PM Lighting and Productions, a full service technical management and event staging company based in Riva, Maryland, conducted the first show in the United States using Analog Way’s brand new NeXtage 16.
On March 23 at The Glen Pointe Marriott in Teaneck, NJ. The company partnered with AV Mercenaries, a technical support firm specializing in corporate theater events, for the production of a Sales Gala for Goya Foods with the new NeXtage 16.
Goya Foods, the largest producer and distributor of Spanish Food in the US and many countries worldwide, organized a Sales Achievement Awards Gala in late March. The event consisted of a corporate presentation followed by entertainment, dinner, and dancing.
Peter Chester, CEO of AV Mercenaries, explains the requirements for the production of this event: “Goya Foods needed an elegant platform to do a brief corporate event with speeches and awards presentations, which could then transform into a beautiful, extravagant and colorful dinner/dance for the company’s sales force and their significant others.”
In terms of technical specifications, the event required IMAG, video playback and graphic support to fit the awards ceremony and the entertainment portions of the show.
The technical production of the event was assigned to PM Lighting and Productions. Peter May, President of the event staging company, says why he opted for the new NeXtage 16 for this event: “After receiving the demo unit, I saw that the NeXtage 16 was the perfect switcher to complete our needs for the show”.
The room was equipped with two 7.5’ x 10’ screens fed by projectors from Eiki, and four 60” Samsung LED screens flown from truss in the room. The sources connected to the NeXtage 16 included 3 x robotic cameras, 1 x handheld camera as well as 1 x Playback-pro system and 3 computers for the display of PowerPoint presentations.
The two outputs of the NeXtage 16 were used to send sources in 4x3 to the two projection screens, and 16x9 to the LEDs.
“We used the NeXtage 16 to switch multiple sources and provide switching effects during the entertainment parts”, states Peter May. “The ability to have up to 4 PIPs and switch each live was essential to our decision for using the NeXtage 16”. A variety of the device’s built in effects were used to animate the switch between the four cameras.
Peter Chester adds: “The NeXtage 16 served as the primary screen control switch to supply signal to our different screens. The product’s ability to integrate multiple sources for numerous seamless outputs combined with a wide array of special effects is a real advantage.”
NeXtage 16 is the first system to be introduced in Analog Way’s LiveCore platform, a new generation of high-end AV processors. After a brief training on the new device and its Web RCS, Jon Tanner of AV Mercenaries operated the NeXtage 16 to its full potential, resulting in an impressive and highly praised performance.
After using the NeXtage 16 on the event, Peter May shared his impression of the new system: “The best thing I can say is user-friendliness. The web interface with its straight-forward approach made setup very easy. This is truly a unit that has it all with the ability to use different input connections on each input without a converter, and ease of setup made it a dream. I can’t wait to see what’s next!”.