[Azzin]

If so, I'll see you there as I'm going today!

[Indy @ S.E.]

Yep Im looking to get there for about 1ish, should be good to see and hear the high end stuff and of course check out the beast that is the PS3!

[scottie50]

Be there tomorrow about 11.

[irascian]

I hope I'm not stealing your thread but it seems to be set up to indicate it's about the show.

Am I the only one who was seriously disappointed with this show? £13 (discount price) and train fares on top is not cheap for a marketing event and I felt the suppliers (or the ones I was interested in) really didn't fulfill their side of the bargain.

Sony - Had the W series, the S series and the X series on display but the X series was the only panel permanently turned off. What was the point of having it there? How was one supposed to do any sort of comparison?

Toshiba - better but not enough staff for the queries people had (two people, each spending too long with people who from what I heard were not serious buyers). Got good solid information on the TV I was interested in but HD-DVD wise felt I was just getting marketing b.s. Me: "When are you expecting the XE1 to come out?" Sales rep:"Two weeks time". Me: "I think you mean the E1. I'm asking about the later model". Sales rep: "Ah. Second week in December." I want to believe, really I do, but too many other sources are saying January.

Sharp (I think it was Sharp, might have been Sony - can't remember). The only two staff around, standing by a brochure dispenser were far more interested in giggling and chatting with each other than paying attention to anyone who - God forbid - might be interested in buying a product.

Pioneer - packed, hot and dark. A very hokey "look how plasma beats LCD hands down" where the brightness was way up on the LCD to make black look grey was on auto-run. Again no staff around to ask questions other than one guy who was spending forever with someone who I didn't think was in any way a serious buyer.

Denon - much cooler than the Pioneer room, laid back even, but no staff rushing to say "Anything you want to know?" despite there seeming to be quite a few around. Too dark to really make out much about the different products. Grabbed a brochure and left.

Micro anvika - the place to buy stuff and ooh look a big show special discount. Buy a Nano and get a free bag. Lordy me how they spoil us!

Demo room - There was a hi-def demo being run, seemingly every 20 minutes. Long queues because it seemed to be in a ridiculously small room with nobody to give any clue as to what the process for getting in was other than queueing. Saw a group of 5 jump the queue and it turned out that when the thing actually started at 1pm he was checking in names before the queue even started. It was very clear that only a handful of people in the queue were going to get in given the "your names' on the list - you're coming in regardless of the queue" approach. Returned 20 minutes later to find an even longer queue but nobody at all around to ask "So do you pre-book for this with your name or what? What is the form here?"

All-in-all I got the brochures I was interested in and got to see the products I was interested in (albeit running pre-canned demos that were clearly designed to hide the weaknesses and exaggerate the strengths) but had expected suppliers to put a bit more effort in given what they were asking us to pay.

Left an hour after I arrived, having thought I'd spend most of the day there (which I could have done if I'd just wanted to queue all day for the demo I guess).

Think I'll just find a good dealer and save myself the money next time I'm looking at making a major purchase.

On the plus side: the venue was well sign-posted (which it needed to be) from the tube station. Got all the brochures I needed. And if you were interested in seeing the PS3 (I had no interest at all in it) I guess that would have been a big highlight.

[jon smith]

Completely agree with irascian that it was too expensive for what was inside - I was on a speaker hunt, but nearly all the demos were absolutely dreadful...

The only things of note...

Acoustic Energy - the Aego T system was excellent. May have a look into these, they were the only sat speakers at the show that sounded any good - a decent simple demo room (not too loud and at least they tried music dvds - even if Peter Gabriel was on constant repeat play).

Sony - The PS3 looked nice (Resistance looked very nice - Call of Duty with martians). Looks similar graphics wise to the 360, but i'm a sucker for new consoles so might get one. In the main Sony demo room the guy spent ages going through the PSP style GUI on the new Sony 5200 amp and then we were treated to very short DVD clips and an even quicker BluRay montage. The Ruby projector was a treat though.

