Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
Blogcast
MillimeterCustom vs. turnkey: The debate goes on...
Dec 16, 2004 12:07 PM
Just how “one-off” does a church media installation have to be?
Media ministers and other church leaders face that question whenever they consider an AV install or upgrade that isn’t an obviously build-to-suit proposition. For most jobs outside of the largest venues and budgets, the answer isn’t clear-cut.
Jerry Gale, VP of marketing at SPL Integrated Solutions, commented recently to this newsletter that “we are seeing an increased demand for complete, almost turnkey packages for new small to medium churches.” Church media directors, he added, “know that they are not inventing something new. They want to purchase a package of audio, video and lighting that has been installed somewhere else.”
Gale’s sense that church leaders prefer to make use of known solutions is echoed, to a degree, by Piet van Weel, of the Worship Team at the Sheridan Church of the Nazarene. “Churches don’t want to be an ‘experimental’ site, the type where it’s all brand new technology and it still has the ‘cool’ effect on everybody,” he says.
Van Weel also sees an issue of perception. “Many medium to smaller churches feel that a custom system is too expensive,” he says, “so they want a turnkey system. They want a system that just works. Unfortunately this usually occurs in churches where the media technology is still new and the experience is limited.”
Consultant Greg Persinger specializes in lighting designs and feels these systems simply must be custom designed to fit specific settings. “As a lighting designer I get calls all of the time to fix stage lighting issues because an architect or electrical engineer spec’d the same system in this church that was designed for the last church they built.”
Granted, Persinger says, the basic equipment is pretty much the same from job to job, but factors like hanging positions, stage dimensions, and room size are almost always different. “Twenty-four fixtures will light a 25 by 20 foot stage very well, but 24 fixtures will not light an 80 by 60 foot stage,” Persinger adds. “You might laugh at this, but I have seen it happen.”
“Ultimately, I think it is more important for the designer to be tried and true, with a successful track record, than for a design to be the same as someone else’s,” he adds.
A recent discussion of this topic at the web portal Church Media Net generated diverse opinions. One poster responded to the idea that church buyers are looking for complete, turnkey systems by saying “there are still far too many contractors who are selling the same box, again and again, despite the actual needs of the particular church.”
Van Weel agrees that “many contractors install it (new technology) because, well, it’s just plain cool. Then as technology matures, the good stuff comes along and the churches are stuck without the resources to replace first-generation technology.”
If there is a consensus on this topic, it seems to be that some careful use of off-the-shelf technology may meet the needs of some churches, but far more often, the church client’s needs are likely to be individual enough to call for some degree of customization.
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.