Memory Stick Video Recorder

The snappily named (as all Sony products are) PEGA-VR100K uses a built-in tuner to record TV programmes using the Quick Time 6 codec to a Memory Stick. You can then pop the stick into your VAIO for editing or for watching on your Clié when it’s convenient. The VR100K can also be attached to a monitor for use as a TV tuner.

Included are utilities for scheduling recording, so you can record that episodes of Fame Academy to watch surreptitiously in meetings.

Sony report that a 1gb Memory Stick will hold more than 16 hours of video in Long Play mode – though we’ve yet to see what the quality is like. Resolutions are given as 320×240 and 160×120, at 15fps. Bear in mind a 1gb stick will set you back about £400.

Sony Style on the PEGA-VR100K

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?