Pioneer room - like many of the rooms this one was a complete waste of space (and I own a Pio plasma).

Kef - the setup was dreadful, the centre speaker on the new eggs was set way too low and this made any movie demos sound awful.

Tannoy - I was really interested in the new Highlines but an absolutely dreadful demo in a darkened room, couldn't even see the speakers and i've had more than enough BBC HD previews for one lifetime. Very disappointing.

Squeezebox - A pointlessly large room with some staff milling about answering questions. Told them I was interested in buying, but no mention of any special show prices. It was only as I was leaving I saw a small sheet with some decent special show prices. They really need to improve their sales skills. Ordered now anyway.

What HiFi - couldn't be bothered to work out the stupid queuing system.

Without my interest in the AEGO speakers and the Squeezebox I could have easily been in and out in an hour - I was in there about 2 and a half in the end but that was with a beer stop.

Can't even remember much of the other stuff there...

[per-Sony-fied]

Oh dear sounds dreadful. I went last year (I think!) and while it certainly is not on a par with the London Hi-Fi show there was enough to interest me to keep me there for much of the day. On that strength I'm gonna go again tomorrow but not expecting to be so enthralled as the Hi-Fi show I attended this year which incidentally did a very organised and well set-up HD-DVD demo For those that are interested I think the Mpeg4 encoding on HD-DVD makes more of a difference than being a higher resolution over SD-DVD Mpeg2 encoding. So yes it's better but not astonishingly better.

[sol_prior]

Just back from the Show.

I was one of the people who "jumped" the queue to get into the hi def demo. This was done as the Denon AVC-1XVA amp used to route the video and audio round the system blew up in the morning whilst we were waiting for the demo to begin. The staff took the names of those of us waiting in the queue and let us in first, after the amplifier had been replaced by Denon. Iguess it was a case of damned if you do or damned if you don't for them, although the staff on duty should have explained to those wating what had happened.

The demo itself consisted of showing the outputs from a Denon 2930 up scaling DVD player (X Men 3), a recording from an episode of Later with Jools Holland on a UVEM multimedia PC, and clips from Fantastic Four on a Samsung Blu Ray machine (UK Spec)and Batman Begins on an American HD DVD player.

The Picture was projected from Sim2 1080p capable projector (I forget the Model) My impressions, Up scaling does work fairly well, although the old saying about Silk purses and sows ears comes to mind, it is at least watchable. The HD DVD picture was dark, the scene was that of the Batmobile chase over the rooftops of Gotham, but the level of detail was a distinct improvement over that from the Denon. There was flicker evident, due to the output of the player being 1080i.

Most impressive of all was the Blu Ray -The same level of detail was evident as with the HD DVD picture, however as the output was 1080p, I did not notice the Flicker.

The UVEM output was also 1080p, and my observations hold.

The Sky stand was also interesting, as I got some hands on time with the remote and box showing live broadcast. I was able to do some rough comparisons between channels. Only the Film channel seemed to be broadcasting HD content, and there was noticeable improvement in picture quality when switching between the HD and standard outputs. The standard definition up scaling on Sky One (Cold Case) was awful.

Had a Watch of the PS3 demos, and was under whelmed with the graphics on display, one looked a little like a bad version of Half Life, but to be fair it generally takes about 12 months for developers to get a handle on the hardware so it could be a little early to judge.

The rest of the Show was disappointing, although I too was impressed with the Acoustic Energy demo.

Originally Posted by irascian

I hope I'm not stealing your thread but it seems to be set up to indicate it's about the show.

Am I the only one who was seriously disappointed with this show? £13 (discount price) and train fares on top is not cheap for a marketing event and I felt the suppliers (or the ones I was interested in) really didn't fulfill their side of the bargain.

Sony - Had the W series, the S series and the X series on display but the X series was the only panel permanently turned off. What was the point of having it there? How was one supposed to do any sort of comparison?

