Tec Hideoto portable cassette player time-travels from 1994, gets USB audio for its trouble
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted July 13th 2010 2:06PM
posted July 13th 2010 2:06PM
Of all the USB tape players we've seen in our day, this is certainly one of them! Available from a Japanese company called Tec, Hideoto is a Walkman-esque portable cassette player that features USB and stereo headphone outputs, powered by either the aforementioned Universal Serial Bus or two AA batteries. It also comes with Cassette Mate software for Windows, which presumably makes saving your audio to MP3, WAV, or WMA a figurative snap. Available next month in Japan for roughly $57, at which point we expect to see these pop up at our favorite import e-tailers here in the states. Get a closer look after the break.
HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC!
Yeah, dating myself..
"Of all the USB tape players we've seen in our day, this is certainly one of them!"
What? This is one of the coolest? This is one of the most unique? Or this is one of 'them'?
@PapaSmurf
if you don't get it, its not worth explaining...
I miss the visceral feel of a tape deck ... damn technology and its touchscreens...
@Goast
I miss the feel of Vinyl. I'm not that old, but 'purist' DJs still rock 12"
@Goast I miss listening to your music player, and as it died the music got slower.
Certainly convenient for those of us that have large libraries of cassettes we'd like to convert but no working cassette players to use for that.
@ashwinkn
I was just thinking the same thing. I have a handful of cassettes that I would love to convert to digital.
@ashwinkn Or you could buy a cable with headphone jacks on both ends, and just plug your tape player's headphone out into the microphone port on your computer. For like $5. Look for Audio Patch Cable.
Does it support hi-speed dubbing?
@glamajamma
Or auto reverse?
@glamajamma
Skip-to-next-song!
@glamajamma Does it support the expensive Metal Tape!?
@calvinki
Technically-speaking, ALL cassettes were metal, although the "metal" tapes you are referring to had the polyester plastic film covered with Metafine (3M trademarked name), instead of the usual compounds, such as gamma ferric oxide, chromium dioxide, magnetite, and other such materials. In most instances, the only thing that made metal cassettes "special" was that they were housed in metal casings, instead of the usual plastic casings.
@glamajamma
That was so groundbreaking when dual cassette decks came out with high speed dubbing and full logic controls!
why?
I can sense Kirfs for way less on eBay
@shift123
Your thrift sense is tingling?
@Alimas yup
finally, an affordable gadget to convert my ol' school tapes to MP3. though, one can still find a really good deal on a used tape deck on craigslist. :-)
Finally I can convert my copy of the Wayne's World soundtrack to digital. WAYNE'S WORLD... WAYNE'S WORLD... ITS PARTY TIME, EXCELLENT. (repeat x10)
Just order up the Greatest Hits of your Old but goodies groups from the $1.99 Clearance bins, then dub those to your mp3 players. The cassette deck is designed to chew up your old tapes, its a shredder in disguise, if not maybe a Transformer. :-p j/k folks its a nice idea, not sure I have all that many tapes left that I haven't picked up the CD or mp3 versions already.
Do want!
Why does every cassette tard have to take pics of their portable cassette player laying on top of or beside their stationary windows junk?
If that isnt proof that cassette players are nothing but a trend, i dont know what is
@cruncis
a stationary laptop... as opposed to a moving one?
@cruncis
hahahaha
Does it have Dolby NR?
Me wants...
Give me an old WM-DD Series Sony Walkman With USB and I'm Sold...
I don't care. I want the one with the bigger geebees.
Does it recognize gaps and split recordings into separate files automatically?
What's the point of ripping from an old cassette? Never mind the fact that the audio was always crap on cassettes--by now, the tape will have degraded significantly.
Garbage in, garbage out.
@eslai Cassette tapes made it easy for regular to record themselves. My grandmother kept a journal on cassette to share stories with future generations after she's gone. Digitizing that, for example, could be worthwhile.
@eslai
Some tapes actually sound okay. Not good, but you know, OK. Good players easily suppress the hiss... and if it was a metal tape, you might even get to keep a few of the high frequencies...
Basically, you need to lower quality standards a lot, but when comparing 'tape version of music' vs 'not having the music', at least for genres where subtle details aren't critical, the tape version might be worth having.
I still have a couple small piles of cassettes and although I can't say I play them very often, it does happen occasionally. Sounds crap but (in some cases) the music's good, plus I get nostalgia value from listening to stuff I got 20 years ago... that's enough.
Kind of like how low-bitrate YouTube has awful sound quality (is it as awful as tape? maybe not), but it's still a good enough way to show people music.
Incidentally the design of this device is pretty nice. If it actually was 1994 I'd totally get one to replace my Aiwa.
Not enough technical data there: any Dolby ? My cassettes are coded with Dolby C to successfully hide the damn hiss. But on a Dolby-less player: ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssucks
Does it have a separate setting for METAL tapes?
But back on topic, I just remember how the walkmans in the late 80s and early 90s, the ones from Japan were so damn thin and managed to have features like recording, equalizer and auto reverse. Plus they were built from metal, not plastic. The North American models sucked.
There is one on Amazon for $50 or so. Looks about the same, I guess. You get what you pay for. Including with magnetic tape.
I do need one of these though. I got the ION VHS-usb machine. I believe the same company makes the cassette-usb I saw on amazon.
Since tape was analog, does this keep the analog signal or convert it to digital? If it keeps it analog, I wonder if this would be a way to bypass RIAA restrictions/filter on Youtube?
@kent99
Really??
@Art Vandalay Yep, really. Some of us older folks have a huge collection of cassettes and this could be a useful feature and worth the investment. Also, the newer releases of many of these older albums have different tracks than the ones released today so in some ways, it would be a great way to retrieve what has been lost. I doubt the record companies will give new life to these older tracks.
@kent99 An analog computer file?
@ChaoZ Is it possible? If not, why?
I think you misspelled "idioto."
hideoto? That reads like "horrible sound" in slang Japanese...
I NEED THIS!!!!
I have like 6 boxes of mix tapes from the 80's and early 90's
With some early hip hop and deep house.
Deep house music B4 the shit went to Europe and the mainstream and turned into noise.
Acid House - Hip House - Deep house - Chicago - Tribal house: So many styles to mention.
Sample the good ish. Soulful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFuujExs03A