Aputure used its IBC 2026 booth to make a point it says it hasn’t emphasized enough: its gear isn’t just a film and TV tool, it’s a broadcast tool. Rather than a table of new products, the booth is built as a working game-show-style studio, lit entirely by Aputure fixtures and run entirely through Sidus Link Pro. We talked to Aputure’s Brandon about how it’s built.
What it is
The demo set is a small, high-end game-show environment — a rotating color wheel as the centerpiece, INFINIBAR pixel bars for accent and party-color lighting, and a ring of MC Pro mini panels (fitted with bubble diffusers) built into the wheel graphic itself, so each color segment flashes to match as the wheel spins. Behind that decorative layer, the key and fill come from Aputure’s core broadcast fixtures: NOVA II 2×1 and 1×1 panels along the back wall, and point-source units — a STORM 1000c as key and a STORM 700x for extra fill — doing the heavy lifting.
According to Brandon, the point of the build is showing that a small broadcast studio doesn’t need a traditional lighting console: every fixture in the room is running off Sidus Link Pro, patched and controlled from a single Mac.
Featured Specifications
- Light engines on display: BLAIR (tunable white) and BLAIR-CG (tunable color, 7-diode: Blue, Lime, Amber, Indigo, Red, Cyan, Green)
- Color coverage: BLAIR-CG covers 90%+ of Rec.2020; BLAIR covers 70%+
- Control: Sidus Link Pro 2.4 — now runs natively on Mac, not just iPad
- Networking hardware: Sidus Four — 4 CRMX + 4 DMX universes from one node, expandable
- Notable new detail: a pole-operated yoke for the Nova line, aimed at EU studio installs, is coming soon
The BLAIR / BLAIR-CG light engines
BLAIR and BLAIR-CG are Aputure’s own light engine chipsets, not third-party tech. BLAIR (used in the STORM 400x, 700x, 1200x, and XT52) is a five-diode tunable-white engine — Blue, Lime, Amber, Indigo, Red — built for CCT range and output. BLAIR-CG (used in the STORM 80c and 1000c, and the NOVA II 1×1/2×1 panels) adds Cyan and Green to that mix for full tunable color, covering more than 90% of Rec.2020.
Brandon’s side-by-side demo compared an HMI, a standard RGBW fixture, and a BLAIR-CG fixture at matched white points. His point: HMI gets its apparent whiteness partly from near-UV content exciting fluorescence in fabrics and skin, which a typical RGBW engine can’t replicate, leaving it looking flatter and more yellow by comparison. The Indigo emitter in BLAIR/BLAIR-CG is specifically there to trigger that same fluorescence response, which Aputure says is what makes the white output read as clean and natural rather than synthetic.
Fixtures used in the demo
| Fixture | Role in demo | Light engine | Key specs | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| STORM 1000c | Key light | BLAIR-CG | 1,000W tunable color, 14,200 lux @3m (5600K, 45° reflector), CCT 1,800-20,000K, IP65 | $3,990 |
| STORM 700x | Fill light | BLAIR | 700W tunable white, 16,730 lux @3m (5600K, 35° reflector), CCT 2,500-10,000K, IP65 | $1,690 (bare) / $2,140 (Cine Kit w/ CF10 Fresnel) |
| NOVA II 2×1 | Back-wall key/fill | BLAIR-CG | 1,000W tunable color panel, CCT 1,800-20,000K, IP65 | $3,690 |
| NOVA II 1×1 | Back-wall key/fill | BLAIR-CG | 500W tunable color panel, CCT 1,800-20,000K, CRI ≥95, IP65 | $1,899 |
| INFINIBAR (PB3/PB6/PB12) | Accent/party color | RGBWW | Seamless pixel bars, 1ft/2ft/4ft lengths | $299 / $479 / $639 |
| MC Pro | Wheel graphic accents | RGBWW mini panel | Lensed mini LED panel, built into wheel segments | ~€190 (EU) |
Control: Sidus Link Pro 2.4 and Sidus Four
The whole set runs on Sidus Link Pro 2.4, Aputure’s lighting control app, which added native Mac support alongside its existing iPad app in this release. According to Aputure, the same show file — cues, the 3D Visualizer, layout view — now works across both platforms, so a lighting designer can build and previz a set on a desktop, then hand execution off to an iPad on set without walking away from the console mid-show. The update also introduced Action Panel, a lockable, full-screen operator view for firing cues and Quickshots without exposing the full programming interface — useful exactly for the handoff Brandon described, where the person who builds the show isn’t necessarily the person running it.
On the hardware side, the booth’s Mac connects via Ethernet to a Sidus Four, Aputure’s networked lighting node, which handles up to four CRMX wireless universes and four wired DMX universes simultaneously (expandable further by linking multiple units), auto-patching each fixture in the room. Sidus Four lists for $2,490. The smaller, single-universe Sidus One transceiver is $439.
Price & availability
Sidus Link Pro 2.4 is available now for iPad and Mac. The Action Panel feature requires the Pro plan ($10/month), with the Max tier adding support for four universes of control. Individual fixture and hardware pricing is listed in the table above; all are shipping now through Aputure’s authorized resellers.
