I can only assume that this is a record attendance year for LDI. I happened to be standing on the show floor when the doors opened on day one and haven’t seen a crowd barrel through doors like that since The Who tickets went on sale. It was quite impressive.?

There are definitely some notable products being shown this year. Coemar’s showing their new Infinity Wash XL fixture. It’s nice to see that we haven’t run out of pieces of glass to stick in front of a light beam. They’ve used a prism system in the optical train that allows for splitting the beam into three with rotation. The effect is similar to an array of ACLs, and it’s pretty cool. It’s also got a new type of color mixing system that produces some truly rich hues and a red that’s closer to what most LDs desire.

The chaps at Green Hippo are showing Hippotizer V3, which is a drastic upgrade to an already great product. Talk about listening to a market! These guys are all about implementation. They’ve listened to what their users wanted and made it a reality. V3 has full network capability that allows for remote control of any number of machines on a network. One of the most notable features is the introduction of onboard video encoding. You no longer have to toil over video codecs. You can basically give the thing any content that you want and Hippo will re-encode it to the format that works best.

Element Labs has their new Versa® Tube HD, Cirrus, and Stealth products on display. Stealth gained some serious notoriety on Madonna’s latest tour and is an absolutely beautiful, low-resolution video display. Cirrus is along the same lines but the LEDs are on a wider pitch and mounted to a translucent web of vinyl-like curtain. The curtain allows for viewing objects behind it as well as taking light beautifully.

It’s almost absurd calling yesterday, October 20, the first official day of LDI. After all, for most exhibitors–and, with LDInstitute, the Backstage events, the Projection Master Classes, and various other sessions, an increasing number of attendees–LDI begins Monday or earlier. Still, Friday’s the yardstick by which we tend to measure how the show is going, since that’s the first day the show floor officially opens. And from everything I saw and everyone I spoke to, it’s safe to say that this year’s LDI is going to be the best show ever.

Yeah, yeah, I know. We say that every year. Best Show Ever! It’s so cliched, it should probably be in quotes. But as ESTA president Bill Groener noted at Thursday’s ESTA dinner, the buzz is palpable. The show floor footprint is the biggest ever, pre-registration in the days prior to the show was already up nearly 2,000 over last year’s total attendance, there are great new products being unveiled, and people are in a buying mood, across all markets.

All I can say is, thank you little baby Jesus. I gotta admit I was nervous coming into this show. We had a lot of new stuff we were doing this year–a print Show Daily, the Projection Master Classes (more on that in another posting), and a few new staff members attending LDI for the first time–and that’s on top of all the stuff we normally do: booth visits, blogging (natch), working closely with the LDI show staff, hosting our Friday cocktail reception, and of course hitting the evening party circuit. That’s a lot of balls in the air. But I gotta say that our staff here has stepped up big time. Marian Sandberg, Lisa Murphy, Diane Straughen, Earl Otsuka, Albert Margolis, Jeff Donnenwerth, Dean Muscio, Keith Gregory, Kirby Asplund, and Glenn Laudenslager–they’ve all contributed immeasurably to making all our various pieces fit seamlessly. Thanks to my homeys.

We’ll have lots more from contributors over the course of the next couple of days, so stay tuned…