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Gadget Show Live 2010
Introduction
If you've never seen it before then I'd thoroughly recommend The Gadget Show on Channel 5 (UK) at 8pm on a Monday evening. The presenting team of Jason Bradbury, Suzi Perry, Jon Bentley and Ortis Deley test, review and complete challenges using all kinds of innovative new 'Tech'. It is excellent Monday night chillout TV.
Every year The Gadget Show hold a live event at the NEC (National Exhibition Centre) in Birmingham called 'The Gadget Show Live'. The live show has hundreds of stands where you can try and buy the latest gadgets available to consumers, special areas include the personal transport area where you can try new transport gadgets such as Ozo, Segway or Rockit Science and the gaming area for hardcore gamers and casual observers alike and a live theatre show with all the presenters.
Three of us ventured up to the NEC for the Friday of the exhibition and the following is a review of some of the best bits.
The Exhibition
If you enjoy gadgets and gizmos then The Gadget Show Live is the premier exhibition to visit in the UK. The range of stands and demonstrations is, frankly, bewildering at first but you soon get into the swing of pushing buttons, touching screens and simply stepping back and saying 'wow' on virtually every stand.
The first items on display in the foyer were a range of the gadgets that made bold claims of being 'rugged' or even unbreakable that the Gadget Show team had tested to destruction. Items had been dropped, buried, drowned, blown up and even flame throwered on the show in the name of testing manufacturers claims of durability.
Hall of Fame
The next area we came to was a collection of tech from The Gadget Show's 'Hall of Fame'. Iconic electronics from my childhood and teenage years brought a smile to my face as I became reacquainted with the first computer I ever really had exposure to at school, the BBC Micro and electronic toys like the 'Simon Says' unit.
It was eye-opening to look at some of the first ever mobile phones and to think about how far we have come in a relatively short time as people took photos and video of these 'dinosaurs' with their iPhones and Blackberrys. It does make you think about where we are going to be in another fifteen years time.
My absolute favourite item from the Hall of Fame was the Sinclair C5 (pictured above) which was intended to revolutionise personal transport back in the 80s. It is interesting to note that there were exhibitors all over the exhibition still trying to do the same thing today but I will come on to that later.
3D
Moving on from the Hall of Fame it was pretty easy to see that the main theme for gadgets in 2010 will be delivering high quality 3D into our homes.
Recently I have seen both Avatar and Alice in Wonderland in 3D at the cinema and, although impressive, I am still dubious about how much 3D adds to the pleasure of watching a film. Most of the larger manufacturers (Sony, Panasonic, LG etc.) all had demonstrations focussing on their 3D televisions. They were showing everything from wildlife films to sporting events and the performing arts. Although the effects were impressive I still find myself wondering if I can live without seeing the Nutcracker Suite or Manchester United putting three goals past my beloved Arsenal in 3D?
The area of 3D that really captures my imagination is 3D gaming. The computer manufacturer NVIDIA were demoing their 3D gaming technology using some top titles including one of my favourite games from 2009, Batman Arkham Asylum. The difference it makes to the gaming experience is impressive to say the least. The corridors or Arkham have so much depth that your brain is soon tricked into believing you are there and this level of immersion in a gaming experience has to be the next revolution in home gaming technology.
Flying Toys
I, like most men, am just a big kid at heart and I'd visited the exhibition with a plan to purchase a new mini RC helicopter. I was bought one for Christmas about three years ago but it was unstable and unpredictable to say the least and the best flight times I could achieve were round about 20 seconds. Since then I have watched The Gadget Show road-test a few of the more sophisticated models coming to the market.
I was not dissapointed at all at the range of RC copters on show. Everything from the original polystyrene body mini copters up to some very sophisticated, petrol driven, machines designed to fly in the great outdoors. There were other variations on flying toys that caught my eye including the seemingly magically controlled hovering disc the 'Vectron Wave' from the company 'Air Hogs'. (It turns out it wasn't magic but the up and down control was operated using altitude sensing technology and based on movement up and down from the pilot's hand.)
I finally opted for the S107 RC copter from Cobra Toys (pictured being flown above) which has a more durable construction and seemed much more stable in the air than most of the other mini RC copters there, due to its dual rotors and built-in auto-detection gyroscope technology. It also has USB charging on top of the usual charging from the controller which should preserve battery life in the handset allowing for more flying hours. I will be crashing my copter into pretty much everything valuable in the house just as soon as I have finished this write-up.
