THEATRE AND STAGE
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The LED screen could
cover everything we potentially needed artistically, so we could bring even more ideas to life
Bandarra, the name of the Aboriginal dance company behind Illume, means ‘to make fire’ in Wiradjuri
is AV Stumpfl’s impressive Pixera media server platform. “We discovered that Pixera was the ideal solution to meet our needs,” explains Grant Kruger, entertainment technical fleet supervisor of lighting for Carnival Cruise Line. “It delivers high-performance video playback and ensures a consistent and polished show experience that can be reliably repeated for many years.” Carnival, one of the world’s leading cruise companies, currently operates Pixera on four of its 29 ships, with more scheduled soon as part of a wider plan to modernise and future-proof its video
and show-control infrastructure. Among the first vessels to launch the Pixera platform were Carnival Encounter and Carnival Adventure, both debuting from Australian ports back in March 2025. On board, passengers can find Pixera powering LED content and visual storytelling inside a various array of entertainment spaces, from the main theatres and music lounges to more intimate venues such as the comedy clubs. For Carnival, the appeal of Pixera lay not just in its capabilities but in its open, hardware-agnostic architecture.
“One of the main factors that sets Pixera apart from other media server brands is that you can own your own hardware with it,” Kruger says. “Pixera provides us with the flexibility to utilise our own custom-built servers, which is essential to our workflow. We currently manage the full technical operations in-house across 29 different cruise ships, overseeing everything from fixture maintenance to media servers.” In the world of cruise ship operations, time is a precious commodity. Each vessel has a limited ‘drydock window’ for upgrades, often only a few days long, during which the entertainment systems must be installed, programmed and tested before the ship sails again. Pixera’s user-friendly interface and fast deployment capability proved a decisive advantage for Carnival’s team. “We had the system up and running – show playback ready – within just three days on both the Encounter and Adventure vessels,” recalls Kruger. “We could build everything on one ship and then just walk over to the other one and deploy it instantly. That was really great.” For a fleet spanning nearly 30 vessels worldwide, such repeatability is critically important. The Pixera system facilitates Carnival’s technicians to copy and adapt project folders from one ship to another with only minimal reprogramming required, streamlining workflow and maintaining visual consistency across the company’s floating fleet of theatres. Cruise ships are among the most demanding environments for any AV system. Limited bandwidth, variable power conditions and salt-air corrosion can all conspire against uptime. Yet, as Kruger notes, Pixera has met these
Carnival currently uses Pixera’s LED technology on four out of its 29 cruise ships
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