On April 21, 2011, we took a trip into New York City to see the taping of the latest episode of The Engadget Show. This was the twentieth episode of The Engadget Show, and was the first episode since the mass exodus of Engadget writers and editors (See, i.e., Josh Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller, Joanna Stern, Chris Ziegler, Ross Miller). The aforementioned journalists left Engadget after AOL, Engadget’s parent company, acquired The Huffington Post, and subsequently named Arianna head of AOL’s online media division. Engadget immediately named Tim Stevens as Editor-in-Chief, and Darren Murph as Managing Editor. Can these gentlemen follow in the footsteps and provide the same level of informative entertainment as their predecessors? Will The Engadget Show live on, or will it fade away like your favorite Nokia 5100 series device? Read on to find out…

We arrived at 770 Broadway, AOL’s New York office, about an hour prior to the taping. We were amped up, and hoping for not only a great show, but for expensive giveaways. The main topic of the show was tablets, so we thought maybe we’d walkaway with a brand spanking new RIM Blackberry Playbook. (We got our hopes up). When we entered the building, we were greeted by Engadget employees. After a small error pertaining to the “guest list” was resolved, we were told to get in an elevator, and take it to the designated floor. We exited the elevator, and were buzzed in, so that we may open two huge glass doors. We then waited in line for roughly fifty minutes. While in line, we were given raffle tickets, and told that there would be many awesome giveaways. You’d think they told us that they were giving us a tablet of our choice, we were that stoked!

After waiting for about an hour, we were lead into a small studio where the Engadget backdrop and stage was set up. The room seated roughly 35-45 people on chairs which were placed on a rising bleacher. This setup was much different than previous Engadget Shows, which were filmed at The Times Center (41st and 8th ave), a venue that seemed to be capable of hosting hundreds of people in the audience. The smaller crowd made the experience much more intimate and personal, and we enjoyed the somewhat personal attention that we received from the cast and crew.

After some lighting delays, the show was rolling. Chad Mumm, the producer and director of the show came out, and gave us some background information on the lighting, cameras, and other filming instruments. It was pretty cool. Tim Stevens then stepped on stage, gave his opening lines, and then we were shown a video of Tim testing out this new, militarized scooter, “The Shredder.” The scooter looked bad-ass, loaded with tons of power, weapons capabilities, and provided special-ops soldiers an efficient way to get in and out of heated encounters with hostiles. We watched a montage-eqsue demonstration where Tim tested the scooter out. It was interesting to see, as it looked like Tim was going eighty miles an hour, when in actuality, he was probably rolling around at 8 mph.

We have to admit, we were slightly disappointed to find out that Allan Mulally was not going to be present in studio. Mr. Mulally was the former CEO of Boeing, and is the current CEO of Ford. He’s a man that we greatly idolize. Instead of seeing him in person, we watched Tim interview him on a television screen (Mulally must’ve been too busy to come in since the NY Auto Show was starting that week). The two primarily discussed electric cars, as well as in-car applications (mobile computing). Mulally is a brilliant guy, answering every question honestly, and in full detail. Be sure to check out the interview.

Tim then brought out Jacob Schulman, an editor for Engadtet, and Ryan Biden, who is RIMM’s Playbook product manager, to discuss the newly released RIMM Blackberry Playbook tablet. We had both been unimpressed with the Playbook up until this segment. The small size, lack of email integration, uncertainty of QNX, poor sales (only 45,000 units sold in the first month compared to over 300,000 iPads sold during its first month on the market), and alleged cheap quality made us apprehensive about the likelihood of success of the Playbook. Mr. Biden did an amazing job selling his product to us during the show. He almost made us want one. The small size started to look like a plus and not a negative, the presentation mode looked extremely useful, and QNX visually appeared very similarly to Web OS from Palm/HP. They even gave away a free Playbook. Unfortunately, we didn’t win it. After seeing this segment, our views changed about the Playbook, however, that only lasted until several IT managers that we know told us that they had received some units, and were severely disappointed with them.

Next up was Engadget founder, Peter Rojas, along with Darren Murph, Jacob Schulman, and Tim Stevens. The four guys discussed the iPad 2, Motorola Xoom, Notion Ink Adam, the new LG G-Slate, and Blackberry Playbook. The group had some funny banter going, and provided some useful information pertaining to all of the tablets on the table. Darren Murph made a few good points which we agree with completely. Basically, he was saying that tablets are cool, but when they get to be too big and too expensive, what’s the point of them (aka why not just use your laptop)? We completely agree. Going along with that, he also mentioned that the pricing of the tablets, and the data plan requirement for some of them is ridiculous. He suggested that if you get a wireless data plan for 5gb a month, you should be able to divvy up / allot that data amongst however many devices that you want (your smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc). Another great point.

The team also discussed the demise of Flip. When Cisco shut down Flip, it was a sad day, but one in which everyone knew was coming. With the advent of smartphones with 1080p HD video cameras built in, many people did not need a standalone video camera unit anymore. Murph also made another good point, in that Cisco might have been too quick to shut Flip down (or maybe they should have sold the brand). Murph also suggested that just because it wasn’t useful for most people anymore, doesn’t mean that it still does have a spot in a particular market. For example, senior citizens who don’t have smartphones would have a ton of use-cases for the Flip since it is simple, cheap, and works great.

Before we left, we saw two identical performances from Sabrepulse, with visuals from Output and Paris. It was sort of arcade like music, and was something to see.

Overall, the experience was awesome. Jay Booshay even won an iPhone speaker dock system. We’d love to have the opportunity to watch another filming of The Engadget Show. We’re excited to see who they bring on next!