Sunday, October 19, 2008
City Theatrical Gains US Patent For Wireless DMX
LiveDesign: "City Theatrical (CTI) has been granted US Patent number 7,432,803 for its wireless technology. City Theatrical’s wireless DMX is similar in concept to a home or business WiFi system, but uses a much more robust and powerful radio transport method to ensure reliability of mission critical systems."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
I wounder if this is the same system that Todd just got in. I know we will be using wireless DMX for a few of the units in ITW. I guess if City Theatrical got the patent, then perhaps they are the only ones who are making it currently.
I don't know a whole lot about patents.
This is pretty cool. I don't know much about DMX, but it seems like this will make movable, wireless set and costume units alot easier to deal with. I also think that it opens up a whole new world when designing for theatre and other entertainment categories.
I was really lucky to talk briefly with the guys at city theatrical about this stuff this summer. At the time it was not that new and exciting, i had seen plenty of wireless dmx technology before but it had always been a finicky technology that worked great in theory, but in the demanding world of live entertainment was not a realistic option. However from using it in the last few workshops and now this patent, I can see that it has turned out to be a very powerful player in the advancement of data distribution systems.
This stuff is very very cool! I got to get my hands on this stuff briefly from a small rental house back home--although I'm not sure what company was creating it at the time. It's great to see how versatile it can be, as people have said, but it also creates a good opportunity for older theatres to upgrade to DMX without having to tear apart their venues. Perhaps its an "under-use" of the equipment, but then again, you could use it for greater things if you wanted, too. I'm eager to see how this technology will grow now.
If this technology is developed correctly, it can become a complete revolution in how theatres are wired. DMX is so compact and can carry so much information to start, that when you add wireless capability, the possibilities are almost endless! I heard that we are using some for Into The Woods… I cannot wait to see them in action.
I worked on a show this summer that was outside and we rented and put together about 50 packs of battery powered dmx wireless LED fixtures. overall it worked really well. We were able to set them up fairly far away and you could still run them flawlessly with no problems. I also worked with an electrician who works for the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center and said that he has been using wireless DMX on moving units for a few years and that it was somewhat finicky.
It's good to hear however that it is patent. I'm sure they have fixed all of the bugs and it will be interesting to see how this influences future dmx systems.
This is very cool technology. I first saw it in a Cirque show, Corteo a few years ago. I was really impressed. I know it is not new, and I am excited to see how well we use it in ITW. Congrats to City Theatrical for moving this froward. I just hope this doesn't make it more expensive... if that is how it works. I am not sure.
It's good that they built this to be usefull for ACn and RDM too, as it seems like DMX is not too much longer for the world of high-budget applications that would be paying to do things wirelessly. It will be interesting to see how this and other wireless technologies are tereated in the next few years as the whitespace debate is settled. If spectrum continues to get more and more cramped, people may still be relying on cable as bandwidth, not technology limits wireless.
although this is good that there's a successful product on the market, it's just adding more noise to the 2.4ghz spectrum.
it'd be cheaper and easier to go with a more standard protocol such as WiFi.
oh, wait... i think this device actually has support for ethernet and just converts the DMX/ACN/... into ethernet packets. so, you can plu in both ETCNet (or similar) AND DMX to the same device
Post a Comment