on some of the finer points of the Selador 7 Color System and gives on additional insight into why the ETC/Selador deal is such a great pairing.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
here is the official press release:

ETC enters LED lighting market! 441MN


After long speculation about whether ETC would enter the LED market, we are announcing our acquisition of the SeladorLED product line from Selador co-founders Rob Gerlach and Novella Smith.

Read the full Selador launch story on our redesigned Web site home page.

In ETC CEO Fred Foster’s words, “We didn’t want to make a ‘me too’ RGB or RGBA product that didn’t provide the kind of significant innovation in lighting we strive for. With its exclusive x7 Color System™, the Selador product line produces a far superior quality of color and light to anything that we had seen before in LEDs. We also benefit from the brainpower of Selador’s Novella and Rob – great people who will join our ETC team.”

Selador’s x7 Color System seven-hue technology produces a light and color quality that conventional LED systems cannot duplicate. This unique color system produces bright broad spectrum whites and intense colors equally well, rendering pigments and skin tones in a more natural way. Read Rob Gerlach’s explanation of the x7 Color System difference on our Light Minds blog.

The Selador x7 Color System also finds its perfect counterpart in our ETC control-system offerings, which make control of LED fixtures easier, more direct and user friendly. We have already integrated color matching and HSI (hue, saturation and intensity) control of Selador products into the latest software releases of our Eos® and Congo® lighting control console lines. Our architectural systems will follow shortly, and we will continue to innovate in the areas of color management in these products.

Selador’s LED line-up includes the Paletta™ and Lustr™ products, just introduced at LDI 2008. Paletta fixtures’ unique blend of seven colors of LEDs was selected to provide the depth of color that designers are used to from their favorite saturated gels. The Lustr line uses a different blend of colors optimized for producing broad spectrum whites and tinted colors – solving the traditional LED problem of making people look unnatural.

ETC is also debuting the latest Selador product: the high-output color-mixing Vivid™ LED fixture series. The Vivid series combines the Selador x7 Color System with powerful K2 emitters from Luxeon™, for the highest output available. Vivid LED fixtures provide high brightness and intense colored lighting for much longer throws, while matching and blending with gel colors and tungsten fixtures.

Get the full product specs and details on our new Selador Series product pages.

You’ll also have a chance to see and demo our new Selador products in person at USITT and NAB!​
 
I'm excited.
 
Congrats to you Steve Terry, and the rest of the ETC crew!

All our best wishes for a long and happy relationship with the Selador staff and product line (with more to come I'm sure).


:clap:
 
It's not gonna be LED, it's gonna be Plasma/LIFI technology. That's the next white light source revolution.
 
would the LED strips possibly be a good replacement for traditional cyc lights? if they havent already.
 
From Rob's Blog post at Light Minds Think Alike:

There are other components of Selador fixtures that are critical for them to look natural to the eye and seamless next to conventional fixtures in a rig. Selador fixtures have newly redesigned circuitry within them that allows for exceptionally smooth, analog-looking dimming. I have to say that this was surprisingly difficult to achieve with a light source as responsive and non-analog as an LED, but I am extremely pleased with the results. Selador is also known for terrific beam-shaping capabilities. No, we don’t yet have a Selador ellipsoidal (it will come) but the fixtures we do have can be shaped very nicely with specialized secondary lenses. We get a lot of compliments about this.

The emphasis was added....

Things just got more interesting didn't they....
 
I am counting the days until used CB's get to $250. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to own some of these new ETC products but I can only imagine the new sticker price.

I can't wait to sub some of these ETC LED's though for the bigger stuff.

;)
 
This just occurred to me, one of my local dealers was/is a Selador dealer, but not an ETC dealer. How will this merger affect them?
 
This just occurred to me, one of my local dealers was/is a Selador dealer, but not an ETC dealer. How will this merger affect them?
The bigger question is how can you not be an ETC dealer and still be inbusiness?

gafftaper's LED Source Four lamp cap may be closer than we think!
:excitable:It's better than that, the LED product I've had a rather unhealthy obsession with has been purchased by my favorite manufacturer. It's a beautiful thing. Now if they can only figure out how to squeeze all 7 LEDs in the S4 cap...

Congratulations to our ETC friends. I've been looking at Selador for a long time and it's clearly the best product out there. It's always seemed like they just needed deeper pockets to get the word out about their product (and afford a booth that isn't at the back of the convention hall). With ETC behind their products things are really going to rock.
 
I spoke with Tom Carlson of ETC today, as I'm headed to ETC within the next month or two, and asked him about the Selador line and if I might be able to see some in action at the HQ. He said that it's hard to tell yet because there's such a high demand to have fixtures out in the field, and nothing has been set in stone in regards to whether or not there will be display models on site at HQ or not. They tried to keep the agreement extremely low-key, and announced the fixture lines almost immediately after the ink dried on all of their paperwork

Tom himself has not seen them in action yet, but he's heard amazing things about them and can't wait to see them. That said, I hope someone sees these soon to let us know how they look. I'd really like to see some photometrics, but that has yet to be posted on the data sheets, which are so young that even the data sheets are plastered with "PRELIMINARY" watermarks on the background.

Spencer Lyons is going to be out here tomorrow so when I see him I'll ask him what he knows about the fixtures and what the odds would be of seeing them in action.
 
The question is does ETC plan to just take what Selador already has created and run with it straight into production or if they are going to stop and do a little redesign work on it. Any of our ETC friends care to comment?

I've been drooling over Selador products for 3 or 4 years now. They are outstanding... much better whites than other products and perfect color temperature mixes.

