Ok, by now we all know, I guess, that you can buy really cheap digital voice recorders in most of america.

So has anyone used them in gaming yet as props? I have an idea that involves a friend taking acting lessons who wants practice and maybe some computer sound effects. Basically it involves (this only applies in high tech settings, obviously) a situation where the players find a digital recorder and I actually hand one of them a cheap one, and let them hit the playback button. You have a frriend, prefferably someone thye don't know, who can ACT, record a message with whatever appropriate tone of voice, screams, etc, the message needs, and  maybe add in some sound effects courtesy of your computer.

An even cooler idea might be to have a DVR linked to some speakers hidden in the room or under the table, and use a sound effect as an ominous forshadowing on some of the dvr messages. Then, at the right time coverty touch the right button, hidden behind your trusty GM screen, to trigger the ominous sound in the room.

Maybe the sound could be linked with the appearance of some sort of creature that has 'killed' people recording the DVR messages. If you do it right he players should jump.

I video-recorded a briefing for a "charlies angels" type group when I ran a Feng Shui one-shot, then ran it through the wringer in After Effects (I do videography on the side, so I have toys) and burned it out to DVD.  It was nice and compact to take to the house of the person hosting, and popping it into the DVD player gave me five minutes to concentrate on little GM-ly last-minute stuff (who'd picked which character, how they were playing them prior to the briefing, maybe I should have this lieutenant take the charge in that upcoming scene to highlight X, Y and Z) while the players about fifty percent listened to the briefing information and fifty percent laughed at the deliberately cheesy effects.

I'd say it was a reasonable success ... more work than I'd do on an ongoing basis, but a nice one-off prop, and I got to pixelate my face

I like the idea of breaking the metaphoric barrier of the TV screen by later reproducing the sound from the recording inside the room itself.  That's spooky!