Toshiba - better but not enough staff for the queries people had (two people, each spending too long with people who from what I heard were not serious buyers). Got good solid information on the TV I was interested in but HD-DVD wise felt I was just getting marketing b.s. Me: "When are you expecting the XE1 to come out?" Sales rep:"Two weeks time". Me: "I think you mean the E1. I'm asking about the later model". Sales rep: "Ah. Second week in December." I want to believe, really I do, but too many other sources are saying January.

Sharp (I think it was Sharp, might have been Sony - can't remember). The only two staff around, standing by a brochure dispenser were far more interested in giggling and chatting with each other than paying attention to anyone who - God forbid - might be interested in buying a product.

Pioneer - packed, hot and dark. A very hokey "look how plasma beats LCD hands down" where the brightness was way up on the LCD to make black look grey was on auto-run. Again no staff around to ask questions other than one guy who was spending forever with someone who I didn't think was in any way a serious buyer.

Denon - much cooler than the Pioneer room, laid back even, but no staff rushing to say "Anything you want to know?" despite there seeming to be quite a few around. Too dark to really make out much about the different products. Grabbed a brochure and left.

Micro anvika - the place to buy stuff and ooh look a big show special discount. Buy a Nano and get a free bag. Lordy me how they spoil us!

Demo room - There was a hi-def demo being run, seemingly every 20 minutes. Long queues because it seemed to be in a ridiculously small room with nobody to give any clue as to what the process for getting in was other than queueing. Saw a group of 5 jump the queue and it turned out that when the thing actually started at 1pm he was checking in names before the queue even started. It was very clear that only a handful of people in the queue were going to get in given the "your names' on the list - you're coming in regardless of the queue" approach. Returned 20 minutes later to find an even longer queue but nobody at all around to ask "So do you pre-book for this with your name or what? What is the form here?"

All-in-all I got the brochures I was interested in and got to see the products I was interested in (albeit running pre-canned demos that were clearly designed to hide the weaknesses and exaggerate the strengths) but had expected suppliers to put a bit more effort in given what they were asking us to pay.

Left an hour after I arrived, having thought I'd spend most of the day there (which I could have done if I'd just wanted to queue all day for the demo I guess).

Think I'll just find a good dealer and save myself the money next time I'm looking at making a major purchase.

On the plus side: the venue was well sign-posted (which it needed to be) from the tube station. Got all the brochures I needed. And if you were interested in seeing the PS3 (I had no interest at all in it) I guess that would have been a big highlight.

Sorry you missed our demo, as is explained below we had a 'technical hitch' and so, to be fair to people who had waited a long time we took their names and asked them to return at 1pm. We then tried to keep 'new' people, who arrived as the 1pm show approached, informed of the plans. In fact it was me who was ticking people of the list and I did walk up and down the 'other' queue explaining what was going on. I'm sorry you didn't appear to hear what was going on.

It's a real shame you didn't see the demo - we try really hard each year to put on a good show and I this year we have done so, again. But electrical kit, especially in show conditions, can go wrong now and again. We were actually up until 2am the night before, tweaking and sorting the demo - but you can't predict these things. We've also tried really hard to show this show's visitors some key new kit - namely a Blu-ray player, plus an HD-DVD player. The HD-DVD player is actually sourced from the States, because we wanted to show visitors the 'latest thing'.

As for there being nobody to ask about the demo times, I was there at the time you were talking about - dressed in a What Hi-Fi polo shirt. Our Advice Desk was also manned all day. In fact, over the course of the day, the complete review team, plus other mag staff (ads, publishing, etc) was in attendance.

In summary, I accept you were upset to miss the demo, however I think your comments re the organising are, at best, a tad unfair. Remember, we too on the mag are hi-fi and home cinema enthusiasts and we hate to let people down - which is why we try so hard at shows to show you some really top kit.

As for people who 'can't be bothered' to ask how to get into the demo - next time, please just ask one of the review team. We're the guys (and girls) dressed in the What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision polo shirts.

