Neo vs Ion

I'm late to the party... Sorry Bill... I am the person you were looking for. I have a 7 year old theater full of Strand gear and I desperately wish it was ETC. It all works fine, it's great equipment. But I can't get any support from Strand. My vision net software was abandoned and you have to run a windows XP computer to communicate with it. The console is great, but there's zero support for upgrades or repairs. Fortunately the good folks at Pathway (who own the Horizon software at the core of the Palette line) still care about their customers or I wouldn't even be able to get a new fixture profile. My dimmers are still rock solid, but I have seen the writing on the wall. The day they start having issues, I'm going to be in BIG trouble as Strand will definitely not be there to support me.

I'm curious about your issues as VN is still developed and supported. All of our commissioning agents use VN on more recent versions of Windows including Windows 10. The Palette software's fixture library is constantly updated as requests come in. Yes, it's done by the Pathway engineers but that's always been their choice. Customer support is always available to help if you need.
 
Stay Away. It was the last significant purchase made by my predecessor and its turned out to be a pretty horrid decision.
I'm in a medium sized regional venue in Ireland. We do a mixture of Theatre, Music, Comedy & Conference. For every 10 theatre shows that come through the door, 9 of them will totally bypass my desk and an alternative will need to be hired - sometimes at our expense, sometimes at their expense - depending on the contractual situation.

First things first; its a decent console, especially if your rig is predominately intelligent. With two touch screen monitors it can be navigated in an instant.
If your rig is full of Phillips gear, they don't take up any channels - a nice touch.
The keypad is nicely backlit and well laid-out.

However, its not what clients want. In Ireland, ETC has absolutely boomed in the last 10 years and most Venues (with a theatrical program) now have an Element, Ion or Eos - a Gio if the're uber Fancy.
Other problems with the Neo: It doesn't have a delete button - not a big issue if they cared to include it in the documentation. Instead you need to battle the syntax until you realise that Shift-Edit equates to delete. Who builds a new console but doesn't include a delete button?
There's virtually zero help online with regard to troubleshooting and problem solving (there's a series of tutorials on Youtube produced by a man with the worlds most boring voice. I challenge anyone to get passed 15 minutes).
I emailed Strand->Phillips->Signify a few times about issues I was having. There's never an explanation about the issues, only a sequence of button clicks to temporarily solve the problem. I'm pretty sure even they don't know the problems until someone finds them.

There's 4 Neo's currently in Ireland - 3 in Venues and 1 in Hire stock - in the entire country!

Do yourself a favour, steer clear.

We are here to help when needed. You can email me directly if you have a console question [email protected] and, yes...I'm the man with the world's most boring voice...first time I've heard that...

For support, we have a customer support, a user forum www.strand-dev.com and Facebook groups.
 
I've used a Neo, albeit only for one show. It's a nice console and it can do all the tricks. The problems (which many people have already laid out and I'm sure you're aware of already) arise when you get stuck. Reliability aside, if it's not in the manual (or buried deep inside the manual), you're going to be stuck for a while. You can't throw a rock without hitting ten EOS users, but finding someone to answer an obscure Neo question can be more difficult.

I guess that could lead to a positive thing - teaching students to think and research for themselves - but that means very little when the show opens the next day ;). And I guess being an accomplished Neo user probably isn't the most marketable skill.

Feel free to call tech support, use the forum www.strand-dev.com, the Facebook groups or email/call me. [email protected]
 
Feel free to call tech support, use the forum www.strand-dev.com, the Facebook groups or email/call me. [email protected]

Why does this feel like one of those situations where I'm goofing off when the boss walks in ;).

@bharrell - thanks for making a presence in this thread. I am personally all for diversity of equipment and manufacturers. It's kind of a catch-22 isn't it. A lot of fear about Strand equipment because there's not as large of a user base, but you need the sales to build that user base. With all that comes the justification for a larger team of people on the support and marketing side, etc...

