Olympus Digital Voice Recorder
- Record up to 444 hours of uninterrupted audio in LP mode
- Pc link with USB 2.0 PORT – Upload files directly to your PC using a simple cable connection for easy file management.
- Voice activation extends recording time and saves battery life by recording only when the microphone senses sound.
- Recording modes – Lets you select standard playback (SP), long playback (LP) or high quality (HQ) mode.
- Large LCD for easy, quick viewing of file locations, recording status and Battery life
Product Description
Transfer audio files quickly and easily to a computer with the convenient PC link.Voice activation extends recording time by recording only when the microphone senses sound. Record up to 444 hours of uninterrupted audio in LP mode. Select from three recording modes to meet your specific needs: HQ for high quality; SP and LP for extended recording. Index marks let you specify a particular point in a recording or playback for easy retrieval. Large LCD for easy, quick … More >>
Categories: Portable Audio & Video Tags: Digital, Olympus, Recorder, Voice
Western Digital WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAU0020HBK-NESN
- Simply affordable
- Easy to use USB 2.0
Product Description
Designed with the same commitment to quality that made WD external drives the number one drives in the world, Western Digital’s WD Elements USB 2.0 external hard drives are the right answer for simply affordable add-on storage. Just plug it in to a USB port and start saving your photos, music, video, and files. Kit contains; USB 2.0 external hard drive, USB cable, AC adapter, Quick Install Guide…. More >>
Western Digital WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAU0020HBK-NESN
Categories: Computers & Accessories Tags: Desktop, Digital, Drive, Elements, External, Hard, WDBAAU0020HBKNESN, Western
RIP Ceefax: Twitter mourns death of BBC teletext after analogue TV is turned off in digital switchover
By Julian Gavaghan
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Britons said farewell to Ceefax today after analogue TV signals were switched off across almost the entire country.
The world’s first teletext service – one of the few instant sources of news prior to the internet – is now only fully available in two regions following latest big digital switchover.
Web users today paid tribute to the iconic pixelated service with hundreds of people tweeting ‘RIP Ceefax’ after it was switched off in five million households in London and the Home Counties.
Fon memories: Ceefax is now only available in two regions after digital switchovers in London and South East
It was most fondly remembered by those who recalled regularly checking it for updates on football scores during their youth.
James Whitaker, from the ESPN TV sports network, tweeted: RIP Ceefax, you were my best friend on a Saturday when I couldn’t make the match, the anticipation of waiting for page 4/6 is unequalled.’
Yellow Peril fondly recalled: ‘Ceefax once printed a drawing I had sent in at the age of 8.’
Others offered more tongue-in-cheek praise for the service, which was first launched in 1974 as a way of offering subtitles for deaf people.
Parting is such Tweet sorrow: Twitter users paying tribute to Ceefax today
Tribute: Radio station Xfm recrated classic album covers, including Definitely Maybe by Oasis and Radio Head’s The Bends
Pixelated icons: The Stone Roses’ eponymous album and The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths were also created
Jonathan Cooper wrote on the social network: ‘My favourite page was definitely 620 (or was it 610)?? Now and next whatson.. Very handy.’
Radio station Xfm perhaps went the furthest to pay tribute to the services.
Martin O’Gorman, its website’s managing editor, recreated iconic album using the same pixelated style as Ceefax.
The station later tweeted: ‘RIP Ceefax. Gone the way of cassettes, 8-track and the ZX Spectrum.’
The service, which has been replaced by the web and ‘Red Button’ offerings, used to be produced by one journalist when it first launched.
It grew into massive operation and by 1983 was offering computer programmes and games such as Bamboozle.
But the dawn of the internet threatened its survival.
When ITV shut down its rival service in 2009 and BBC announced that Ceefax would discontinue when all analogue signals are switched off in October this year.
Last night’s switch-off across London and most of the Home Counties as well as Oxfordshire and Hampshire is the largest phase of a process that began in earnest in 2008.
