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Pioneer
BDR-202 Blu-ray/DVD/CD Writer:
$649
www.pioneerelectronics.com |
Blue Laser Evolves
If you’re still waiting for a winner to be declared between HD DVD and Blu-ray, you’re already missing opportunities to sell the next generation of blue laser technology. Think about it: The drives are out, the movies are on shelves, graphics cards such as AMD’s Radeon HD 2600 series accelerate the intensive decode process, and today’s multi-core processors have the horsepower you need for smooth playback. High-def is where it’s at.
The technology might seem new, but Blu-ray drives have been around for a while now. Long enough, at least, that “next-generation” drives such as Pioneer’s BDR-202 are starting to emerge. Prices were high enough before, so what makes a second-gen drive worth the extra dough? More speed, for one thing. Older burners wrote data to media at 2x speeds—72 Mbps or 9 MBps. That doesn’t sound bad until you consider a single-layer disc holds 25GB of information. The Pioneer drive cuts back on the time you’ll spend waiting for high-def projects to finish burning by upping performance to 4x, or 144 Mbps. It also writes re-writable discs at 2x, both DVD formats at 8x, and dual-layer DVDs at 2x. A 4MB data buffer helps to keep feeding the drive with information to write.
Getting the BDR-202 running is easy thanks to a simple SATA connection. As a reseller, simply complement Pioneer’s drive with the right graphics card, a solid multi-core machine, and your playback software of choice. Though pricey, customers can expect to pay roughly what a set top player would cost—and those don’t write.
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TASCAM
MP-GT1 Guitar Trainer:
$269
www.tascam.com |
A Specialized MP3 Player
Most of the MP3 players you sell serve one purpose: to play back music to keep listeners entertained, whether on a long flight or at the gym. TASCAM’s MP-GT1 is an MP3 player tasked with the more specific purpose of helping your customer learn how to play the guitar. The player’s feature set is specifically built around that one job.
For example, the MP-GT1 includes a capability called Variable Speed Audition, which slows songs down without changing pitch. Specific sections can also be looped, making it easier to practice tricky passages. As a musician, I can appreciate the usefulness of looping a few bars that are too intricate to nail on the first shot. Slowing things down is another helpful trick when an original recording includes a lot of fancy finger work. Avoid re-tuning by pitching songs up or down on the MP3 player itself. It’s all about convenience.
There’s a guitar input on the MP-GT1 that can apply effects to an aspiring rocker’s jams. One of those effects is a guitar canceller, which works like the karaoke mode on many entertainment systems. A tuner, metronome, and nine-hour rechargeable battery are all built in. TASCAM doesn’t publish the MP-GT1’s memory capacity, instead claiming it has room for 240 four-minute songs at 128 Kbps. A sharp 128x64 LCD display puts the track information for each of those tunes up close.
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