On one of my many jaunts around my local Home Bargains I stumbled across the Pop Idol Talentbox. Displayed at an RRP of £29.99 with the reduced price of £4.99 and struggling to find things for my seven-year old daughters bag for Father Christmas I thought "Hey, it's a relatively big box, if its a pile of doggy do, who cares?”
So what’s in the box that always rocks? ******************************************* (Ha, how you all hate me for that!)
The Pop Idol Talent Box looks a lot, unfortunately on inspection what you get is a microphone and a CD-ROM. Plug the microphone into your microphone socket in your computer and it is a bottom of the range microphone with a lack of volume control. However, on automatic installation of the Pop Idol Talentbox CD you are greeted with a rudimentary karaoke machine and mixing studio.
Now here’s the snag, you cannot just use any karaoke CD with this programme, no sir. Re:creation who produce the software have made it so only the Pop Idol CD works with the programme. Now this means that you have an initial
eleven tracks to choose from which have all been sang on Pop Idol or American Idol. These tracks are:
I'm Outta Love- Anastacia Ironic- Alanis Morissette Don't Stop the Music- Robyn A New Day Has Come- Celine Dion Hip Hop Ballad- AWA She Bangs- Ricky Martin Sex Bomb- Tom Jones My Love- Westlife Glorious- Andreas Johnson If Tomorrow Never Comes- Ronan Keating Evergreen- Will Young
Hardly cutting edge are they? I suppose we should remember this product is aimed at girl’s aged seven up but then my daughter only recognised three of the eleven songs on offer thus limiting what she could do with it.
Go on Dave sing us a bit of Sex Bomb *********************************************
So, I have my microphone plugged in, I select the volume using the sliders and do a little sound check. A little bit of echo so I turn it down a touch and then select "Sex Bomb" and press play.
"Sex Bomb, sex bomb, your a sex bomb. You can give it to me when I need to come along"
The words to the song come up and change colour supposedly in time with the music to aid singing with the microphone. However, there seems to be a considerable lag on the words particularly on fast songs such as this. Now I am no Tom Jones but even I now this song is supposed to be sung quicker than the words are telling me too so I speed up a bit. The instrumental is pleasant enough although disappointing, as it is not simply the song with the vocals of the great Welshman removed but is in fact a pre-conceived studio piece.
So I have sang my little heart out and done a bit of hip thrusting (not too much mind the microphone wire isn't so long and the ald hips aren't what they were). Now what do I do with my masterpiece? Well I can put it through the mixer. What this means is I can add echo to my voice and turn into Cher and fade in and out of my track. Not really a mixer then is it! Well to be fair it is designed with simplicity in mind and in that it succeeds. My daughter has no problem using the programme functions due to the fact there are so few!
I want to be an idol! **********************
Now here's the main selling point of the CD. By pressing upload and connecting to the Pop Idol website you are given the daunting option of setting up a free profile and uploading your song to the audition room. What this means is that other people will listen to your track, vote how good it is from one to ten and comment on it! Entrants are divided into two groups the under 16's and over 16's. Due to the simplistic nature of the CD there are a large number of the under 16's competing on site some truly terrible, others almost good but just like the programmes the joy for my daughter and me was listening to the truly terrible ones! Want to be the next Simon Cowell? Well this is your chance. However, be careful, as what I liked best about the website is they have a strong abuse policy and will delete anyone found to be abusing the site which, after all has predominantly children as its members.
What could have been an entertaining programme aimed at the right age group is spoiled by the fact that to receive additional songs you must download them. Fine you might say but the prices for downloading are scandalous. Five pound for three tracks that are a minimum of two years old is daylight robbery and is an obvious money making scheme to fleece parents. For your child to fully enjoy the programme of course they are going to want the extra tracks but at this price you have to be mad to pay it. To add insult to injury the prize for winning is fifteen free downloads!
On a technical issue this CD runs on the cheapest PC you can find requiring only a minimum of a Pentium 90 to run. However, the website does not support any browser other than Internet Explorer, which leads to questions regarding its security, and adware (which has increased on my computer since accessing the site).
In summary I have mixed feelings about this Talentbox. It is entertaining for my daughter but certainly not worth the £29.99 full retail price. For all my moans my daughter likes it and that is what matters but I don't think in hindsight I would have bought it even at £4.99.
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