Re: Do CD's Degrade?, and DCC Question

["Matthias Radestock,SG 90/08/11,," <mr1@irz209.inf.tu-dresden.de>]

In article 9LD@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu, mujad@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (James A. Drenter) writes:

>Incidentally, don't expect those new DAT decks to play your current
>standard cassettes, they won't.  The DAT standard is a completely
>different type of tape (physically, as well as operationally).  It is
>thicker, and resembles more of a small video tape (such as VHS-C).  DO
>NOT BUY A DAT SYSTEM IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO USE DATs EXCLUSIVELY.

This is correct for the DAT indeed, but the new DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) players
can play normal cassettes too, although they cannot record on them. The DCC mechanism
is different from the DAT. It does not use diagonal tracks like DAT and video-tape and
the cassette dimensions is quite similiar to the normal cassettes. However, this
new technique requires the data to be reduced (not compressed!), so unlike DAT, some
information will be lost. As far as I know the first recorders will cost about $700.


Matthias Radestock (rade@freia.inf.tu-dresden.de)