To anyone else reading this, please don't be put off - the reason the queues are big is because our demo is the only place, this weekend, you'll see Blu-Ray and HD-DVD being played one after the other, on a 1080p projector. To me, that seems something worth talking about. Perhaps, even in a positive manner...?

[Phil Hinton]

For those going Saturday and Sunday, look out for the AVPodcast team. I will be wearing a brown hoody type top and will most likely have headphones on and a mic shoved into peoples faces most of the day. Come and say hello and have your say about what was good and bad about the show in the podcast!

Oh on Saturday I will be with Seth Gecko who looks like Silent Bob but with less hair, on Sunday I will be with our old Games reporter Neil who is 7ft tall. I'm the short fat one!

Originally Posted by sol_prior

Just back from the Show.

I was one of the people who "jumped" the queue to get into the hi def demo. This was done as the Denon AVC-1XVA amp used to route the video and audio round the system blew up in the morning whilst we were waiting for the demo to begin. The staff took the names of those of us waiting in the queue and let us in first, after the amplifier had been replaced by Denon. Iguess it was a case of damned if you do or damned if you don't for them, although the staff on duty should have explained to those wating what had happened.

The demo itself consisted of showing the outputs from a Denon 2930 up scaling DVD player (X Men 3), a recording from an episode of Later with Jools Holland on a UVEM multimedia PC, and clips from Fantastic Four on a Samsung Blu Ray machine (UK Spec)and Batman Begins on an American HD DVD player.

The Picture was projected from Sim2 1080p capable projector (I forget the Model) My impressions, Up scaling does work fairly well, although the old saying about Silk purses and sows ears comes to mind, it is at least watchable. The HD DVD picture was dark, the scene was that of the Batmobile chase over the rooftops of Gotham, but the level of detail was a distinct improvement over that from the Denon. There was flicker evident, due to the output of the player being 1080i.

Most impressive of all was the Blu Ray -The same level of detail was evident as with the HD DVD picture, however as the output was 1080p, I did not notice the Flicker.

The UVEM output was also 1080p, and my observations hold.

The Sky stand was also interesting, as I got some hands on time with the remote and box showing live broadcast. I was able to do some rough comparisons between channels. Only the Film channel seemed to be broadcasting HD content, and there was noticeable improvement in picture quality when switching between the HD and standard outputs. The standard definition up scaling on Sky One (Cold Case) was awful.

Had a Watch of the PS3 demos, and was under whelmed with the graphics on display, one looked a little like a bad version of Half Life, but to be fair it generally takes about 12 months for developers to get a handle on the hardware so it could be a little early to judge.

The rest of the Show was disappointing, although I too was impressed with the Acoustic Energy demo.

That's a pretty accurate account of the queue 'issue'. Again, I stress, I did try to let everyone know of what was going on. As you'll understand it's sometimes tricky to predict when something will get sorted. Glad you enjoyed (at least I think you did!) the demo, though.

[jon smith]

Originally Posted by MRMM

As for people who 'can't be bothered' to ask how to get into the demo - next time, please just ask one of the review team. We're the guys (and girls) dressed in the What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision polo shirts.

Should people have to ask how to get into a demo though?

Originally Posted by per-Sony-fied

Oh dear sounds dreadful. I went last year (I think!) and while it certainly is not on a par with the London Hi-Fi show there was enough to interest me to keep me there for much of the day. On that strength I'm gonna go again tomorrow but not expecting to be so enthralled as the Hi-Fi show I attended this year which incidentally did a very organised and well set-up HD-DVD demo For those that are interested I think the Mpeg4 encoding on HD-DVD makes more of a difference than being a higher resolution over SD-DVD Mpeg2 encoding. So yes it's better but not astonishingly better.

Let me know if you have any problems seeing our demo - I'll be there all day. In a mag-branded polo shirt.

