In November 2005, Sony announced that its remaining DAT machine models would be discontinued the following month.[12] Sony has sold around 660,000 DAT products since its introduction in 1987.[citation needed] However, the DAT format still finds regular use in film and television recording,[citation needed] primarily due to the support in some recorders for SMPTE time code synchronisation, and sometimes by audio enthusiasts as a way of backing up vinyl, compact cassette and CD collections to a digital format to then be transferred to PC. Although it is being superseded by modern hard disk recording or memory card equipment, which offers much more flexibility and storage, Digital Data Storage tapes, which are broadly similar to DATs, apart from tape length and thickness on some variants, and are still manufactured today unlike DAT cassettes, are often used as substitutes in many situations.