What Hi-Fi? Sound & Vision Show - Part 2

Finally the photos are available.

It took quite a bit to upload the files but they are now available under the new “Gallery” page on the menu bar. Just click on the album to view and voila.

So, this is the second part of the post for the What Hi-Fi? Sound & Vision Show. I will list just a few comments about some of the products displayed in the show that I think are worth to mention. I am not talking about the overall exhibition experience since the first post gave you an idea of what I thought about that.

• There were loads of rooms with demos of audio equipment, but the one I enjoyed the most was the Cambridge Audio room. The sound was absolutely amazing. Great bass and loads of loudness. But what caught my attention was the design of the speakers, all hi tech style with a nice quality finish.

• About 20 minutes of my time in the exhibition were spent “touching” a Canon EOS 40D. This camera is just amazing. Perfect weight, the buttons all well placed, big LCD screen with Live View and all the other features that make the EOS 40D one of the best cameras out there. Go to the Canon web site and check the specifications in case you don’t know yet. It is a bit expensive for the photo amateur like me, but it is a great camera that is worth every penny. By the way, I am using a super zoom camera from Canon, the Powershot S3 IS (read the review for it on TrustedReviews).
• I have taken a few shots of the Intelligent Furniture desks. These desks are really very useful (if you’re not one of those people opening your PC all the time), you can have an entire PC hidden inside the desk. All the cables invisible? That’s great. You can buy one of those with a Dell pc included in the price together with a 19″ screen and a mouse and keyboard. Impressive? I think so. But listen to this; you also have a built in sound system on the desk. No way you say! Yep, it’s true. “Powerdesks are fitted with the Freemote, a remote control for a PC. The Freemote is a sleek unit which is placed in the desk’s work surface and duplicates the key controls of the PC (on/off switch, USB ports, headphone & mic ports, optical drive and operating lights)…”. That is just cool . Of course that comes with a price. £1850 for the Lima Powerdesk (the brown one in the pictures) and £1449 for the modern PolarisX Powerdesk (the sleek silver one). There are other cheaper options. Just check their web site for further information.
• All the major consoles were there available for people to try out, including the Wii which made some very nice people look like “goofs”. :p I specially enjoyed the combination where there was a PS3 with the Tekken 5 game being displayed on a 42″ Toshiba Regza. Great console, great game and (hopefully) my next TV. Of course it will be connected to my XBOX 360 since I don’t own a PS3.
• In my opinion the Sony area was quite an enjoyable place to be. Loads of colourful rabbits, which is now part of Sony’s marketing strategy, the brilliant Bravia TV sets and the numerous PS3 and Blu-ray players positioned all over the place.
• It looks like that after all there was some Apple demonstrations including the iPhone. Sorry about that, but it looks like I have missed it.
• Yes. There was a Koenigsegg and a Lamborghini in the exhibition.
• Yes. Lots of young ladies with no money to buy clothes that cover their whole body.

And, at last but not least, the “awesome” MPX iPod (and other equipment) sound system from VOIX. This equipment makes use of the sentence “looks great… sounds even better” very well. Why? Because that’s just it. It looks amazing and the sound it outputs is fabulous. It was quite impressive to see a normal iPod connected to the system and to hear that quality of sound. And I knew it was from the iPod and not from a CD playing in an Hi-Fi system. When I was talking to this young lady from VOIX she asked me “How much do you think it cost?” and to be honest I told her I had no idea, but of course I was thinking to myself “yeah right, you are going to tell me is just 900 quid if I buy it now”. Then she told me it was about 260 pounds. That is a great price. A 2.1 system which you can connect anything to it and has an iPod bay where you can connect any of your iPods directly with no cables. Of course the sound is not like a top quality KEF or Mission speakers, but you can’t ask that for that price (ok you can, but let’s be honest, you won’t get it). You can also buy a subwoofer for it separately. The BX2 which has 70W max output can be bought for £130. But let me say; you only need to buy it if you want very deep bass. The 2.1 VOIX MPX speakers really look good and sound even better. That is why geekie.net is awarding the first

A big applause to VOIX for creating this amazing product

This is a good time to finish this post which became a little bit longer than I expected. END