Streaming Media
One thing that certainly struck me about the stands at the exhibition was the amount of new and innovative ways to get media streamed to where you want it. From iPod docks that connect wirelessly to speakers anywhere in your house to DVR (Digital Video Recoder) boxes that allow you to watch and record TV, internet content (such as BBC iPlayer), pay-per-view movies and view all of your photos and video. If 3D content is to be the future of home entertainment then streaming is the way that content will be delivered to you.
In the field of streaming media the product that stood out for me was Fetch TV. FetchTV combines Freeview+ digital television with a full featured digital TV recorder and on demand and online entertainment. Not only can you watch and record up to 50 Freeview channels, but you can wirelessly connect to your home network to give you access to pretty much everything you would want to see on your Digital TV. You can pause and rewind live TV with an eight day programme schedule and series link. You won't even have to sacrifice the Sky flagship channels such as Sky Sports as these can be accessed through Sky's online TV service. The picture seemed excellent quality and the on-demand content covered pretty much everything I could think of there and then.
Personal Transport
As I alluded to earlier there was plenty to see at the exhibition in regards of personal transport innovation. This is an area of tech development that I have always felt can be a fools errand. The fact is that the car and bicycle are engrained in our culture and psychie and anyone who trys to persuade us out of our comfort zone has an almost impossible mountain to climb.
Having said this of course, they keep trying. As well as the Segways, skateboards and scooters, the new kid on the block this year was the YikeBike. A fold-away, motorised bike that works on the prinicipal of the penny-farthing (ask your great grandparents) but with the handle bars situated behind the rider. You have to take your hat off to inventors for trying and investors for putting up the development cash but, where Clive Sinclair failed with the C5, many more have and will fail to replace our transport main-stays in the future. Other than enthusiasts who get their kicks from discovering and learning new modes of transport I still don't see any of these items getting mass market buy-in so I guess many dreams of developing 'the new car' will fall by the wayside before we stop consuming fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow...
Gaming
I find the world of hardcore gaming a bit too intense. People who spend hours on end perfecting their skills on a game like Call of Duty all take it a little too seriously for me but it was amazing to stand back and watch some of these guys at work. The exhibition boasted some of the worlds best gamers and you can only admire just how good some of the players are.
There were plenty of exclusives like the first look at EA Sports offering of its world renowned football game FIFA to coincide with this year's World Cup in South Africa.
The other thing that caught my eye was the incredibly diverse range of gaming peripherals and especially gaming chairs. It is probably every guys dream to have a full gaming setup (chair, steering wheel and pedals, three screens and a high end gaming PC with 3D capabilities) and the cost has really started to come down. The problem is where to put it without upsetting the wife?
The Live Theatre Show
I'm glad that we decided to watch the theatre show at 4pm because it rounded off the day nicely. The presenters promised the same Gadget Show magic as you get on the TV show but live. And they delivered exactly that.
The show included an appearance from an 8ft tall robot called 'Titan' who walked like John Inman and squirted water over unsuspecting visitors. There was a presentation of a technology called 'Architectural Video Mapping' that transformed the stage with some incredible graphic and video effects. Performance artists 'Feeding The Fish' used juggling and clever light technology to amaze the crowd. A version of Suzi Perry's runaway iPhone application success 'Biker Blast Off' that could be played by the audience cheering as loudly as they could and then controlling the angle of the bike by all standing up and leaning with their hands in the air. I was also pleased to see the Festo Air Penguins that I had marvelled at so much on the TV show were 'swimming' calmly above the audience's heads.
The show lasted about an hour and we were treated to Gadget Show staples such as builds, competitions and Suzi Perry in a leather catsuit. The show finished with a personal transport race around the auditorium.
We all had a great time at The Gadget Show Live 2010 and will definitely be going back next year (with probably a bigger budget considering all the 'show only' deals on offer). There wasn't enough time to see and try everything we wanted to and not enough space for me to cover off everything we did see in this review. All I can say is that we would all recommend getting tickets to next year's show as soon as they come up for sale. This show will only get bigger and more popular.
