Tape streamer
A tape drive that writes data in one continuous stream instead of starting and stopping for every block.
Older tape drives ran start-stop: read a block, halt in the inter-record gap, spin back up for the next. That demanded muscular motors and wide gaps. A streamer instead keeps the tape moving continuously and trusts the host to feed data fast enough to fill the stream. When it can't, the tape must stop, back up and take another run at it — "shoe-shining" — which wears both media and time.
QIC, DAT and DLT units are all streamers, and their buffers and compression exist precisely to keep the stream fed. Cheaper mechanics were the whole point.