Several things to
point out here:
1) The critical factor here is good
LED fixtures are far too expensive for most places to afford to just outright replace their inventory tomorrow. It would cost somewhere around $250,000 for me to replace everything with
LED when you include the needed upgrades to
non-dim power, a new light board, a lot more
DMX universes and data distribution. Theater's just don't have that much money. Instead we are slowly adding them in a little at a time.
LED Cyc Lights.
LED side lights,
LED Down Lights, Then go with the
ETC "Layers of Light" approach and pair one
LED fixture with each area of
incandescent light. It's going to change, but it's very slow. The change from
hand drafting to
CAD was something that cost what a thousand bucks?
LED's are far more expensive and will therefore take a lot longer to do.
2) There are a LOT of theaters out there who upgrade their gear based on the change they find in the seats. These are the kinds of places most young technicians start working at. So 5 or 10 years from now the big boys will have ton's of
LED fixtures, but the places you need to work at to begin your career will still be trying to keep their color scrollers going a few more years. If colleges aren't teaching
incandescent lighting design, it's going to be really hard to get work fresh out of college.
3) There were several comments that make it sound like the lighting manufacturers are pushing everyone to go
LED. While they know we all want
LED, I'm quite sure
ETC is perfectly happy to continue to sell us a couple more million Source Fours in the years to come. It's energy regulations and our own desires to just have the coolest new toys that are pushing the change. The death of the
PAR lamp is mostly about a lack of demand for them. PARS were the first thing to be
flat our replaced for reasons I will go
point out below, but
Source Four Ellipsoidals will take a MUCH longer time to go away. How many of you have a few old non-axial
Altman 360Q's made in the 70's or 80's still kicking around in your inventory? It's going to be the same way for all those S4's.
4) Why were
PAR's the first thing to go? Because
PAR LED's are the cheapest and easiest upgrade to do. You can get a pretty decent
LED PAR for what $300.
LED Ellipsoidals are 4 times that in price. Plus the optics are critical on an Elipsoidal. Any old
LED ellipsoidal will not due. But a
PAR's have always been about dumping a lot of color on
stage cheap. $300
LED PAR is going to be okay, if you can get your budget up around $500 you are going to get a really good one. Finally
PAR's were always done with lots of fixtures in banks of repeating colors so you could get just the right mix of
RGB... One
LED PAR replaces three or more Incandescents in a rig, so they are easier to transport and cheaper on the load of the whole show. It's the most logical replacement to do.