Any time a plane goes down, the black box recorder, once again, becomes a mythical machine whispered about in the back alleys of news broadcasts. So Wired assembled a technological rundown on the device.
A research team at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Japan has successfully displayed simple images produced in the human brain on a computer screen. Dream recorder anyone?
As a lazy writer who is occasionally forced to interview an actual person, I still haven’t found the perfect solution to transcribing phone interviews without doing it myself. But a service called Cogi looks promising.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. This is Teac’s LP-R500. Ugh. Sorry, I’ll try pulling myself together: it’s a modern version of what my grandad used to call a “radiogramme,” cramming in an FM radio, a CD player, cassette player and record deck into one sleek ancient, massive, clunky box along with an amp and speakers. Admittedly it does let you record your vinyl and tapes to CD. But… ugh. Yours for an ugly $US700. [Akihabaranews via Dvice]
If you’re in the market for a new television and a Blu-Ray player, Sharp will help you kill two birds with one of its new Aquos DXs. The company has released a line of LCD TVs that have built-in Blu-Ray disc recorders, which they tout as an all-in-one solution for recording television onto BDs… in case there’s television that’s actually worth the trouble. The 16 sets in the Aquos DX line range from 26-inch to 52-inch models and cost between $US1,600 and $US4,900.
It’s not official, but the word from our friend HD Guru Gary Merson is that Panasonic has a lot of cool hardware coming to America next year. The biggest news is that there will be Blu-ray decks that actually record HD video onto shareable BDs, something we hear about from Japan, but haven’t seen in these parts (AU: Wow! we have something before the US). On the plasma front, Panny is working on NeoPDP 1080p plasma that would cut power demands by 50%, making them even more efficient than LCD. This efficient panel, says Merson, will be made in sizes all the way up to our beloved 103″. And in another direction, Panasonic will be joining the coalition of the slimming, releasing plasmas under 2.5cm thick. And now… we wait. [HDGuru]
Sony has had a little splurge of Blu-ray action, and come up with six new models of BDR-recorders/players that also sport hard drives which can record HD video. The T-series, BDZ-T55 and BDZ-T75 are the basic models, with 320GB hard drives, BD Live and memory-card ports and DLNA (on the T75). The L-series models BDZ-L55 and BDZ-L95 have 320GB and 500GB drives respectively, and a HDV 1080i/DV input, and 2 USB sockets for connecting digital cams to. The top-end X-series BDZ-X95 and BDZ-X100 models have 500GB and 1TB of drive room, Sony’s Cross Media bar GUI and the new Digital Reality Creation – Multi Function version 3 chip. Full specs below.
In case you missed it today, there’s a big conference happening in Europe called IFA at the moment. And while we haven’t yet seen the Panasonic presentation, the guys from Trusted Reviews did, and they scored a photo of the presentation slide for Panny’s new Blu-ray recorder. Although when we say new, we mean new to Europe, not new to Australia – the DMR-BW500 has been out in Australia for a couple of months.
But is it the same device? Eagle-eyed reader Anthony pointed out that the slide Panasonic showcased at IFA explicitly says that it features BD-Live technology, which we know for a fact that the Australian version doesn’t. Considering you need an Ethernet port (or inbuilt Wi-Fi, I guess) plus some dedicated storage on board to be able to use BD-Live, it would mean that the DMR-BW500 for Europe would have different hardware to the Australian model.
Tascam—last heard of here on Giz with a portable MP3 guitar “trainer”—has come up with another gizmo that may interest you if you’re a guitarist. The GT-R1 is a portable MP3 recorder for capturing your axe work, capable of recording to MP3/WAVE at 48/44.1 kHz 24-bits uncompressed. That’s not bad quality, and since it works with SDHC, you’ll have plenty of recording time. Better yet it’s got multiple effects built-in, and also has a “trainer” function which allows you to play along with your fave tracks at your choice of speed—without changing the pitch. Sounds pretty handy, and it’ll be out August 26th in Japan for around US$310. [Akihabaranews]
If you’re covering an event and already carrying a huge gear bag with a laptop, camera, emergency Cliff bars and all the rest, QuickVoice is a welcome replacement for a standalone digital voice recorder. We like QuickVoice as a late addition to our favourites for its pause feature, which allows you to start and stop recordings without creating a whole new clip.
