Has anyone used lighting equipment from "Savage Equipment" before? I've seen them on a few websites for $100-$300, they are Kino-like knockoffs.

Ari, please don't post links to photo/video sites which compete with DVinfo's sponsors. Posting a link to the manufacturer is fine however. Thanks for your understanding.

No problem boyd - I did a google search on the company and couldn't find a homepage, hence why I posted the previous link.
Either way anyone heard of them before? Kind of sketchy that they don't seem to have an easy-to-find homepage

manufacturer's web site:
http://www.savagepaper.com/lights.htm

No, I've not used them or seen them.

I can't find any info on these guys still - only this thread, which doesn't say much - http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=59602&highlight=savage

There's a heap pf companies making cheap gear in Asia, what can you say about it?
Light comes out of it, what do you expect it to do.

Largely the quality of the light is determined by the tubes used, even if they're using cheap stuff with a poor rendition index you can swap it out for the better stuff from Osram etc.

Where the big differences lie is in the durability of the fixtures, if it's for a home studio where the lights don't get moved any of them are OK, if you're going to give them a hard workout moving them around from what I've seen of all this stuff it's not going to last too long before fabric frays, hinges fail etc.

Also worth mentioning that most of this gear is made for stills photography. Expect a fair amount of spill. Also some of the light sources that I've looked at have fan cooling and it can be noisy.

If you're handy with basic tools and have a bit of electrical knowledge you can put this kind of gear together yourself or even improve some of the cheap Asian stuff with better fittings.