Gadget Show Live 2013

G-Man72

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Just come back from the Gadget Show Live at the NEC and left feeling throughly disapointed.

The only native 4k hd demo was on the lg stand showing a driving game.
A Sony 70" or so tv for £25k that was showing a blu-ray (obviously not 4K)
The Samsung stand had a large trailer with 4K advertised all over it but no 4K tv`s.

B&W speakers.
Mission speakers.
Superfi stand.
Epson stand.
JVC stand showing the DLA55 (?) nice but boring snowboarding film and nothing else.

It seems most of the stands are selling some kind of headphones this show.

I am so glad I went on trade day and didn`t have to pay for entry.
I would be surprised if it is on next year as it seems to be getting smaller with less big names showing a presence.

You might as well go to currys and pc world and you would see pretty much the same things without the entrance fee!!
 
Guess you missed the thread on here about it. Sorry to hear it has not improved from previous years (which it needed to!)
 
Bugger, just purchased some tickets for the kids and myself. I went last year and it was ok, enough to kill/waste a day with the kids.
 
I have been to all three previous shows now, and this was by far the worst.
There was nothing that really grabbed your attention.

The most interesting thing I though was the dancing robots.

Dont forget it costs £10 to park at the NEC and a small bottle of coke is £2.

Last year they had about 7000 people on trade day and about 4000 the previous year. It felt that it wasn`t as busy as last year, but I`m glad I`m not going on the public days!!
 
Do you think the average gadget show visitor is particularly interested in audio visual technology?
We could easily have arranged to demonstrate 4K televisions with some of the leading TV manufacturers, but it would have been difficult to justify this financially as we don't sell anything and there is limited value in publicising the forums to that audience.
 
I think people would be interested, just like the avforums stand last year, not everybody wants or can accommodate a projector system but people still want to see it in action! I thought it was a great stand and nice to see what a £30k pj can do!
It would have been nice to see the Sony 4k pj in action

The gadget show is to show new and upcoming technology. 4k is the future just as VHS, cd, DVD and blu-ray was in years gone by.

They had some robots there which were upwards of £15k.I don't think many people will buy one but the company is demonstrating them in the hopes that people will buy them.

Just like superfi demo'ing the 4k sony tv. Looks great but what's the point if you are only showing an up scaled blu-ray? It doesn't really show of the technology.
 
I have been to all three previous shows now, and this was by far the worst.

That doesn't sound good. I'm there on Saturday to do a piece for this very forum about it!

If it's anything like last year, then it will be less about TVs, Blu-rays, 'Gadgets' etc and more about iPhone cases, iPad speakers, docks etc etc and a big area for the kids to play on consoles all day.

For me the Gadget Show either needs to go or be restyled completely to be some kind of UK version of the CES. But I'll reserve judgement for when I go on Saturday.
 
The AVForums stand was the best thing about the gadget show last year.

I can't even imagine how much it cost and how much work went into setting the stand up but it was for me the best thing by a long shot at the show!

I think gadgets/computers/av etc all ties in to one for most people however most people like to be shown something exciting and new not a set of headphones. I'm guessing there was nothing on the PS4 / XBOX 720 there? Surely theres a couple of prototypes knocking about now?
 
What we learned last year is that people may remember the experience you give them (the home cinema demo in our case), but there is no guarantee that they will remember who brought them the experience.
How many people could say now that last years demo was from Anthem AV, Sim2, Paradigm or AVForums?
I chatted with Emma from Vibe and they had a big stand selling loads of headphones 'n' stuff. Maybe they recouped a portion of their outlay. Scan had a massively impressive stand last year which was very busy. (I was shocked that they aren't there this year). If we had something to sell then doing the show would be an entirely different proposition.
We learned a fair amount from doing the show last year and there were a lot of benefits.
But I would only do another gadget show if we were paid to because it would benefit the organisers way more than it would benefit us.
 
So AVForums aren't there this year?
What was on the forum stand last year? Was it just the projector set up?
 
There was nothing about any of the next gen consoles but there were plenty of xbox 360 for the kids to play with.

Sony only had a small prescence showing headphones as far as I could tell.
Nintendo was there pushing the WiiU unsurprisingly considering how poor sales have been, and they were still pushing the 3DS too.

As Greg said "If it's anything like last year, then it will be less about TVs, Blu-rays, 'Gadgets' etc and more about iPhone cases, iPad speakers, docks etc etc and a big area for the kids to play on consoles all day." It`s still like that this year!!

I was talking to one of the guys from Epson and he was there last year too and he said all people wanted to know about was the xbox game they had playing on the projector!!

I did have a look at graham.myers stand (an advertiser on these forums) and he was a very nice bloke who I would be glad to buy the new popcorn hour A-400 from him.
 
