As usual, some people are getting completely lost in the reality of financing for half the theaters out there. There are a lot of 30+ year old
360Q's still in use out there... and they are going to stay in use for a long time to come. There are thousands of
ETC Express consoles in use right now that will stay in use for decades. There are so many schools, community theaters, and churches out there who can't afford anything. They buy what they can and use it until it falls apart, then replace it one
instrument at a time. These are the potential buyers for the
Altman Phoenix, and they will keep buying
conventional fixtures until the day that an
LED ellipsoidal costs less than a
conventional fixture.
The increased energy efficiency of switching to
LED isn't that important to this group for four reasons:
1) The cost of electricity is buried in the rest of the building budget and so it's hard for them to define how much they could save. At the college I have been at, they have no idea how much energy we were consuming in the theater. It's just lost in the total campus usage. Same is true for most schools and churches.
2) Higher regular operating expenses are much easier for these types of facilities to stomach than a large one time equipment
purchase. The idea of having to come up with an extra $20k to buy
LED fixtures is simply not possible. When something breaks and needs replacing, they go replace it with the cheapest option.
3) Many have the wrong infrastructure for
LED's. They have very little non-dimmed
power in the right place. Most of these facilities have a single
DMX line that runs from the
console to the
dimmer rack. There might be one extra output on the rack or backstage somewhere, but nothing in the way of
DMX distribution need to control a full
LED rig. Both of these are very expensive problems to solve. These places also often are running an ancient
console that can'
t handle the amount of
DMX channels needed by
LED's. So they would need a new
console too.
4) For many of these facilities their entire inventory is around 30-40 fixtures. They get used a few times a week for a few hours. The cost of replacement vs. the amount of use just doesn't make sense.
For all these reasons, the Phoenix re-design (and the changes in the
Strand product
line) are a great idea. It's much like the
switch from SD to HD TV, that big of a change can't happen over night for those who don't have a lot of money. Yes the market is fading and there is a new technology that is superior, but there is still at least another decade of people in the low budget theaters needing
conventional fixtures.
ETC has left the door open. The S4 is the industry standard, but it has had no major changes in a LONG time. If you've ever used a
Selecon Pacific you know there things that
ETC could do to improve the S4. My guess is
ETC's plan is to try to lead the movement of the market along to
LED's and not focus on conventionals. That leaves even more room for
Altman and
Strand to make a move.
And a second
point I want to bring up...
It's been almost 20 years since the S4 was invented.
ETC has been king of the market all that time. Their products are rock solid and they stand behind their products with top of the
line customer service. The love of the S4 as an industry standard is well deserved. However, that doesn't mean that someone can't create a better product tomorrow. It's completely possible that
Altman can make a superior product at a lower price.
Altman is NOT a flash in the pan little company, with a history of crappy products. We are talking about an industry legend with a history much longer and deeper than
ETC. Yeah the Shakespeare kind of sucked, but long before the S4, the
Altman 360 was king of the
fixture market. Markets change, products come and go, companies change. Who knows what lies ahead.
I don't wish
ETC any ill will at all, they are great people, they make great products, they support CB, they have taken amazing care of me as a customer, and they
throw and awesome party
. I recommend them highly, but who is to say that some other company won't come out of nowhere and invent the next industry standard (just as
ETC did when they dethroned
Altman in 1992). Last year at
LDI, one of our CB friends who works for
ETC said to me, "We can never tell if you like us or hate us", and here I go again (sorry guys). The
point is anyone who blindly follows a single manufacturer as a fanboy is a fool. No one manufacturer can do everything perfect for everyone. No one product is perfect for everyone. Maybe the Phoenix is a vastly superior product to the S4 for you and maybe it isn't for me. I don't know until I try it out in
my theater and see how it satisfies
my needs. So keep an open mind about these things, get a hands on demo, and judge the results for yourself based on the actual results.
Crap, I'm turning into Ship. 
