TLC Christmas Light specials

[Blackbeard]

I watched a couple of specials The Learning Channel had on tonight. One was about how overboard some people go to decorate their house exteriors. Mostly static stuff. The second was more about how elaborate things can get. These homes were decorated with some fancy controllers, LOR, things that looked pretty professional, and controlled with software I didn't recognize.

The one thing I noticed about both shows, in particular the second, was that none of the displays stood up to the ones I've seen on the net where people were using DIYC controllers and Vixen. Some of these people had 150k lights running 400 amps worth of electricity, and still, they paled to the ones I've seen elsewhere.

Now granted, they only used a few different displays, and I'm not trying to flame any war about equipment, but these displays were shown with professional video equipment and all the facilities of a semi-major network.

Just goes to show what some really creative minds with some pretty great  DIYC equipment and open source software can do. Since I haven't displayed anything of my own yet, and won't this year because of other priorities, I can't include myself in that group of spectacular displayers. I just hope when I finally do, I don't disappoint myself.

My hat's off to you all that do this.

[dmaccole]

FWIW, those two shows were from 2006 and 2007 -- which means they were filmed during the 2005 and 2006 Christmas seasons -- and the whole DIY thing really didn't get rolling until 2007 (this site launched in early 2008).

I think Annalisa (Crazy Christmas Lights Lady), who is in the 2007 TLC show, has redone her show at least twice since they filmed her.

Some of what you see in those TV shows is really just history, not the current state of those light masters' current shows.

\dmc

[trekster]

Damn.... you are good!

Ron

[DennyMo]

Dunno if I watched the same shows you did or not, but I was struck by how bad of a hack job some of the installs were.  Then on the other extreme were those that were just "too much".  My wife clarified for me, "I said you could make our house 'that' house in our town, but [pointing to the TV] not one of 'those' houses." 

Loved the bit at the end of one show where they were talking to the son of one of the homeowners, he happened to be an avid hunter:
Host: "Would you shoot Rudolph?"
Son: "Yup, and mount the rack on the wall."
Dad: "Heck, if I had antlers, he'd shoot me and mount me on the wall, too."

[Ron]

I'm pretty sure "Invasion of the Christmas Lights 2" was filmed last year, or the 2009 season.  Clyde Dearing is a friend of mine from Montgomery, TX.  He's the one that had the ejecting elf and dog with the yellow lights.  Very funny and big show.  He's all LOR I believe but he and Super Elf Chuck put on a great show.  

That's the one that had Richard Holdman on it too.  He was at his parents house, not his original house, so I think that was last year.

Ron

[memphislights]

They even went into the Grinch thing with Holdman's neighbors.
You have to give the guy his props considering how far he has to manually lug stuff out to set it up.
It comes down to "each his own."  If it makes him happy, and he isn't really hurting anyone, let him be.

My friend is at least lucky that there aren't any real Scrooges that dislike his lights.  Is anyone on here not so lucky?

[magic8192]

I think most of the people in the show are from Planet Christmas and they run LOR.  The one guy did seem to be using some professional DMX equipment.  Looked like it was a very expensive setup. 

I am very pleased with the show because after it my wife was talking about what she was going to add to our show next year and I had a lighting engineer t-shirt  waiting for me on my chair when I got home  this evening.     She is hooked. 

[Blackbeard]

I didn't watch the #2 show. I'll watch it if I get a chance, but two hours at a time is my limit. I didn't pay much attention to the production dates, so I might have been misled by the simplicity of some of the displays.

At any rate, I'm still amazed by how great some of the displays are (Holdman's in particular, along with a few others). One of the points I'd like to make is that there doesn't seem to be any limits to what people can come up with, even using the DIY stuff.