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 … [Continue reading]
Digital Video Format Comparison
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 … [Continue reading]
Digital Video Format
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 … [Continue reading]
DivX
According its pseudonymous authors the DivX codec - no relation to Circuit City's now defunct DIVX digital video disk player - is based on Microsoft's MPEG-4 video technology, with the addition of an … [Continue reading]
miniDVD
If SVCD can be viewed as format that seeks to combine the advantages of DVD quality with the cheapness of writable CD media, then miniDVD can be viewed in a similar light. The miniDVD format goes … [Continue reading]
SVCD Digital Video
With over 20 million households owning VCD payers by the late 1990s, it is unsurprising that China was instrumental in the development of a successor to the VCD format. The first of three independent … [Continue reading]
VCD Digital Video
The VideoCD format was created to satisfy the demands of both the entertainment and information publishing worlds. The aim was to provide a format capable of delivering their content on an … [Continue reading]
ActiveMovie Technology
ActiveMovie, a Microsoft API that was announced in March 1996, is receiving wide support in the computer industry as "the next generation of cross-platform digital video technology for the … [Continue reading]
Digital Video for Windows
AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) is Microsoft's generic format for digital video in Windows, provided via its MCI (Media Control Interface). AVI allows for a number of compression methods, in real-time, … [Continue reading]
Apple Quicktime
Recognizing the drawback of requiring a costly playback adapter, Apple developed a video format that can be played without special add-on hardware. The result, QuickTime, represents a major milestone … [Continue reading]