Month: August 2016
Brand New Sound Enriching Premium CD Player to be Launched in September
Music is life – and therefore good quality sound is like pure fresh air. This is the kind of philosophy that inspires Marantz, a recognized world leader in advanced audio technologies, that is ready to prove one more time that there is no better sound than the sound recorded on optical media and played on the Premium-class CD player.
The company has announced the launch of the brand new HD-CD1 Player with superb, elegant, classic design. While compact in size, it is engineered and developed on the basis of Marantz state-of-the-art technology carried over the company’s award winning CD players, including the famous Marantz HDAM-SA2 amplifier modules. The new model is expected to be launched to the markets as soon as September 2016.
The HD-CD1 is a premium class CD player in the compact form and with attractive design feature, a product that would be a good addition to any audio-enthusiast’s collection of audio compact discs. It combines the company’s 30 years experience in compact disc playback with the latest developments in digital audio technology.
This product is ideal for use as a CD transport when used with the HD-AMP1, or as a CD player in any situation where a compact device is required without any compromise on sound quality. Selected components are used throughout the audio signal path, for the very best reproduction of music. A centralized CD mechanism, able to play MP3, WMA and AAC files as well as standard CDs, is also used for ultra-accurate disc-reading.
The morale here for all music and other audio format-lovers is simple – don’t hurry to dump your old CD’s: the audio recorded on them is certainly still worth listening to, and there are still good CD players out there to enhance your experience.
Falcon Technologies International is a world-leading producer of optical media products including CD-R’s and DVD’s, which are the perfect compliment to Marantz CD player to ensure a blissful listening experience.
Recovering Old Files: Challenge or Lesson to Study?
Informational technology is developing so fast that data we stored only a few years ago is often stuck on old disks with very few drives that are able to read them. Computer forensics experts can uncover old files, sometimes solving crimes along the way.
When new files relating to the South Yorkshire Police’s handling of the Hillsborough disaster emerged, plenty took the form of dog-eared notebooks and water-damaged folders. But in amongst the evidence handed over to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, there were also 167 floppy disks – containing hundreds of documents that were potentially critical to the investigation.
Paper is a reasonably useful medium; if it gets a bit damp or dirty you can still read the marks that have been made on it. But the same can’t be said for magnetic storage. The exhibits manager for the inquiry, David Wolstencroft, and his team had to purchase an ageing computer in order to read the 5.25-inch floppies – disks much bigger than the 3.5-inch ones most of us remember using on our PCs before they died out, and a medium already well on the way to obsolescence at the time of the 1989 disaster. “We got them all read,” he told the BBC when the analysis was just getting under way in 2013, “and they’ve come back on two small disks [DVDs] that aren’t even full. It’s unbelievable the way technology has changed.”
The process of transferring data from old media such as floppy disks to more modern, readable formats might sound relatively easy, but the transient nature of modern technology can make it hugely problematic. Tracking down and purchasing a computer from the era of shoulder pads and Crocodile Dundee would seem like a promising initial step, but the subsequent journey is uncertain.
“If you boot up an old machine,” says Tony Dearsley, Principal Consultant at digital forensics firm Kroll Ontrack, “you have no idea what’s going to happen. It will have been sitting in a cupboard for 15 or 20 years. You’re going to have component failure, capacitors are going to die. Ideally you’d try to avoid doing that altogether.”
Our increasing reliance on technology and the related increase in the digital information we all generate has fuelled a massive rise in the number of firms offering digital forensics services. But when old cases are reopened and dusty technology resurfaces, experts face multiple challenges.
Floppy disks, from the 8-inch to the 5.25-inch to the 3.5-inch, become less willing to yield up their contents with every passing day. Even hard disks, which theoretically have some measure of protection from the atmosphere, still experience decay.
Data storage mediums have changed so many times during the last 50 years, that it seems like we are still looking for a perfect way to store the huge volumes of information we generate on a daily basis. And as years go by, the compatibility of data carriers and readers becomes a bigger and bigger problem. If only data archiving would be somehow standardized, then we would we most likely not face such challenges anymore?
Many kinds of sensitive data have to be stored and preserved in a way that can be easily accessed after years, decades or even centuries. As has been touched upon already, paper is a good medium of storage, but it has a number of disadvantages: beginning from large physical volume per unit of information and ending with poor level of environmental influence resistance.
Data storage experts agree that as of today, there is no better alternative for optical media in data archiving. Professional archival grade DVDs and CDs with gold and platinum layers are able to secure data for centuries, fact proven by a number of professional tests under severe environmental conditions.
