SHOW NEWS: Last chance to bag yourself a bargain!

WhatHIFI, more like What a rip off!

I attended the show on Saturday afternoon and wished I had stayed at home. last year I attended the show and was very impressed, this year was a real disappointment. No major companies (Sony, Pioneer etc) the Wii stand was pathetic, 2 consoles showing through the smallest of lcd's.

This year it only took me an hour to look around, last year it took me 5 hours.

Neil.

Andy

Thanks for your response.

With respect, there is a chasm of difference between seeing two screens on a wall to being able to quiz knowledgeable manufacturer employees about their products. This is part of the show's appeal and has always been extremely informative in previous visits to the show.

Actually, I didn't miss the point of the demonstration. I accept that home cinema is a family medium (although I didn't see too many young children in attendance at the show), but like it or not the majority of buyers like the excitement of big thrill movies and it was a surprise that your chosen showings were the main rather than support events.

As I said earlier, the demonstration of different equipment last year was, in my opinion, far better received and proof of this particular pudding is in the fact that having waxed lyrical about same to my two companions who attended the show with me yesterday, without any prompting, both came out of the demo saying how disappointed they were with the display.

Regards,

Bryan Daniels

Bryan Daniels

With regard to point 3) we did have the Award-winning 50in Pioneer plasma on display on our stand alongside the Award-winning 40in and 46in LCD Sonys, showing Iron Man on Blu-ray.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we have only just received the other new Pioneers this week for review. We'd have liked to have had them in time for the Awards deadline, but they weren't available.

On point 4) I think you slightly missed the point. We wanted to demonstrate the full potential of Blu-ray on a system that yes, of course, most people can't afford, but equally they're highly unlikely to be able to see and hear such a fantastic system which is why we built the demo at the show.

The Pixar short was intended to show just how good a Blu-ray picture can look on a large screen (and bear in mind we have to appeal to a family audience including young children), and the Justin Timberlake clip  was chosen to demonstrate the AUDIO capabilities of Blu-ray as it was 5.1 uncompressed linear PCM which many visitors may not have heard.

Having demonstrated the £80k system, we then very clearly made the point that the price of Blu-ray kit is tumbling and you can now build a really good Blu-ray system at home for around £1000.

What's more, good Blu-ray players are available now for less than £200 and HD-capable multichannel amps/receivers for £500. All this was very clearly explained during our demos.

The vast majority of people who saw our demo enjoyed it, and some even clapped at the end.

I will pass your other comments about the show on to our exhibitions department.

Have to say that having attended the show yesterday, I wish I'd stuck with the Sunday Times myself. Frankly I feel completely duped for the following reasons:-

1. I did pre book the tickets becuase you said they were limited; they weren't and I agree with Madmaxmel that the £1.00 booking fee was outrageous. What happened to the previous pre booking discount?

2. The cost was further inflated with the surprise of an additional £10.00 charge for parking at Excel for the afternoon. Pity you didn't mention this in your literature.

3. Your advert for the show gave the completely misguided impression that a multitude of manufacturers (most particularly your award winners) would be in attendance. They weren't. Pioneer, Sony (TV) and Arcam were the notable omissions and in my case, left me frustrated in my primary aim of being able to directly compare the Sony LCD TV's with their Pioneer (strangely still yet to be reviewed and totally overlooked in the awards)counterparts's. I would also add that the Denon stand was laughable.

It seemed to me that the exhibitors were predominantly aimed at 'Stuff' readers and your attendance was of the "also appearing" variety.

4. After your excellent demonstration last year (comparing a relatively cheap Denon DVD upscaled picture with an HD-DVD alternative of Transformers), this year's display was as uninspiring, as it was fatuous. A Pixar short, coupled with a Justin Timberlake concert are hardly likely to make people rush out and buy new equipment.

In any case, the presenter's comment about flying in the face of the credit crunch by demonstrating an £80,000 system demonstrates that you are totally out of touch with the majority of your readers. Giving demonstrations of differently priced components up to the "temptation" level would have been rather better received; if 1% of the audience could afford the £80,000 price tag, I would be surprised.

I did take up the issue of the paucity of exhibitors with one of your members of staff and he apologetically said that the absentees had all been asked, but had chosen not to attend. Might I suggest you sign companies up before you publicise the event in future, as £31.00, plus fuel for a largely fruitless afternoon is not my idea of value for money; you owe your readers much better.

Regards,

Bryan Daniels    

As you will have seen from the link, the Yamaha discount was posted as soon as we knew about it, on Friday...

Oh dear WhatHiFi...

Had you stated that there would be lots of discounts on stuff, and listed some of the stuff and discount level BEFORE the show, people (including myself) might have dragged themselves (myself included) to ExCel (which let's face it, is an *** to get to for anyone, including Londoners).

You see, the £20 entrance fee (and the outrageous £1 booking fee - why?) is rather steep in these hard financial times, so UNTIL you mentioned the discounts, there was little incentive to attend!

As it stands, it's Sunday afternoon, the Sunday Times is a big read and it's raining, so as tempting as obtaining the excellent Yami amp for £480, it's TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE I'm afraid.

Best promote the show better next time if you want ticket sales to be worth writing about next time!

Best regards

MadMaxMel