Avolites Ltd is a multinational

technology company A technology company (or tech company) is an electronics-based technological company, including, for example, business relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce services. Details According to ''Fo ...

based in

Park Royal Park Royal is an area in North West London, England, partly in the London Borough of Brent and partly the London Borough of Ealing. It is the site of the largest business park in London, but despite intensive existing use, the area is, toget ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. Avolites manufactures high end professional

lighting control console A lighting control console (also called a lightboard, lighting board, or lighting desk) is an electronic device used in theatrical lighting design to control multiple stage lights at once. They are used throughout the entertainment industry and a ...

s, stage dimming equipment, and

media servers Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...

for use in the professional stage lighting and media control systems industries. In 2011 the company expanded into the

media server A media server is a computer appliance or an application software that stores digital media (video, audio or images) and makes it available over a network. Media servers range from servers that provide video on demand to smaller personal comput ...

sector of the entertainments technology market by acquiring software developed by Immersive Ltd, supplying control systems used in the

2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony The opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics took place on the evening of Friday 27 July 2012 in the Olympic Stadium, London, during which the Games were formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II. As mandated by the Olympic Charter, the pr ...

, and the 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony. The company has received awards for many of its products, including the ART-series dimmers, the Sapphire Media, and the Ai media server software.

History

Avolites started as a lighting production company in 1976 when a group of touring road crew formed a company to manufacture their designs for a touring dimmer rack, the Avolites FD dimmer. The company then expanded into manufacturing lighting control consoles, initially releasing the 8100 series, before creating the QM500 series in 1983. During the 1980s the reputation of the brand grew and by the late 1980s the company was purchased by

Carlton Television Carlton Television (now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV franchise holder for London and the surrounding counties from 9.25am every Monday to 5.15pm every Friday. The company is now managed with London Weekend Televi ...

. The company was returned to private ownership as part of a

management buy out A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or High-net-worth individual, individual. Management-, and/or leveraged buyout b ...

in 1991. Eventually the lighting production work was discontinued and the company focused on equipment manufacturing only. During the 1990s the company introduced several new products designed to control the range of

intelligent lighting Intelligent lighting refers to lighting that has automated or mechanical abilities beyond those of traditional, stationary illumination. Although the most advanced intelligent lights can produce extraordinarily complex effects, the intelligence l ...

products that were emerging onto the market at the time, releasing the Rolacue Sapphire, Pearl 2000 (released 1995), Sapphire 2000 (released 1998) and Diamond II/III consoles. Most of these consoles were based on

Motorola 68000 family The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and w ...

processors. In 1996 the company also updated the FD dimmer, replacing it with the Art 4000. During the 2000s the dimmer product range was redesigned again, resulting in the Art 2000 series of racks; the Art 2000i installation racks and - in the later part of the decade - the PowerCube dimmer/distribution units. In 2001 Avolites launched the Diamond 4 range of control consoles, which was based on a conventional PC motherboard instead of custom made hardware reliant on Motorola processors. Although the custom hardware consoles were still sold and updated in stages during the 2000s, the company gradually moved software development towards the

Windows OS Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

running on conventional PC motherboards. This move allowed the company to re-write its lighting control software, resulting in the release of the Titan software series in the late 2000s. Since the introduction of Titan the company has designed a range of consoles specifically to run the software, including the Titan One

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

DMX

dongle A dongle is a small piece of computer hardware that connects to a port on another device to provide it with additional functionality, or enable a pass-through to such a device that adds functionality. In computing, the term was initially synonym ...

, Titan Mobile, Tiger Touch and Sapphire Touch consoles, which were all introduced between 2009 and 2012.

Avolites Media

David Green, Mark Calvert and Ralph Lambert formed a VJ collective known as Inside-Us-All initially working on visual effects for the rave and party scene. The trio decided to expand into more corporate work and took on a new staff member, John Munro, forming the Pixel Addicts company at the time. Pixel Addicts was later renamed to Immersive and it was within Immersive that the "Addict" media server software was developed. In June 2011, Avolites acquired the rights to the Addict media server software developed by Immersive, rebranded it as "Ai" and formed a spin-off company called Avolites Media. The media server products were used in the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies of 2012 to perform video mapping across the audience seats.

Management changes

In October 2012, the company appointed JB Toby and Koy Neminathan as Technical Director and Sales Director respectively. Steve Warren moved into the position of Business Development Director. In February 2018, Paul Wong was appointed as Managing Director, replacing Richard Salzedo who is now the group chairman.

Products

Avolites has manufactured a wide range of lighting control products, accessories and software, but is best known for its range of control consoles and dimmer racks. 1977 B100 Console, 1978 FC Dimmers, 1983 QM500 Console, 1992 Rolacue Sapphire, 1994 Rolacue Pearl, 1999 Pearl 2000, 2001 Diamond 4, 2006 Pearl Expert, 2008 Titan v1, 2011 Tiger Touch, 2013 Expert Pro, 2018 Ai Q3 Media Server, 2021 Diamond 9 (D9-215 and D9-330)

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.avolites.com/
Fixture Personality Library
Electronics companies of the United Kingdom Stage lighting Stagecraft software Companies based in the London Borough of Ealing