A while ago, my partner and I were lucky enough to be invited to Gadget Show Live Professional, a sneak preview of GSL for trade buyers and people in the industry. Obviously, we jumped at the chance to be able to visit this event and hot-footed it down to the Birmingham NEC to see what it was all about.On entering the first hall, one of the first things to greet me was this super-cute robot from the Future Technology area. Using Microsoft's Kinect, he can sense depth much better than a robot using a regular camera. More on this in a future post!
Walking around the first hall, where most of the home-oriented gadgets and technology were situated, there seemed to be a massive focus on 3D home entertainment, with most of the major television manufacturers represented. All dependant on 3D glasses, the quality ranged from excellent (The Batman demo at the Acer stand was a favourite) to "Oooh no." (A direct quote from myself.) If I had money to burn, I'd certainly invest in a top of the range set, however at the moment 3DTV for me is marked under the heading "Purely Aspirational", at least until the costs come down... or the glasses come off! Speaking of aspirational, one company were exhibiting their top of the range hot tubs, complete with champagne glass holders. As the husband quite rightly pointed out, it's not merely the extortionate cost of such a luxury that prevents us from owning one, it's the fact that we simply don't have room in our house!
Next stop was the Gadget Hall of Fame in association with the Centre for Computing History. A little confusing at first, as we stepped straight into the 1980's exhibit only to be met with a genuine Sinclair C5 and the red JVC camcorder made famous in Back To The Future! Closer inspection of a BBC Micro computer revealed that it contained the text based game Hampstead, and confirmed that twenty years later, I am still no good at text based games. Around the corner was the 1970's exhibit, faithfully decked out in obnoxious wallpaper, with working Pong machine and an actual Betamax recorder! I had to capture the moment as I doubt I shall ever see one again! The 1990's exhibit was filled with a few more familiar toys such as a Mega Drive, the first iMac and a selection of early mobile phones, but the computers of the 1960's were almost unreal! I found it fascinating, but almost impossible to comprehend how those boxes of circuits relate to the technology of today. Guess I've got a lot of history to catch up on!
After blagging a glass of wine from the lovely people at Orbitsound (Who also gave me one of their T3 personal speakers to test - review to come!) we headed down to the test track, where all kinds of bikes, radio controlled vehicles, scooters and such were being tested out. On the way we met none other than the man himself, Jason Bradbury! He was running around like a bit of a madman trying to get things organised for the live show, undoubtably we caught him at probably one of the busiest times of his life, yet he still gave two minutes of his time to say hello and pose for a picture with us. What a pro! Then onwards to the track, where my other half got to try his hand at riding a Segway!
All in all, an absolutely superb day out, and that's even before I've told you about the Game Zone! But more on that later in the week...
You're right about the focus on 3D technology at that show, it's a pity they're still dependant on the glasses. If the 3DS can do it without them I'm guessing we'll see a similar trait in 3DTVs emerge over the next few years.
ReplyDeleteI didn't get a chance to see the Gadget Hall of Fame but my boss has a beta-max at my workplace, I need to get my geek on and set it up.
Look forward to your review on the Game Zone!