Internet-based TV seems inevitable because the potential services are compelling, and because the newcomers to broadcasting from the computer industry appear keen to drive it that way. Traditional broadcasters are likely to simulcast on the Net in the next few … [Read more...]

The fact that the frequency of AC power - 50Hz in Europe and 60Hz in the USA - was used to lock video frames in each of the PAL and NTSC video standards, was a principal factor in the frame rates used by each of formats - 25 fps and 30 fps … [Read more...]

Japan had pioneered HDTV for decades with an analogue implementation. However, both it and a similar attempt in Europe ultimately failed. Japan again took the lead in digital HDTV, this time along with the USA, who began digital HDTV … [Read more...]

There are quite a few digital channels transmitting widescreen programmes and movies for viewers with a widescreen television and the general trend is clearly towards the introduction of widescreen as the standard picture size for digital TV. The … [Read more...]

The standard sound format for European digital television comes in the form of MPEG-2 Stereo. This system can carry two channels of CD quality digital audio. The quality of audio this delivers is little different to that possible using the NICAM … [Read more...]

In Europe the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) project was set up in 1993 and came from a market led perception that digital broadcasting to the home needed technical standards of transmission to avoid the anarchy of proprietary boxes which has … [Read more...]

Evolution The digitisation of TV can be traced back a quarter of a century to the first digital video effects box, which scaled and rotated live images. This was followed by many expensive digital video devices: stills stores, caption … [Read more...]

Digital TV For years, the broadcasting and computer industries have proclaimed that "convergence" was just around the corner. Both have had different things in mind, of course, and each has claimed to be the driving force behind the must-have … [Read more...]

Formats comparison The principal technical characteristics of the digital video formats discussed above are summarised in the following table: VCD SVCD X(S)VCD DivX DV DVD Formal … [Read more...]

In the late 1990s a new generation of entirely digital cameras and camcorders emerged, and with it a new video format, Digital Video (DV). The DV cassette is a small, metal-oxide tape, which is about three-quarters the size of a … [Read more...]