As for Photometrics, Like all LED manufacturers, Selador has always sort of danced around the topic of photometrics a bit. How can you compare conventional photometric data with a Selador set to match Congo Blue or Medium Red? It's not fair. You could compare to white but which white? Which color temperature? I'm sure ETC will try to create some photometric data but it's very hard to do with any sort of logical accuracy.
 
Ever get the feeling people can read your mind, only to find out there's an intricately connected web of people keeping tabs on you and your interests? That's ETC.

I can only assume it was Steve who set it up, but it could have been Sarah, Dave, or any of our many other ETC lurkers. Today Spencer Lyons showed up to give a training session on the Congo Jr. for some of our students and to my surprise, arrived with a Selador Vivid. Apparently someone saw my post last night, took the fixture to Spencer, and had him bring it out today to show off.

I tried to take photos, but they did not turn out(not that I expected them to, and even if they had, they do little justice). I did however hold a quick shootout that anyone can set up on their own to get an idea for the brightness. I used L119 as my benchmark in a 575w S4 PAR with a NSP lens, and used the same color as is programmed on the Congo palette for L119 on the 11" Vivid fixture. The output at a distance of ~20-25' onto our projection screen was almost exactly identical. If I only saw the pools of light and was told to guess which one was incandescent and which was LED, I would've had to have flipped a coin to choose one or over the other because they were so close to one another. The 231W of LED's compared against the 575W of tungsten incandescent could have had me at a total loss for words.

The fixtures are so new that it sounded like this one had been hidden in the depths of their HQ in a super secret room. They have not even decided on an MSRP yet, but Spencer did speculate next week possibly they will have something arranged.

As for the speculation for the LED ellipsoidal, Spencer had seen that blog as well, and noted that the laws of physics may yet prevent that from happening for quite some while, as LED's can not be packed into such a small area and be any kind of point source. That said, he didn't sound as if there were actually plans in the works yet for anything of that nature, although I'm sure it's been talked about in meetings. Until then, they have the perfect product for a PAR that never needs new lamps or gels. I think the only reason they haven't announced the development of an LED PAR yet is because they are working absolutely as hard as they can to get these borderlight fixtures released, but I wouldn't be too surprised for them to be announced in the not-too-distant future.

The only serious roadblock that I see is that the Selador fixtures were not inherently cheap to begin with, so even if ETC develops LED PAR's, it'd be hard to say how they would priced, and I doubt it would be anywhere near comparable to the S4 PAR. Just the 11" X-7 sold retailed for $1460. Granted though, Spencer did mention that the two inventors were having issues starting their business originally. His example was if you purchased fixtures from them, you may have to pay part of it up front so they could afford the materials to actually create the product. I don't know how long ago that still held relevant, but I wonder if ETC being involved will help to bring that price down at all.

Between acquiring Selador, preparing to release another console, and having just released the Unison Paradigm, ETC seems to be as productive as ever, especially given the economy. Tom Carlson told me a few days ago that ETC has, as of now, been rather unafflicted by the economic downturn, but they are prepared for the worst. I don't know exactly what they've done to ensure that, but I trust that they'll continue to thrive.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention that the fixture he brought us was lovingly marked as being of the Vivid series by what looked like it could have been a silver Sharpie. That tells me that before they actually ship anything, there are still a number of things that have to happen yet, but it sounds like they're coming along quickly.
 
Last edited:
Ever get the feeling people can read your mind, only to find out there's an intricately connected web of people keeping tabs on you and your interests? That's ETC. I can only assume it was Steve who set it up, but it could have been Sarah, Dave, or any of our many other ETC lurkers.

I had a similar experience when a S4 Par arrived without the little bolt that attaches the yoke to the fixture. I sent Steve a PM asking for the best person to contact for a replacement part. The next morning someone from ETC was calling me at home to arrange next day delivery!!! I have NO idea how they got my phone number. While the 24/7 customer service number is impressive, it's nothing compared to the "we will find you at home and make sure you get what you need the next day" service I received thanks to ST and our ETC friends here on CB.

...and in the equal time department. Although they only have one active member here, Strand reads CB too. I posted a complaint about a problem I had and received a MASSIVE response (including flying a guy from Toronto to Seattle on short notice). While they didn't call me at home when I was barely out of the shower, they were very quick at figuring out who I was and getting back to me through my regional sales rep.
 
Last edited:
"As for the speculation for the LED ellipsoidal, Spencer had seen that blog as well, and noted that the laws of physics may yet prevent that from happening for quite some while, as LED's can not be packed into such a small area and be any kind of point source."
And when I posted similar sentiments last year I was pounced on as having no imagination and not being able to be forward looking.
A re-read of Conventional Fixtures - LEDs for the theatre is still illuminating.
 
Last edited:
What I wonder about, is why would they need to pack the LED's into a point source? Would it be possible to use a system of condenser lenses to get the unified beam needed, or might that make the unit too bulky.
 
From what I saw at LDI, plasma seems like a strong possibility for a point source for an ellipsoidal. On the other hand there is also the 100 watt LED from Neo-Neon. If they can build a 100, why not a 200 watt single LED? It'll be a long time, if ever, until we see a color mixing LED ellipsoidal. But I'm not giving up on the single white LED or plasma ellipsoidal just yet.

What I wonder about, is why would they need to pack the LED's into a point source? Would it be possible to use a system of condenser lenses to get the unified beam needed, or might that make the unit too bulky.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. Maybe my dream of the ETC LED replacement cap is impossible. However, by using a different combination of lens and reflector, physics would be happy to help us merge multiple sources into one single focusable beam.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back