It's good to know that there is tech support out there. I think a lot of us see tech support as a last-ditch effort. You'll find people here and elsewhere going back and forth with questions that could be answered within two minutes, and straight from the horse's mouth. Maybe you could chalk it up to the somewhat recent aversion to talking on the phone, or maybe people prefer throwing issues out to a group and sifting through the various suggestions. It's an interesting social phenomena.

**

Well, I think a lot of fear also comes from how Strand has been juggled around for the last several years. I think we all have it in the back of our minds that someone will eventually drop the ball all together. That was once my fear with Vari*Lite but they seem to be doing well lately.
 
Its like heathcare decisions - wagering which course of action is likely to do least harm and help most. Is saving $ 25,000-50,000 on bid day worth the risk of not having ETC behind it? Which is the safest wager?
 
Why does this feel like one of those situations where I'm goofing off when the boss walks in ;).

@bharrell - thanks for making a presence in this thread. I am personally all for diversity of equipment and manufacturers. It's kind of a catch-22 isn't it. A lot of fear about Strand equipment because there's not as large of a user base, but you need the sales to build that user base. With all that comes the justification for a larger team of people on the support and marketing side, etc...

It's good to know that there is tech support out there. I think a lot of us see tech support as a last-ditch effort. You'll find people here and elsewhere going back and forth with questions that could be answered within two minutes, and straight from the horse's mouth. Maybe you could chalk it up to the somewhat recent aversion to talking on the phone, or maybe people prefer throwing issues out to a group and sifting through the various suggestions. It's an interesting social phenomena.

**

Well, I think a lot of fear also comes from how Strand has been juggled around for the last several years. I think we all have it in the back of our minds that someone will eventually drop the ball all together. That was once my fear with Vari*Lite but they seem to be doing well lately.

I think you are right. I see and talk to a lot of people where I do training and show them feature X. They say...wow...I could have used that last week when I did Y instead. I ask how they got to that and they said they asked their friends or posted something. I would ask if their friend knew the console and they would say no. I've struggled to understand why the logical choice would be to do that rather than call tech support that knows the equipment but I think it's just human nature.

Tech support is available anytime at 800.4.STRAND. We have experts for fixtures and for systems.
 
I think you are right. I see and talk to a lot of people where I do training and show them feature X. They say...wow...I could have used that last week when I did Y instead. I ask how they got to that and they said they asked their friends or posted something. I would ask if their friend knew the console and they would say no. I've struggled to understand why the logical choice would be to do that rather than call tech support that knows the equipment but I think it's just human nature.

Tech support is available anytime at 800.4.STRAND. We have experts for fixtures and for systems.

I think that these days if you can find an answer on Google or on a Facebook group, folks go there first. ETC maintains a forum specific to console and other issues (Strand might as well, not sure) but I’d bet that 90% of folks with questions go to to the Eos FB Page. I’ve seen answers in near real time, so there’s something to the idea, but I imagine its a headache for ETC tech support as the solutions fond on FB are outside of the system ETC maintains for tracking solutions.
 
I think that these days if you can find an answer on Google or on a Facebook group, folks go there first. ETC maintains a forum specific to console and other issues (Strand might as well, not sure) but I’d bet that 90% of folks with questions go to to the Eos FB Page. I’ve seen answers in near real time, so there’s something to the idea, but I imagine its a headache for ETC tech support as the solutions fond on FB are outside of the system ETC maintains for tracking solutions.

We do. it's at www.strand-dev.com for the forum, and there are 2 different Facebook groups. One run out of EU by users and the one that Strand sponsors and runs from the US.
 
You already know the answer to that question.

ST
Yeah, the challenge is getting the client to understand that the manufacturer having your back, so to speak, is worth the $1k - $2k or so a year over the life of the installation. Going cheap typically means replacements rather than repairs or expansion that inevitably cost much more. But penny-wise, pound-foolish is the typical response.
 