Originally Posted by jon smith

Should people have to ask how to get into a demo though?

No. Unless there's been a problem and the queue is huge! That said, there were loads of staff on duty, plus the queuing area is clearly marked with ropes.

And, to be fair, we don't quite have Disney's budget...

[jon smith]

Originally Posted by MRMM

And, to be fair, we don't quite have Disney's budget...

Sorry, didn't realise laminated A4 bits of paper were outside your budget.

[teched whfsv]

Originally Posted by MRMM

And, to be fair, we don't quite have Disney's budget...

On the plus side, we don't have height gauges, either. So even very small people can enjoy the demo in complete safety.

Originally Posted by jon smith

Sorry, didn't realise laminated A4 bits of paper were outside your budget.

1. I'm glad this is getting silly, because it's too late to have a serious discussion

2. Now that Andrew Everard has logged-on, and added some Disney-inspired wit, I feel WHF?S&V may have, even if only down to superior numbers, won this little war

3. Goodnight

4. And good luck

[asimm]

Ok here goes. The show did inspire me, I am now pretty desperate for a good HD display. Will look at the offers that the Sky stand told me about (£300 cash back with certain Sony TVs - 150 with all others). After being surrounded most of the afternoon by HD coming home to my 32inch CRT Sony doesn't cut it.
Stands that impressed me -
What Hi Fi - really impressed with the comparisons between the 3 formats - DVD (standard) and the two HD options. Hard to choose in terms of picture quality between Blu Ray and HD DVD.
Sim - without doubt there Polar Express demo was the best in show and the best sequence I have ever seen on any PJ.
Gadget Doctor - they have on show their retro top 10 gadgets. I asked why no atari (they have chosen the Spectrum) and left as WW11 broke out between Tom Dunmore and the other guy on the desk (atari v amiga).
Sky - very good stand, lots to see and the guys on the stand were very informative.
Sony - good range (including blu ray laptop) and v informative staff.
Epson - a good projector at what looks like a very good price with a free electric 2m screen.

Not so impressive
PSP section - could have made much more of this.
PS3 - two of the games looked good but not great and one looked great. Have to say though no great jump from the 360s that were knocking around (including 2 in the boots of some minis). Learnt that the PS3 will upscale normal DVDs!
Arcam - all their kit was at the back of a room - in the dark. I really wanted to test one of their amps.

On the whole I thought it was a good show but probably should cost around £10. Very heavy on displays, most of the HI-FI rooms are pretty much same as always - you get to hear some very expensive kit. Would have liked far more show deals.
No phones (apart from Blackberry) which I was disappointed about.

Hope this helps anyone considering going.

[irascian]

Originally Posted by MRMM

Sorry you missed our demo, as is explained below we had a 'technical hitch' and so, to be fair to people who had waited a long time we took their names and asked them to return at 1pm.

There was more than one queue. That lined up along one side of the room, which then forked in two at the "What Hi Fi?" stand (which seemed to be entirely about selling new subscriptions to the magazine - if I'd been told they were the organisers for the demo I'd have asked them but there was nothing to tell me this) and then the others on the opposite side of the corridor. As I recall when I went back about 1.15pm the ONLY person I could see was wearing a Toshiba shirt and it wasn't clear if he was just taking a break (the demo was next to the Toshiba stand) or was responsible for the queue.

By the way I was only one of many people I saw shaking their heads trying to understand what was going on and then giving up because of the mass of people.

Anyway thanks for the response. Hopefully anybody going over the weekend will now know what to do

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

I'm going to try to go Sunday. Interested to see this 1080i flicker on a 3 chip DLP...there should be no reason for it.

Gordon

[mutley1]

We personally thought the show was not as good as the last two years. We were hoping to see more demos for HD and Blu-ray but were disappointed.
One little tip, take your sandwiches with you. We had two chicken rolls, 2 coffees and 2 ordinary sized pkts of crisps. Total price £15 !!!!