Only Northern Ireland and the Tyne Tees region will hold on to analogue for another six months.
Categories: News Tags: after, Analogue, Ceefax, death, Digital, mourns, switchover, teletext, turned, Twitter
The digital switchover signalling the end of an era for television’s analogue transmitter
By Robert Hardman
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End of an era: Robert Hardman at the Crystal Palace broadcast tower
Later on tonight – so late, in fact, that most of us will be in bed – an engineer called Andy Elston will walk into a concrete bunker in South London and press a button marked ‘off’ on the side of several white steel cabinets. As these machines fall silent, Andy will walk next door and press the ‘on’ button to start up what looks like a brand new ship’s engine.
And up above – at London’s highest point – a stack of metal dishes will start pumping out an entirely new digital television signal. Even though there will be nothing to see and most of us will be asleep, this moment has already been hailed as the ‘most important moment’ in modern British broadcasting history.
Andy Elston, take a bow.
The great £630 million UK switch-over (from analogue to digital television) has already happened in several regions across Britain. And it will not be until October that the last old-style analogue transmitter is finally disconnected (in Northern Ireland).
But, as far as the industry is concerned, the most important moment is tonight when the Crystal Palace Tower changes its tune. Because Crystal Palace, perched above south London suburbia, is to television and radio broadcasting what Wembley is to football.
Britain actually has a total of 1,154 television transmitters reaching 60 million people, from the Outer Hebrides to Bodmin Moor. All of them either have been, or are about to be, converted to the new technology.
But this single monster is by far the most important because it accounts for a fifth of the population all by itself. It was from here that colour television first took flight in 1967, from here that HD television was transmitted for the first time in 2009.
So it will be the end of one era and the start of another at one of Britain’s most conspicuous – and well-connected – landmarks.
After all, it is from Crystal Palace that the Queen and her Government receive everything from Coronation Street to Question Time. If radio transmitters were awarded royal warrants, this one would have a handful.
Scroll down for video
Well-connected: It is from Crystal Palace that the Queen and her Government receive everything from Coronation Street to Question Time
Back in the day: The control desk at the BBC’s new London transmitter at Crystal Palace in March 1956
Crystal Palace started transmitting pictures and sound to millions of people more than 50 years ago. But in those days, Britain had just one telly channel. It was not known as BBC1 or even BBC. It was called, simply, ‘Television’.
In the earliest days of this exciting but rather sober new medium, the BBC’s main transmitter was located at another ‘people’s palace’ in north London – Alexandra Palace. By the mid-Fifties, though, a massive Coronation-fuelled rise in television ownership meant that a more powerful antenna was required.
The new tower was built on the ruins of the original Crystal Palace, the Victorian exhibition centre which burned down in 1936.
Although the new structure was not a conventional beauty, people marvelled at its size, calling the 720-foot creation ‘London’s Eiffel Tower’.
But while the Eiffel Tower claims to sell more admission tickets than any other paid monument in the world, the Crystal Palace Tower is strictly off-limits to everyone. Given the number of signs inside the place saying ‘Danger: Risk Of Death’, this is not wholly surprising.
In honour of the great television switch-over, I have been allowed through the closely guarded perimeter for an exclusive tour to see how it all works. Several hours later, I cannot pretend that I am much the wiser, but I have no doubt that if I were a radio ham, this would be the Promised Land.
Transmission: The ultra short wave sound radio transmitter in 1935
Standing at one of the tower’s four great feet, the only way to appreciate all the kit up above is to lie down on the ground underneath. Right up at the top, a huge white plastic cylinder protects all the old analogue stuff from the elements.
Just below it, a lot of white plastic boxes protect all the new digital electronics. The next level is crammed with various radio transmitters and below that is assorted telecoms stuff. Down at ground level, there is a huge greenhouse full of lethal-looking generators covered in ‘Death’ signs.
While this thing lords it over London and the Home Counties, the actual nerve centre is dug into the side of Sydenham Hill down below and has no view whatsoever.
