In this digital age, I would think all cockpit conversation could be recorded for the cheap price of one cell phone call. I mean they could even use Skype with a WebCam to record everything that goes on in the cockpit.

So why are airline manufacturers still installing these expensive and complex black boxes, when it is so cheap and easy to record audio and video from anywhere live in the world? Plus the cost to retrieve a black box is expensive financially and timewise, as we see with the recent Air France crash.