The Hog and Vista are both great consoles. the style of programming on both of them are totally different. In the hog you work in a
cue list like any other lighting
console, in the Vista you work in a time
line like you are editing video. When it comes to dance shows i love the vista, you can
drop in all of your music,
lay it out the time
line for the music, then
build your lighting timeline right next to it, makes life much easier. When it comes to theatrical lighting I like the hog, but dont mind the vista. The vista is a little clunky when it comes to dealing with large attributes, but i think the new software has been released or about to be released, which is an entrie rewrite of the software to
address all of these issues. Also what vista and hog models are you looking at? Also I do not like the MAC2000's. They are kinda loud, and even when
DMX is off, their fans are always running. Every tech i have talked to who works on
mac 2000's say that if you lose a piece of glass in the color mixing module the whole color mixing
system self distructs. The color mixing
system in the
MAC 2000 is made out of very thin glass, and it is shoved right up next to the lamp. Personally i like the ROBE 1200. I did a shoot out a while back, and the ROBE kicked the MAC2000's
butt badly. In the ROBE the
zoom is better, gobos are better, if i remember speed was about the same, I like the colors in the ROBE better, they were more concentrated.