There may be plenty of options out there for those who still want tapes to be a part of their home music collection, but portable devices are thin on the ground these days: enter the Hideoto from TEC, designed to fill precisely that gap.
Designed to look like an old Walkman from the days before MP3 players roamed the Earth, the Hideoto allows you to enjoy your old cassette tapes on the move – powered by three AA batteries, the device is a completely stand-alone solution featuring a standard headphone socket for your portable listening pleasure.
Left at that, however, it wouldn’t be worthy of gracing the pages of Geek With Laptop – so you know there’s a sting in the tail: also included on the body of the device is a USB socket, which provides the rather smart dual purpose of powering the device in the absence of batteries while providing the ability to digitize your old cassette tapes for posterity.
According to CrunchGear, use of the device is simple: just hook the Hideoto up to your PC via the included USB cable and launch the free Cassette Mate package which comes with the device. Once loaded, you’ll be able to automatically save the contents of your tapes to your hard drive in MP3 format – with bitrates selectable from a grainy 32Kb/s to a more high-fidelity 320Kb/s – or as a lossless WAV file. Once saved, the files can be transferred to a more modern MP3 player – saving you from the embarrassment of being seen with a cassette deck in your pocket at the gym.
While the Hideoto is far from the first tape digitizer on the market – and with the TEAC AD-800 offering integrated displays, CD player, and stand-alone MP3 ripping it’s not even the easiest tape digitizer on the market – it’s by far the most portable, and the ability to use it as an old-fashioned Walkman for those tapes you haven’t quite got around to transferring is a welcome bonus.
Sadly, there’s no mention of any advanced features – such as a tape type switch or Dolby-B Noise Reduction functionality – but considering that TEC will be marketing the Hideoto as more of a novelty than a serious audiophiles’ tool, that’s perhaps to be expected.
The device is expected to launch in Japan next month for an expected $57, although TEC has yet to confirm whether the Hideoto will be coming to the US.
