Any notes on the Philips Showline SLBAR-660s?

[Jay Ashworth]

We're getting a bunch of them for cyc lighting (and maybe footlights).

Any notes on working with them, mechanical, power or DMX wise?

What's the easiest way (working-with-wise) to lay the DMX out for, mostly, theatrical work? Am I correct in believing that one has to commit to RGBW vs HSIC and the pixel grouping before raising the batten? Or can you RDM that?

 

[danTt]

If you have any chance to change it, I would avoid Phillips gear like the plague.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Well, we'd have preferred the Chroma-Q's, but they're $10-20k out of budget, and we'd like to get rid of 2 rows of MR-16s even more.

Expand?

 

[JohnD]

Just curious if you demo'd the Chauvet Ovation strips.

 

[DavidJones]

Those are actually pretty solid fixtures. Good for cycs, good for footlights, good for border lights, and good as an effect light/blinder for rock and roll/ EDM etc. They do support RDM, so I think you can change all of those settings from a console, but I don't think I have done it myself. As a Cyc fixture, you want them a bit farther away from the cyc than a color force or Ovation strip because they have a wider 60-degree beam angle.

They are extremely reliable, as in I have not seen a failure every, and have been using them since they were introduced a few years ago. Some of the other showing strips are not that great, but the 620/640/660 are very good. For a dedicated Cyc fixture, I think I like the Ovation or Color Force better, just for the narrower beam angle and even coverage over a long throw close to the cyc, but considering foot and border uses, the SL Bar 6xx is a great utility fixture, and still good on a cyc.

 

[DavidJones]

I should add that The fixture has 2 horizontal rows of pixels, so they are 2x 18. you can have up to 18 groups of 2 pixels tall, so each "pixel" it 1 LED wide and 2 tall, at the highest resolution, this works just fine for a cyc and really most applications if you want a lot of control. If these are facing the audience and will actually put pixel mapped with video, the 9 group mode gives you 4x4 led modules as your pixels, and that can work better in some cases. I mostly use these at their highest resolution mode in RGBW.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Ok, see, that was a much more useful field report; thanks.

I hadn't read the manual all the way yet, but I wasn't sure you could get all the way to single pixel.

Am I correct in believing that you can only have *one* grouping per configuration, though?

If I want to put entire strips or pairs of strips on my wing playbacks, to emulate the busking environment I have now, I'll have to do that by grouping on my ION -- or just putting all the relevant pixels on each fader?

 

[DavidJones]

Yes, and/or no. That depends on how ETC handles multi-instance fixtures, and that I don't remember. On MA2, The first instance is the "master" that has an overall Dimmer, strobe, etc. and each Group of LEDs in the fixture is another instance of an RGBW cell. MA2 Creates these as Fixture 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, etc. All of the .x
1.x are "sub fixtures" So calling up "fixture 1" selects the entire fixture will all of its parts, but you can also just select 1.4 for example and only grab that individual group of LEDs.

I usually change the default values of the masters to be dimmer at 100%, that way I can basically ignore the master, and just use the individual RGBW sections(with virtual dimmers). Colorforce, on the other hand, don't have a master, just a bunch of RGBA cells.
I'll put the master of each fixture into their own group, and then just use the cells in my layout views to make selecting them easy, I find its impractical to fill up my group pool with individual fixtures when there are so many of them. Layout Views are basically the same as ETC Magic Sheets.

If I want a "whole fixture" on one playback fader I would select fixture 1.2 thru 1.19, and store it on my fader. (again I defaulted my masters to dimmer at 100% so I can ignore fixtures X.1) This gets very tedious to do selections like this, so I just lasso around them in my layout view instead; much easier.