The crisps were £1.20 a packet and I choked on them as I checked the receipt. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.

Overall show rating = 6.5 / 10

[lazymatt]

I've got to agree with the general sentiment here. I though the price was a bit rich for what was inside.

Also echo what has been said about the organisation of the What Hi-Fi demo...I thought the queue was for Stuff subscriptions. No clear indications of what was going on. And seeing as there was nothing really sent with the tickets to indicate this demo was happening, I knew nothing about it and missed it.

I know we Brits like to queue, but I wasn't going to stand there like a lemon without knowing why.

Highlight for me was the Sony demo room. Make sure you get a ticket and have a look/listen...very impressive set up.

Also a big fan of the Quad ESL's...the only problem was after listening to them everything else sounded muddy!

[Gary Lightfoot]

I wonder if the 'flicker' was a deinterlacing artefact similar to being in video mode instead of film mode. I saw this on the Sony Ruby with the upscaled 'Robots' demo so that might be what was being seen on the 1080 Sim2.

The Ruby wasn't set up properly, which was a dissapointment (looking flat with desaturated colours and raised black level - I assume the iris was in off mode, but the Sim2 demo was great, with all the projectors there looking excellent and much better than the Ruby IMHO. I think the Sony room was more set up for their new amp rather than the projector (the Pearl was there but not working) which was a dissapointment as I was hoping to see the Ruby or Pearl at their best.

Would like to hear your comments on the Ruby Gordon and see what you think of it in the Sony room (if you manage to get there on Sunday).

Gary.

[RichardK]

I agree with Gary, the Sony demo did seem to be more about the new receiver, and the fact that they have a stereo room EQ system that takes less than 30 seconds to do its stuff (don't know how that compares to others). I saw the Ruby demo last year and had thought it looked really good, so good that it made me decide that my decision to only look at DLP projectors was the wrong one.

This time the Ruby looked awful and the SIM2 demo was excellent. All SIM2's projectors looked much better than the Ruby, and as I literally walked out of Sony's demo and straight into the SIM2 one, it was as close to a side by side demo as you could possibly get. I'd have thought Sony would've been better off with showing the Pearl, as it'd be in more people's price range. But then I'd also expect anyone showing their products to make sure they are setup properly!

I was disappointed with the show (I was there less than 2 hours), and I don't think I'll go again. I think a better option to see the kit is to find a good dealer, and demo it there.

[lazymatt]

The Sony demo was definaltey set up for the amp. What time where you guys there? We caught the show just before lunch (about 2.00) The guy did say he may get the Pearl set up later in the afternoon, as there are more people intrested in it.

Thought the sound from the amp was fantastic though - nice and airy (should be with those speakers).

[Gary Lightfoot]

I was there around noon or a little before. Pity about the Pearl as it may have been a missed opertunity, but at least they have another day to show it off.

Gary

[recruit]

Will be going along tommorow and will check in on the Sony Setup...i hope they do have a Pearl on Demo

[jon smith]

Originally Posted by lazymatt

Thought the sound from the amp was fantastic though - nice and airy (should be with those speakers).

I was annoyed with the Tannoy demo for having 2 subs in action, but the Sony one had 4 PV1s running... more than a little over the top i think.

[danny daniell]

Originally Posted by Gary Lightfoot

I wonder if the 'flicker' was a deinterlacing artefact similar to being in video mode instead of film mode. I saw this on the Sony Ruby with the upscaled 'Robots' demo so that might be what was being seen on the 1080 Sim2.

The Ruby wasn't set up properly, which was a dissapointment (looking flat with desaturated colours and raised black level - I assume the iris was in off mode, but the Sim2 demo was great, with all the projectors there looking excellent and much better than the Ruby IMHO. I think the Sony room was more set up for their new amp rather than the projector (the Pearl was there but not working) which was a dissapointment as I was hoping to see the Ruby or Pearl at their best.

