Sony don't play DAT

Sony has laid to rest one of the many formats put out by the company in the late 80s: DAT, or "Digital Audio Tape." The first DAT deck was released in Japan in March of 1987, and the final product to be released was the TCD-D100 in July of 1997. Sony announced that the final shipments of the TCD-D100 (right) will be going out in December of this year. They will, however, continue to offer repairs to units and sell DAT tapes. DAT was somewhat attractive because it offered high sampling rates for the time. Nowadays, we have things like Hi-MD and the PCM-D1 that achieve similar tasks more efficiently, and the latter does so at higher sampling rates. Seeing as how Sony only ever shipped 660,000 recorders in Japan during this 18 year period, we won't be shedding any tears over this one.