Personally, having fixtures that only work on certain addresses shows me poor implementation of DMX into the fixture, which would also indicate to me that this company may have other issues with "the universes, both DMX and actual", making mandates and demands that are clearly a product of non-forward thinking on the part of the company making the fixtures.
Now, could I fault MyDMX for having some limitations? SerraAva brings about a good point which I did respond to, but as happens many times, my wireless connectivity decides to take the big pooper on me right as I click "post now" and it chucks those bits right on the floor. His Hog consoles tend to associate instructions to FIXTURES, not to channels. The fixtures are then associated to channels, hence dragging the data with the fixture. Of course, let's look at a few things here. Since I am not only not allowed to talk pricing and on top of that I don't know the pricing, we're not talking about an "apples to apples" comparison either.
The HOG console is designed for a lighting professional, and lighting professionals have to have a lot of options and flexibility to accomodate such "additions". Having a better understanding of lighting, especially thanks to SerraAva throwing in his 2-cents(or maybe a dollar fifty) worth, it's plain to see why he makes the choices he does, and why other lighting professionals make the choices they do as well. Also, as I've learned by talking to some very talented lighting programmers/operators/designers(who work for a company called SPL, yeah, that's right Dion and Kevin, I'm giving you guys a shout-out!), they tell me that "real lighting guys use consoles". And so do other "Real lighting guys". There must be a reason why they are doing things that way, don't ya think?
MyDMX is a cost-effective software lighting controller/programmer, designed for those who what more than a basic to middle of the line MI/small company oriented hardware controllers. A Hog costs a considerable amount more, maybe somewhere in the range of 10-50 times greater, depending on the model, firmware, configuration and features. They simply can't compare.
As such, MyDMX has limitations. It sucks, but that's why there is Compu Live, which has considerably fewer limitations.
Now, going back to what SerraAva said about how it's easier to code the software to just associate the istructions with channels as opposed to associating instructions with fixtures, he may have hit the nail on the head. I am not testing this theory out right now, but I will say it may have merit that is worthy of investigation.
Looking at this from the angle of "professional lighting designer" to "weekend warrior/DJ/small sound company", a Hog can't and won't make sense to me, and it's not something I am about to buy unless I get big and have a full time lighting designer/operator who comes to me and says words to the effect that business demands a Hog console. For me, MyDMX works just fantastic and it honestly does serve all my requirements. Easy to use, lots of goodies, easy for others to learn to use. These are all good things.
Now, let's address the blame game. Who is at fault? We can't cleanly point the finger. We're cramming a fixture in that clearly has a very limited DMX addressing structure, which is forcing everything else to bump up addresses. This bump requires excessive reprogramming. Ugly, annoying, I hear ya, I feel ya, and I sure am glad I am not ya, but I am not any better off, as sometimes my scene designs require me to do "tons" of extra work. The difference is that I don't have time to whine about it, I have time to get it done, or rather I have to take the time to get it done since my clients don't give a damn about anything other than results. Yes, it sucks. Life sucks. Wear a helmet. It ain't gonna get any better. Best you can hope to do is limit the damage life is gonna throw at you.
You can even check my post histories and past postings. I've raved about MyDMX, I've ranted about MyDMX. It ain't perfect, it has shortcomings, it has limitations. But, it also works really well for me. I rave because I can share insight and information with others, who I hope in turn can benefit. I rant because the product has issues that need to be addressed, and I want to see the product be as good as it can within the limitations that the design of the software has chose to work within.
I guess the bottom line is that either way he goes, he's going to have to reprogram. He can either do it in MyDMX, or sell MyDMX, buy something else and have to start the process over again. Or, I guess he can move up to a high end console at considerable cost.
I've got hundreds of scenes in MyDMX now. I'd hate to have to reprogram them all, even if they aren't all that complicated. But, after I yell at a wall and beat the crap out of a pillow to vent my anger, I just can grumble over the time I wasted on that and get to fixing my issues instead of just getting to it in the first place. But hey, that's how I am. My customers will NOT suffer over "my problems".
It sucks that MyDMX appears to associate programming to channels, rather than associating programming to fixtures. That is apparently how it is. I would expect a higher end product like Compu Live to perhaps take that issues into consideration, and maybe they will since it's more of an "evolving product" despite being in production.
You get what you pay for. No matter how you slice it, you still get tons of bang for that buck using MyDMX. And yes, I'm gonna complain about things from time to time, but you know what? I'm still going to use it. I had my major rant-a-thon about the product, and you know what, I still took it out and proudly used it at my big show on July 25th and well, through faults not my own(facility lighting), MyDMX wasn't about to shine(ahem), but I still did my lighting show anyways and it wasn't too bad. MyDMX itself performed flawlessly as I progressively had to stage in the lights.
Start show, assemble trees, put trees on stage, fire them up, power them up, add DMX to cross the stage... add some fixtures to fill in gaps.... MyDMX kicked butt for my event.
So let me rant all I want. I rant to help improve the product.
Now, what were we talking about?