Sony is set to discontinue sales of its tape recorders and tape-based dictaphones in 2013. The final shipments of the TCM-400, TCM 410, and TCM-450 cassette recorders will be dispatched near the start of the year, and comes just over two years since the company discontinued its Walkman portable cassette player.
Toshiba has used the CEATEC trade show in Japan to unveil the Regza Blu-ray DBR-M190. The device stands out from the Blu-ray player/personal video recorder crowd in that it packs a massive 5TB hard drive. This, along with its mult-tuner capability, makes it good for simultaneously recording up to six digital broadcasts for up to 15 days.
SuperMegaUltraGroovy and toastycode have launched an upgrade to the their Mac audio recorder, releasing TapeDeck 1.3. The software behaves like an old-style tape recorder, with the ability to export to WAV, AIFF and MP3 formats. Users can customize content with animations and sound effects, while past recordings can be managed from within the application interface.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is launching the "Digital Backpack," which will allow visitors at the Freedom Center to utilize social networking technology, digital media production, and wireless computing in ways that empower them to create, "distribute and access a shared vision for freedom." The company has chosen Apple products to power the project: each pack contains an Apple MacBook Pro notebook computer, iPod classic with voice recorder, digital camera, HD digital camcorder and tripod. These perspectives are then captured as a digital movie, archived at the Freedom Center, and published to an iTunes channel that the Center is launching in May.
Blackmagic Design recently unveiled several new video interfaces at the NAB 2008 conference, the USB-based Video Recorder – available in consumer and professional versions – and a large scale 8U rack-mount SDI router. The Blackmagic Video Recorder offers consumers the ability to capture video directly to H.264 through component or S-Video onto their computer. The consumer USB Video Recorder sells for $120.
Toshiba recently unveiled several new lines of LCD TVs, portable and home DVD players, DVD recorders, and some LCD TV-DVD combo units. The AV500 series LCDs range from 19- to 42-inches in size, and feature a 720p HD image resolution. Dynamic backlight controls can adjust for deeper black levels, and the display is housed in a glossy black cabinet. LCDs in the AV500 series will range from $430 to $1300, and Toshiba expects to ship the various models between February and May.
