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How Do Computers Make Pictures?

Sure computer graphics have come a long way, but the question is: how?? Or, what's a pixel? What's a bitmap (or a raster)? How, in fact, does a computer make a picture when all it has to play with are zeros and ones?!

Well, with great difficulty. Modern graphics cards are phenomenal in what they do, but even the simple things are complex when it comes to making computer images. One of the hardest things is one of the most basic: how do you get a digital image from your camera to your computer? Or even from computer to computer?

Luckily, it turns out there's some really quite clever people working in the mysterious world of digital computer imaging. This new article on digital image and video data will roll out over the next couple of weeks. It begins this week touching on the difference between analogue and digital data, how images are sampled, and sample resolutions. As the series progresses, you'll see that many of the solutions that have been employed are amazingly simple, but just as often, they're simply amazing.

What in the LCD is IPS!?

PC monitors have come a long way since the 1980s, when huge, hot and noisy boxes sucked in gallons of air and layers of dust, and seared lime green on black text into the weary eyes of computer operators. However, the once lowly cathode ray tube monitor advanced in strides through the 1990s and into the millennium, offering increasing colour depth and resolutions from VGA to XGA and beyond.

Now, though, the CRT's days are pretty much over, and the flat panel monitor's day has very much arrived. With updated background on LCD monitors, particularly on the advancing technology of IPS, let the PC Technology guide show you how to tell your twisted nematic from your thin film transistor. These clear guides and helpful diagrams explain all you need to know about flat panel monitors, so you need never be boggled by a goggle box again.

Blu-ray - the hi-def blue laser disk technology

Optical disks have come a long way. They began back in the 1980s with the humble CD, which was great for music, computer software and data. Unfortunately it turned out to be poor for movies, though there was some limited success with VideoCD in Asian markets.

DVDs came to the rescue in the 1990s with capacity enough for movies - great! But then, along came high definition video, a format way out of the DVD league.

All was not lost. In the nick of time, around the new millennium, the invention of a marketable blue laser diode provided the eureka for optical disks. Brighter, thinner blue lasers gave far better definition and accuracy than the old CD/DVD red lasers. Now a disk the same dimensions as a DVD could carry many times more data - including hours of high-definition video! Hurray!

Excited consumers looked on with sadly fast fading hope as, true to form, the industry leaders around the world leaped into action and collaborated to create a truly awful mess.

Two competing formats had emerged, HD-DVD and Blu-ray, both vying for market supremacy. Championed by media and technology giants on both sides, it was a close run thing for years. When HD-DVD finally capitulated in November 2008 Blu-ray became the industry standard for blue laser optical disk technology. With 100GB capacity, live web interaction and high definition, surely the Blu-ray Disk (BD) is the future?

Blu-ray Region Codes

Blu-ray Region codes: DVD region codes were introduced to try to give movie studios some control over global distribution for their movie releases. The system wasn't entirely successful, but the studios have persisted. Though boundaries have changed, Blu-ray too has regional coding.

USB Flash Drives

These are not "drives" at all - the misnomer was gained as they were intended to replace old portable drive technology. Offering massive storage and access fast enough for boot facilities, USB Flash Drives are arguably the best current portable RAM for PCs.