In November 2005, Sony announced that the final DAT machines would be discontinued the following month. However, the DAT format still finds regular use in film and television recording, principally due to the support in some recorders for SMPTE time code synchronization, although it is slowly being superseded by modern hard disk recording equipment which offers much more flexibility and storage. In 2004, Sony introduced the Hi-MD Walkman with the ability to record in linear PCM. Hi-MD has found some favor as a disc-based DAT alternative for field recordings and general portable playback.
Archived audio problem
The discontinuation of DAT player production leads to a significant problem regarding audio archives, since a tremendous amount of recordings from the mid-80's until about 2000 exist solely on DATs. This means that this material is locked up on these tapes.
Even if some larger broadcasting facilities or studios still have some DAT recorder/players in their internal stock or could find a handful of second hand models, each unit can inevitably suffer from wear-out in the spinning drum heads, winding mechanisms, brakes, etc. The best solution would be to transfer the information off the DAT "tapes" and into computer-based hard drive systems via an AES/EBU digital connection. Even though these "transfers" have to happen in real-time which can make this process tedious and time consuming, an exact clone can be made using this process, where no digital information will be lost or compromised. Running the DAT through an analogue soundboard and then into the hard drive system, would forever defeat this purpose.