I'm curious about your issues as VN is still developed and supported. All of our commissioning agents use VN on more recent versions of Windows including Windows 10. The Palette software's fixture library is constantly updated as requests come in. Yes, it's done by the Pathway engineers but that's always been their choice. Customer support is always available to help if you need.
Bobby I had problems with my VN system 2.0.15.0 (it's a 7 year old school). Some of the programming had somehow gotten written over or corrupted and several things no longer worked. I called the Strand support and was told I would need to find a computer running XP to get the software to work on it (I did actually). They couldn't find the original files for my theater. They eventually sent me the files for another school 50 miles away with a sort of similar name (They assumed that the name of my school got shortened to the name of that school I guess). The person I was talking to seemed to only have one plan which was to reload the original software. When that was not possible he was out of useful ideas and basically said I should just try to mess with it on my own. I did find an XP laptop and I got no where. I ended up bringing in my local dealer to repair it, it turns out the repair guy was also the guy who did the installation so that was helpful. But he didn't have the files either, it had also been so long he didn't remember much about how the software worked and it took him full day to fix it as he figured things out step by step, which was expensive. .

I was a big defender of Strand when the Palette series first came out. At my previous venue I had one of the earliest installs of a Palette console and you guys did a lot of great stuff to help me out. I was really impressed with the speed of support and the lengths you went to, to help me out. I still love the ease of learning the software and think the way it embraces the fact that it's a Windows device makes the Palette software much easier to teach on than anything I've seen. But since the Phillips take over, you @bharrell seem to be the only one with your act together over there. Some great tech support people lost their jobs in the move to Texas (I miss you Randy), leaving you as the one shinning star of customer service. Since the move to Texas, my experiences with getting tech support have gradually gotten worse and worse. My experiences trying to talk to people on the trade show floor in the booth have been pathetic. The Palette software seems to be half finished with so many possibilities never quite realized. About a year ago I looked into expanding my Palette VL by 4 universes. What a joke, $14,000 four four universes! I could buy a new console for that! I really do appreciate you Bobby and all you have done for the industry and trying to help out the previous customers. But it's more clear to me every year that Philips doesn't care about customers it didn't make any money off of. Hopefully things will change with the new ownership.
 
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You already know the answer to that question.

ST
I hate how confidently you can say this (and how right it is). I'm a huge etc fan, but I can't think of any company where being the big fish in a little pond ever paid off for users. Competition results in much better products. Hopefully etc keeps proving me wrong in this scenario, but I'd love to see some other company step up and provide "competition" in various parts of the market. Pathway does a good job on the data side, but outside of that the competition really targets different markets.
 
Was strand sold again? This could be promising...
If I understand it correctly, a year or so back Philips split off the lighting division as a separate company which changed its name to "Signify". So VL, Strand and Color Kinetics are no longer part of a company that makes medical equipment. They are once again just a lighting company, which is hopefully a positive step. As @danTt said, competition is good for consumers. A healthy Strand pushes everyone else to be better. So I do wish them the best.
 
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I think you're seeing some healthy competition from Chauvet's pro group and Wenger/Clancy. There just aren't a more than a couple major single-source monopolies out there that do rigging/lighting/controls/architectural/emergency under one roof. Strand's really the only other major after ETC, except for rigging which they can usually tag team with Wenger.

I'm not sure that sourcing everything from one vendor/manufacturer is critical on most projects and I would actually discourage it as a design philosophy, but the all-or-nothing approach is very fashionable for how lighting systems get specified and procured --architectural as well as entertainment.

As someone who straddles the divide between AV and lighting, it's very interesting to me how lighting is that pigeon-holed. Whereas most AV systems have 20-30 manufacturers involved for the major purchases -- and just about any established AV contractor can get a dealership for any product so long as they're willing to sit through a training class on the more advanced products (DSP programming, control systems, speaker system deployment, network AV design best practices, etc.) Bidders may have their reasons for wanting to substitute certain pieces of equipment but you don't generally don't see an entire spec get flipped.
 
