Bell Full HD tour

[jb1]

Unless they are going to demo some 1080p gear, they are walking a fine line in terms of misleading the public. Anyone who keeps up with current technology knows that the Full HD logo currently used identifies equipment that is 1080p capable.

[Hugh]

Well I attended the Bell ExpressVu Full HD launch today and personally found it to be a tremendous waste of time.

I have attended a lot of PR and marketing events and honestly I have to say that this was perhaps the worst PR event that I have ever attended.

Despite the press release saying the event would start at 10:15 am sharp, it did not.

Here is what happened...

After waiting 25 minutes, a black helicopter flew up to near where we were standing and hovered for ten minutes. I have no idea why this helicopter was there but after it departed, a bunch of guys in black suits and sunglasses (think Men in Black) got on top of a trailer and pulled back a tarpaulin revealing a beaver with a welders helmet on and the words that movies without HD are like action movies without explosives.

I assume that the helicopter and guys in suits were supposed to be the feeling we get when we watch Bell Full HD.

Five minutes later, a women in spandex and another guy two fell off the BEV trailer onto some cardboard boxes. (I presume that was the Hollywood stunt team)

Fifteen minutes later (about 45 minutes after it started) the ExpressVu people let us into the trailer where we viewed three televisions playing HD signals and three televisions which were showing the same 16:9 images but compressed into a 4:3 image on a Widescreen tv.

The squashed images were described as "analog tv" (despite having come from ExpressVu) and the rest were HD signals.

They were going to show us some HD presentation but then I would have had to wait another 5 minutes while a tv crew from a Bell Globemedia station got their story first.

At that point, I left the trailer and was given a plastic water bottle that said ExpressVu on it. No press people were there to answer questions, no one explained what just happened and so after almost an hour after arriving, I left still trying to figure it all out.

I have no idea what happened to Shannon because there was no verbal announcement or anyone that could answer any of my questions.



Lets call it a "failure to launch!"