Falcon Technologies International has a specially designed product line called Century Archival, that is a perfect solution for a long term data storage. It is not only a cost-efficient solution, but also a guarantee of secure and lasting data storage.
5D Glass Disc – Future of Optical Media?
As we move forward and the evolution of Informational Technology goes on, the challenge of constantly increasing data arrays storage becomes more obvious. Flash-memory, HDDs and SSDs have their limits: both in volume and reliability. The natural question “What’s next?” – sounds relevant in this context. The University of Southampton believes that the answer is Five-Dimensional (5D) Glass Discs.
As it was mentioned previously on our blog, traditional flash wears out, HDDs occasionally fail, physical photographs fade and paper books rot. Optical media meets archival purposes best, and this is why the industry re-shaped driven by the market conditions partially in this segment. It sets certain important tasks in front of Optical Media: preservation and security of humanity’s collective culture heritage for generations to come. Currently this critical data is transferred from one slowly failing storage medium to other one, but what if we had means to store it once and forget about it?
The possible next-generation optical media – 5D Glass Disc is something that may serve as “everlasting” data storage solution. The technology uses data encoding within sub-microscopic nanostructures in glass. Existing optical media, such as CDs and DVDs use two dimensions to store data, while the new technology adds three more dimensions to it: nanograting orientation, refraction ‘strength’ and location within x, y and z axis. Researchers say that three additional dimensions increase the storage capacity up to 360 Terabytes per disc.
Speed aging tests of the glass disc showed fantastic results: the data stored on such kind of media may outlive the planet itself: at 190 °C operational lifetime is calculated to be a ‘mere’ 13.8 billion years!
It all sounds like a technology from Star Wars Universe or any other fantastic saga’s, but in fact it is an actual technology, that may re-define the entire optical media industry in future (at least the data archiving segment of it). It would be fair to note here, that in the very beginning of CD-era in the mid-80s nobody would ever think that optical media would later become so cost-effective for personal and corporate use.
See the video displaying data-writing on 5D glass disc.
End of the VHS-era: How Home Video Shaped The Media Industry.
Rewind your memories and just take a moment to realize that the entire era has just ended this summer; the last-known company that was still producing video cassette recorders (also known as VCRs) has officially announced that it has finalized production of the last unit.
That’s right, on July 21 The New York Times pointed to a short announcement published earlier in the Japanese newspaper Nikkei which was essentially a press release by the Funai Corporation, stating that the company took a decision to cease the production of VCRs due to the “difficulty of acquiring parts”.
The New York Times also referenced a statement in which the company said, “We are the last manufacturer (of VCRs) in all of the world.” Further to this, it was stated that only 750,000 VCRs were sold in 2015 worldwide, significantly down from the millions sod every year decades earlier.
It is hard to imagine anyone from generations growing up with streaming technology which brings all the latest movies and television shows straight to TV’s, tablets and smartphones screens, to get a feeling of nostalgia from this news. However, virtually everyone from those in their late-20s and older will almost certainly remember the sight of VHS tapes scattered around the floor adjacent to their televisions, and boxes full of old VHS tapes dumped somewhere in the closet or the basement of their homes. These tapes were extremely popular in 80s and 90s, when VHS was one of the most popular kinds of home entertainment.
People used to record their favorite TV shows and popular movies from premium cable channels so that they could view them again later, which was sometimes a complicated procedure requiring the setting of a timer on the VCR in order to program unit to record at a certain time period. For the first time, people started having the magic feeling of freedom from the TV schedule: you didn’t have to be at home at a certain time to watch something anymore.
In some parts of the world, like mid-80s USSR, very often smuggled VHS tapes carried the valuable information about “Western culture” and “the capitalist way of life” to the younger generations who were planning to rise in rebellion against the isolation imposed by the old Soviet Union.
Many of us have important memories stored in a form of home video footages on VHS tapes: a wedding video, the birth of a child, vacations, proms and other important events. These footages are really important for us – they are like time capsules that conserve the best moments that can be always pulled out and re-lived at any moment.
VHS tapes have now been officially consigned to history – making it a good idea to transfer all the footage stored on them to some more reliable media storage, such as DVDs. Magnetic tape is more sensitive to environmental factors, and therefore the tape (and footage!) may deteriorate and result in data loss. DVDs are more long lasting, so you might consider to use them to make a backup of your precious memories.
Falcon Technologies International LLC has developed a product line specially designed for consumer market. Value Line is designed to meet the needs of cost-conscious consumer and represents a perfect balance between quality and price. The good product is complimented by entry-level price range and no failure guarantee, making Value Line a highly competitive product on the market.