[disappointed]disney magical blu-ray tour

so yesterday i had some downtime in escondido (near san diego) so my bud and I went to the mall that was by there and to our luck it was the mall where the newly launched disney blu-ray magical tour had stopped by. (if you dont know what I am talking about click here )

so anyway they had a kiosk set up in the center of the mall with 3 plasmas each on 2 side and another plasma on the end that was like a viewing area where there were some benches for people to sit. they also had a nice sound system set up for the end tv.

i ventured over because i was quite interested as to what they may have had to offer and hoping for any freebies. i was a bit underwhelmed actually. my friend who has neither hd-dvd or blu-ray was kind of my barometer since he is the type of crowd disney/sony tried to reach with this tour. so he walked up to one of the sides with 3 tvs and tried watching some the scenes. he was pretty impressed with the quality but then when he tried playing some of the interactive games they had (from the chicken little and pirates bds) he kept asking the rep there why the games were so slow. She had nothing to say except...isnt the picture just amazing? there was a different rep on the other end of the kiosk where they had forms for a ps3 giveaway and the lady there asked me if i had seen a blu ray movie before and i told her yes i have a blu-ray player. so she replies oh so you trying to win a second ps3? i told her i dont have a ps3 to which she replied..wait how do you watch your blu-rays? annoyed by a total lack of information i quickly finished filling the form and walked on. Now the guy who was doing the main presentation was pretty well informed until he got to the studio exclusivity part...their brochure said all studios outside of universal made blu-ray which isnt true anymore but i figured these were sent out to be printed before the paramount/dreamworks announcement. when he was saying out some of the upcoming titles to be released on blu-ray he also mentioned shrek which obviously will not be. afterwards i walked up to the guy and told him that shrek wouldnt be on blu-ray and he told me in a very arrogant way..oh of course it will be later this year and I told him no its an HD-DVD exclusive because its a dreamworks film. and he goes and tells me..i believe you're wrong but let me look into that and i will get back to you. so he leaves and starts talking to some other people.

overall i was disappointed because most of their presenters were basically regurgatating whatever info that sony/disney gave them and had no other knowledge of the technology. on top of that they were putting some misinformation into their presentation. Also the actual size of the kiosk wasnt very big either. i guess i was expecting something grander considering that its the first major tour of its sort and its sponsored by disney and hitting only a small number of malls (18 i believe) across the country. on top of that they really didnt do anything to keep the audience involved or give away any free stuff. the best thing i got was a 10 dollar off coupon when i by 2 blu-rays (certain movies only) a lot of people got up mid-presentation and left others barely stayed around the other plasma display to watch the movies they had on loops. my friend left saying that even though he loved how the blu-ray looked because everyone there seemed like they had no clue what they were saying he'd buy an hd-dvd player first. i figured they'd give away something, maybe a bd-demo disc (for blu-ray owners to show off to their friends), pens, hats shirts anything really. but there was nothing of the sort. hopefully since this was one of the first stops along the tour they'll improve it by the time it hits houston in december.

but if you are someone who is interested in buying a hi-def player and unsure to get blu-ray or HD-DVD this tour really wont do much to inform you of anything new. you are probably better off reading the avsforum or even asking people here.


/nerdish rant