What we learned last year is that people may remember the experience you give them (the home cinema demo in our case), but there is no guarantee that they will remember who brought them the experience.
How many people could say now that last years demo was from Anthem AV, Sim2, Paradigm or AVForums?
I chatted with Emma from Vibe and they had a big stand selling loads of headphones 'n' stuff. Maybe they recouped a portion of their outlay. Scan had a massively impressive stand last year which was very busy. (I was shocked that they aren't there this year). If we had something to sell then doing the show would be an entirely different proposition.
We learned a fair amount from doing the show last year and there were a lot of benefits.
But I would only do another gadget show if we were paid to because it would benefit the organisers way more than it would benefit us.

To be honest Stuart I think it would have been a waste of time for you to have had a stand there this year. Maybe you should get some iPhone cases made up and start selling them there:D
 
The AVForums stand was the best thing about the gadget show last year.

I can't even imagine how much it cost and how much work went into setting the stand up but it was for me the best thing by a long shot at the show!

I think gadgets/computers/av etc all ties in to one for most people however most people like to be shown something exciting and new not a set of headphones. I'm guessing there was nothing on the PS4 / XBOX 720 there? Surely theres a couple of prototypes knocking about now?

If we had something to sell then doing the show would be an entirely different proposition.

Looks like you could have sold Arcam Boy a "T" shirt at least :D
 
I used to belong to a classic car club and we did a few shows. It cost us to appear at the venue. We were charged for electricity, hiring carpet tiles etc. We had a few tickets included, but had to pay for extras.

When you think how much they charge for admittance etc. it was outrageous that the exhibits had to pay for themselves. Remember we didn't have anything to sell, just show our cars off to the public.

So we were the attraction. The organisers just got too greedy if you ask me.
 
Whos going today? (Wednesday?) Ill be there in less than 10 hours :)
 
signs said:
Looks like you could have sold Arcam Boy a "T" shirt at least :D

I'd rather have a mug :)
 
I did see a nice Les paul style guitar made from one of those 3d printers!! On the stand next to JVC.
 
Stuart Wright said:
What we learned last year is that people may remember the experience you give them (the home cinema demo in our case), but there is no guarantee that they will remember who brought them the experience

In one visit, yes, but over a few years then people do start to remember. I have never managed to get to the gadget show, but regularly go to the building show at NEC. Over the years I have made purchases as a direct result of things I have seen there. More often than not this is through seeing something on more than one visit so it is a cumulative effect rather than a one off.

One year they had a really good smart homes section which is what started us down the distributed audio route and Rako, but this has never been repeated which was a great shame (subsequent years have had a few stands but nothing compared with that one year). Presumably stand holders felt it wasn't worth it, but I think they needed a few more years to see the real impact.
 
Just got back its the first time I've been to a gadget show live and I'm glad I didn't pay ! If you want an iPhone case get down there.

I was expecting to see some up and coming gadgets but nothing caught my eye. I saw mede8er and popcorn hour there which was my highlight but there wasn't much intrest on the stands from others. Superfi seemed to have a lot of interest

We was there for about 2 hours and run out of intrest
 
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Just got back its the first time I've been to a gadget show live and I'm glad I didn't pay ! If you want an iPhone case get down there.

I was expecting to see some up and coming gadgets but nothing caught my eye. I saw mede8er and popcorn hour there which was my highlight but there wasn't much intrest on the stands from others. Superfi seemed to have a lot of interest

We was there for about 2 hours and run out of intrest

Ive been here since like 10 and still loving it. Went in the dome. Lot of good race sim tech to play with even for someone with a medium to high end sim kit at home. Senheiser has a good budget concious range of headphones on display. Interesting to see a relatively small company like marley right here with senhiser. Epson had a nice display. LG's dual screen effect and 3D tvs blew me away. So far hold the record for the dirt 3 lap time record. On track to win the thrustmaster wheel set. Which id love to try out. If cobfigured right it has the potential to be better than my current set up. All in all a really good show for me but im into my games. Still got the super theatre thing to go to in an hours time.

Edit: also picked up a Samsung 840 ssd drive 250gb :cool: to replace my two 60 gig drives. All for a cool 123 quid. 5 quid cheaper than anywhere else and theres still another 15 quid rebate. Look out for a pair of corsair 60gb ssd's on the classifieds.
 
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How far did anyone have to travel to the show?

I live in Cannock, so it was a quick run down the M6 toll for us and only about 20 mins drive.
If I was travelling from much further away I would have been even more disappointed.
 
How far did anyone have to travel to the show?

I live in Cannock, so it was a quick run down the M6 toll for us and only about 20 mins drive.
If I was travelling from much further away I would have been even more disappointed.

Dudley for me would have been 20 mins apart from the trouble on the m42
 
I came from coventry. 15 minute journey.
 

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