I remember seeing a prototype (or something similar) of this kind of device maybe a couple of years ago and thought it was a pretty good idea. For those of you who have old cassette decks (or new ones, even) in your car but have gone all digital as far as your music is concerned, this might be a doodad worth looking into.
It’s basically a cassette tape that holds an SD card loaded up with MP3 files. You can use it on its own as an MP3 player or pop it into a cassette deck and play the files as though they were on the tape itself.
ThinkGeek has it for $39.99, while Chinavasion has it for $22.45. I’m not quite sure how you’d skip about tracks while it’s in your cassette deck but Chinavasion says “Use like a normal cassette in a car cassette player or cassette player,” so I’m guessing that might mean fast forwarding and rewinding just like the good old days.
This would have been pretty cool about five years ago.
I can’t remember the last time I even laid eyes on a tape deck.
@Nate
I kind of agree, but it seems lots of cars still come with tape decks, I’m not sure why I don’t think anyone still makes tapes. Someone should really tell the car manufactures.
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Hey Dave. There’s a built-in 450mAh lithium battery that’s recharged by the USB cable. Not sure about how long it’ll last, though.
This would be great in my father’s 02 Lexus. The car is old enough to still have a cassette deck but not young enough to have had an MP3-reading disk player or an AUX jack built in it. It’d really handy for those who don’t want to deal with an FM transmitter for an iPod.
“Designed for the 1994 Honda Civic enthusiast!”
Do they have one for 8-tracks?
Maybe record players?
Oh, how about a Player Piano MP3 player???
that would be steampunk
especially if it was powered by steam
try
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I have one of these, works decent. The card doesn’t stick out like that, its just so show you that it IS an SD card. The one problem I have with it is the “resume play.” Without a display, its hard as hell to find a song unless you know the play list by heart (and without a shuffle feature, another annoying thing about it, you probably will) but it seems to have a half-ass way of saving the last played song. As in it works half the time. I let it sit for a minute after pulling it out and it sometimes saves the spot. My last issue is the power save mode (or lack there of). If I forget to shut off the switch (hard toggle, not push button) then its dead next time I go to play it. The battery does have a decent life though, doesn’t seem to be damn Ni-Cad with memory (thank god). $22 for me is a lot better than $200+ for a audio deck with SD/USB support plus being in the neighborhood I’m in, a tape deck is pretty good theft deterrent. ;-)
It works great. I bought one from http://www.cassettemp3player.com
I was able to load up tons of 80’s tunes on it and pretend like it was 1985…ha ha ha. Pressing FF and RW for a minimum of 4 seconds allows you to go to the next or previous track….pretty cool….
Overall, its fun to use and I would recommend it to any 80’s music lover.