We continue to see trends in digital technology that are pushing video to the forefront of consumer memory capture means. While still imaging is still the primary method consumers think of when it comes to capturing and preserving life’s many memories, video technology is making tremendous strides in both ease-of-use and, maybe more importantly, in ease of ways to share.
Enter SanDisk’s recent introduction of their V-Mate product which turns a flash memory device into a portable video recorder.
V-Mate can record video from a TV, cable, satellite or over-the-air, set-top-box, DVD player, personal video recorder, like TiVo, or a VCR. The V-Mate memory card can then be inserted into a mobile phone, video music player, hand-held game console, or notebook computer and the video replayed. Memory cards supported include SD, MMC, MMCplus MMCmobile, SDHC, MiniSDHC, MicroSDHC, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick PRO Duo.
Matthijs Hutten, product marketing manager at SanDisk tells us, “The number of mobile devices with a card slot and video playback capability is huge and growing rapidly. The V-Mate will make it easy for consumers to watch video on their devices by doing the analog to digital conversion for them, compressing the video into MPEG-4 in multiple formats, and then creating the correct file format for the target mobile device — all features unmatched by any product today in this price range.”
The V-Mate is expected to be available next month and will carry an MSRP of around $129.99. More important than the fact the VOD market continues to explode is the fact consumers now have a multitude of ways to capture and quickly share life’s events as they unfold. Inserting yourself in the middle of that equation simply has to be a part of imaging retail’s new mission statement.
