Black Boxes: Teraoptix Terapin CD-Recorder

by Chris Raley
Spring 2001

Teraoptix Terapin Audio/Video CD Recorder
Manufacturer
Teraoptix Inc.
(888) 654-0645
www.goterapin.com

Price $599
If you're like us, you're itching for products that will bring optical digital recording technology to the living room. And indeed, there are some manufacturers who want to scratch that itch. Teraoptix has developed the Terapin, an Audio/Video CD recorder that is able to record from a variety of sources onto a disc. The final CD not only plays back on the Terapin recorder, but also on standard DVD players and multimedia PCs. We found however, that while the Terapin recorder represents a step towards fulfilling the desire to go digital with home recording, we think its progress is more accurately measured in baby steps.

A Rough Beginning

When we took the Terapin out of the box, its space age design impressed us. The contoured blue opaque plastic cover across the top of the box, the oval digital display surrounded in steel gray and the yellow lights that run a narrow line across the top of the deck are very chic. Even the design of the remote, with its blue opaque battery cover and sliding guard over the bottom set of buttons, is cool.
However, on closer inspection we began to notice many design flaws. First, the contoured blue plastic rising over the top of the recorder is purely decorative. Nice, but how are you going to stack it in your entertainment system? The only way it will fit is on top of the stack. The plastic trim adds significantly to the height of the unit. If your entertainment system is like ours, space is at a premium.
The front panel that covers up easy-access inputs fell off when we first took the player out of the box and then fell off repeatedly during our testing. Then there's the remote. We thought that its sliding blue cover might be a clever way of protecting buttons like Erase, Record or Finalize from being inadvertently pushed. Not the case. The important buttons are on the top of the remote while oft used buttons like Shuffle, Program and Mute are underneath the sliding cover. If you're going to have a cover like this one on a remote, then let it serve some kind of purpose other than decoration. Another problem we had with the remote is the fact that it lacked a power button. The only power button is on the face of the box itself. Not exactly couch-friendly.
Unfortunately, the design flaws didn't end there. When hooking up the unit, we noticed there was no RF in/output. This means that you can't directly connect cable TV to it. A television signal must run through your VCR before entering the Terapin. It seems odd for a machine that is supposed to replace VHS to be dependent on the VCR in order to successfully record television.
Another thing we noticed was the placement of the RCA audio and composite video I/Os. On many machines the video and audio I/Os are lined up so that the inputs form one line straight across and the outputs below that form another line straight across. Not so with the Terapin. The audio outputs lie in-between the video in/outs and audio in, so that you have to cross wires to hook up your connections. This layout makes cabling a rather frustrating experience.
Taken one-by-one these design flaws are relatively minor. Taken all together they created a rough start for our look at the Terapin.

What Really Matters

Of course, all these other things could be overlooked if the Terapin performed like a dream and produced a beautiful image. And in terms of use, we didn't have a problem. The remote performed most of functions, except, of course, turning it on and off. Recording was an easy process. When we had our inputs ready to go, we simply pushed the Rec Video button and the display on the screen informed us we were in Record/Standby mode. We pressed the Confirm button and the machine gave us about three seconds to release the pause on our input device. When we pressed record again, the Terapin automatically created start IDs and counter times for the new track.
Other functions such as Finalize and Erase were similarly easy to perform. If you're working with a CD-RW disc, the Terapin can erase the whole disc, even if it has been finalized. If the disc isn't finalized the recorder gives you the option of either erasing the last track or the whole disc.
However, it was in the final video product that we were most disappointed with the Terapin. We recorded from three different sources: a VHS tape, a Digital8 camcorder and from cable TV routed through a VCR. You also have the option of recording audio only through the analog inputs or digital inputs. On all three video sources, the picture had many artifacts and the colors were noticeably less vibrant. The audio recording ability of the Terapin however, is 16bit 44.1KHz digital as it is on commercial audio CDs.
When we finished recording we finalized the disc (closed it to further recording) and tried it out on other players. It played on our Philips DVD player, however we found, that playback would pause at the end of each track and pick up the next one a couple of seconds later. Sometimes it would stutter briefly once more at the beginning of the next track before continuing. Although Teraoptix says the discs will play in any CD-ROM drive, none of the PCs we tried was able to read the disc.

Try, Try Again

The Terapin recorder is a great idea, however it's not so good in application. The overall construction was cheap and tinny. The series of design flaws add up to a non-intuitive machine. Operation is relatively easy, but the video quality falls far short of VHS video. Hopefully Teraoptix will fix the problems with the unit and re-release a better version. It sure is a pretty box.

Tech Specs:
Video Inputs/Outputs: S-video, composite
Audio Inputs/Outputs: Analog stereo RCA, Digital stereo RCA
Dimensions: 15 1/2 x 13 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches
Weight: approx. 10LBS