The BBC Transmitter Hall – a strip-lit windowless chamber with all the charm of a mortuary – is nerd Heaven.
It will be the end of one era and the start of another at one of Britain’s most conspicuous – and well-connected – landmarks
There, I find banks of steel cabinets with a lot of pipes and dials. Next door, the ITV Transmitter Hall is much the same, although the kit is older with some clunky levers protruding here and there.
Tonight, all these rooms will become obsolete as the action moves to a gleaming, freshly-painted chamber called the Combiner Room.
In simple terms, the old system works as follows. All the old analogue television output from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 is channelled from the studio into this place via underground cables (Channel 5 emanates from another tower in nearby Croydon and will switch at the same time).
Each station is then fed into its own amplifier and whooshed up a pipe to the top of the tower from where it is sprayed electronically to every receiver in a 50-mile radius. Under the new system, the whole lot will be fed into a mixer which can not only pump out loads of extra digital channels at the same time but its signal is ten times stronger.
Analogue is broadcasting’s gas guzzler, its couch potato. It has served us well for years, but is hopelessly inefficient compared with a digital signal.
And once the switch-over is complete, we will not just end up with many more channels. Our reception should also be significantly better.
Grand: The original Crystal Palace site before it become the broadcast site
The downside is that, wherever you live, unless you have a Sky dish or cable television, you need to buy a digital set top box or a new telly and then retune your set the morning after Andy Elston and his team have pressed the ‘Off’ switch.
Digital UK, the body overseeing the transformation, insists that most televisions have made the switch very easily and that it’s only older ‘secondary’ sets that are likely to face problems.
To the untrained eye and the wider world, London’s Eiffel Tower will hardly look any different. But Arqiva, the company which owns and manages Britain’s transmitters, is planning a huge party at Crystal Palace tomorrow night to celebrate the entire national operation. Six tons of lighting equipment will be hoisted up the tower for a light show visible right across the capital and beyond.
The guest of honour will be the elder statesman of British broadcasting.
‘With the switch to digital TV, we’re celebrating the start of a new, very exciting time in broadcasting,’ says Sir David Attenborough. ‘This is as wonderful as anything I’ve experienced in my 60 years in the TV industry.’
The Crystal Palace Tower has certainly seen – and transmitted – it all, from Suez and the Moon landings to Big Brother, 9/11 and last year’s royal wedding.
The digital switchover will finish in October, when the final analogue transmitter is disconnected
Today, we are bombarded with choice. Back in 1956, when this thing revved up for the first time, there was none at all.
On that day, ‘Television’ did not start until 3pm when the Greenwich Time Signal was followed by something called Mainly For Women: Family Affairs and Watch With Mother.
‘That evening, viewers were offered the news, a play, the Burns and Allen Show, a wildlife programme presented by Peter Scott and, finally, a documentary series called Travellers’ Tales. On March 28, 1956, that particular episode was titled The Berbers Of The Atlas Mountains. The producer was a promising young thing called David Attenborough.
Technology may come and go. But it is good to know that some things never change.
Categories: News Tags: Analogue, Digital, signalling, switchover, television's, Transmitter
Digital Blue American Idol Digital Camcorder – 510
- Shoot Video and record your singing with the camera’s built-in microphone. You can also choose to use the handheld microphone that conveniently plugs right into your PC mic jack
- Edit with images from American Idol! Imagine being able to add background musicians, actual stages/sets, and special effects even animated judges who will tell you how you performed
- Email a complete music video to your friends or get access to special contests and activities on the web
- 16MB onboard memory
- Unlimited recording time connected to a Windows PC (4 minutes time away from PC)
Product Description
Get ready to make your own music videos with the Digital Blue American Idol Digital Camcorder and your PC. There’s so much you can do! Start making your own music videos like an American Idol! Then turn your computer into the ultimate editing suite. Features:Shoot digital videos and record your singing with the camera’s built-in microphone or the handheld microphone that plugs into your PC jackEasily edit your videos, scene-by-sceneAdd animation, background s… More >>