Bobby I had problems with my VN system 2.0.15.0 (it's a 7 year old school). Some of the programming had somehow gotten written over or corrupted and several things no longer worked. I called the Strand support and was told I would need to find a computer running XP to get the software to work on it (I did actually). They couldn't find the original files for my theater. They eventually sent me the files for another school 50 miles away with a sort of similar name (They assumed that the name of my school got shortened to the name of that school I guess). The person I was talking to seemed to only have one plan which was to reload the original software. When that was not possible he was out of useful ideas and basically said I should just try to mess with it on my own. I did find an XP laptop and I got no where. I ended up bringing in my local dealer to repair it, it turns out the repair guy was also the guy who did the installation so that was helpful. But he didn't have the files either, it had also been so long he didn't remember much about how the software worked and it took him full day to fix it as he figured things out step by step, which was expensive. .

I was a big defender of Strand when the Palette series first came out. At my previous venue I had one of the earliest installs of a Palette console and you guys did a lot of great stuff to help me out. I was really impressed with the speed of support and the lengths you went to, to help me out. I still love the ease of learning the software and think the way it embraces the fact that it's a Windows device makes the Palette software much easier to teach on than anything I've seen. But since the Phillips take over, you @bharrell seem to be the only one with your act together over there. Some great tech support people lost their jobs in the move to Texas (I miss you Randy), leaving you as the one shinning star of customer service. Since the move to Texas, my experiences with getting tech support have gradually gotten worse and worse. My experiences trying to talk to people on the trade show floor in the booth have been pathetic. The Palette software seems to be half finished with so many possibilities never quite realized. About a year ago I looked into expanding my Palette VL by 4 universes. What a joke, $14,000 four four universes! I could buy a new console for that! I really do appreciate you Bobby and all you have done for the industry and trying to help out the previous customers. But it's more clear to me every year that Philips doesn't care about customers it didn't make any money off of. Hopefully things will change with the new ownership.

I'm not sure where you sit on your VN issues, but let me know if you still need help.
 
I think you're seeing some healthy competition from Chauvet's pro group and Wenger/Clancy. There just aren't a more than a couple major single-source monopolies out there that do rigging/lighting/controls/architectural/emergency under one roof. Strand's really the only other major after ETC, except for rigging which they can usually tag team with Wenger.

I'm not sure that sourcing everything from one vendor/manufacturer is critical on most projects and I would actually discourage it as a design philosophy, but the all-or-nothing approach is very fashionable for how lighting systems get specified and procured --architectural as well as entertainment.

As someone who straddles the divide between AV and lighting, it's very interesting to me how lighting is that pigeon-holed. Whereas most AV systems have 20-30 manufacturers involved for the major purchases -- and just about any established AV contractor can get a dealership for any product so long as they're willing to sit through a training class on the more advanced products (DSP programming, control systems, speaker system deployment, network AV design best practices, etc.) Bidders may have their reasons for wanting to substitute certain pieces of equipment but you don't generally don't see an entire spec get flipped.

One difference is audio systems are probably going to have parts and components replaced in a few years, so it's never going to be one manufacturer. I also don't know if one manufacturer makes everything needed or nearly as close as lighting has traditionally - from Kliegl and Century long ago. Lighting - basic power and data infrastructure and architectural controls - have a much longer expected lifetime than av parts and pieces. And just the variety of components for av is much greater. I don't consider av and light very analogous. Worse, an av contractor thinks they can do lighting - with no lighting experience.
 
I'm not sure where you sit on your VN issues, but let me know if you still need help.
Thanks Bobby, my local repair guy got things working again. I would like to change the layout of some of the screens to get things we use most in one place. When I get a chance to work on that I'll drop you a line for advice.
 

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