Would like to hear your comments on the Ruby Gordon and see what you think of it in the Sony room (if you manage to get there on Sunday).

Gary.

I agree with Gary,the Ruby looked too washed out & pallid for my taste ....I really don`t understand why these manufacturers go to all the trouble & expense of deming this kit if they can`t even be arsed/have the expertise to set it up properly. Maybe Sony ought to put some cash into developing a self calibrating pj similar to the hi-tech amp they were showcasing? .....just a thought
The Sim 2 dem was far more pleasing with a more entertaining choice of clips being shown (the new Eddie Murphy film looks hilarious!) Best of their clips was indeed "Polar Express" on the C3X.....the MI3 clip on the £35,000 three chip 1080p looked too high in contrast for me & i think i would have developed a migraine had i watched the entire movie,although in fairness,Adam Roser did explain that this was the fault of a stylised process applied to the film & not the fault of the pj,so maybe not the best clip to showcase that model Adam? In general,the whole Sim range looked excellent with the smaller £3,000 Domino looking best value imo.

Danny

[AgentCool]

I went to London yesterday to see the show and my first impression was a distinct feeling of deja-vu upon walking in. It certainly didn't feel like a year since I was last there and the layout being almost identical - often right down to each company's stand location - to the previous show enhanced this feeling.

Without going into too much detail about everything I'd say I was impressed by Toshiba's HD-DVD demo, especially when compared to some of the Blu-Ray demo material Sony were showing on their stand. The HD-DVD material I saw never dipped below 'Very Good' on any of the various sized displays whereas the Blu-Ray demo I stood and watched for several minutes wasn't particularly impressive. Sony were showing a demo from 'Into the Blue' and although it clearly was only a demonstration disc, the picture was extremely grainy even when standing about 10 feet away from the 40" screen they were showing it on. At times, the underwater scenes looked worse than many DVDs I own with similar material.

I felt the Blu-Ray format fared better on the LG stand, amongst others, but it certainly didn't make me want to spend £1000 on a player when it didn't offer any improvement in quality over the cheaper Toshiba players.

Some of the projectors on display were amazing and really shows what can be achieved in your own home, albeit with lots of space and cash. Also worthy of mention were Quad's electrostatic speakers that produced some of the best sound I have ever heard from any speakers.

The PS3 was the biggest disappointment as, given I had travelled 200 miles to the show (though I did make a day out of it), I was ready to be impressed and declared totally wrong about my scepticism of the console. The three games I saw (Motorstorm, Resistance & Lair) varied in quality and none looked any better than what I've seen on the 360. Motorstorm looked pretty good but its frame rate was noticably low, probably struggling to get to around 25 FPS. Gameplay wise it looked fun (I really couldn't be bothered to queue for any of them) but shallow.

Resistance offered a much higher framerate but the gameplay didn't seem up to much more than a generic first person shooter though this was a game I would have liked to play for a while to see if it offered anything new to the genre.

Lair was quite clearly far from finished with lots of bad slowdown, especially when there was lots going on. I couldn't really tell what to make of the game other than it looked a bit like an aerial dogfight-sim with a dragon instead of a plane.

Overall, it didn't look disastrous but there was certainly nothing to warrant over £400 of your money with a pretty uninspiring line-up. Perhaps in another year...

As for the show as a whole, it was much the same as last year but I felt that at the previous show the 360 made a much better impression than the PS3 did at this one; probably because the 360 was given a detailed demonstration showing off many of its capabilities and a wider variety of games.

[Bert Coules]

Originally Posted by danny daniell

...the MI3 clip on the £35,000 three chip 1080p looked too high in contrast for me...

I found that three chip machine demo really curious: the sheer screen size was impressive, of course, but the clip was such a bad choice: a processed image with added grain. And was I the only viewer who found the lateral movement amazingly jerky?

...the smaller £3,000 Domino looking best value imo.

And gave, subjectively at least, a rather better picture than the top-end model...

Bert
www.bertcoules.co.uk