Mobile Games

With the recent boom in mobile telephoney in India, it was only a matter of time before mobile game fever hit the generation next. The newest branch of the gaming industry, mobile gaming is estimated to be worth about $1.5 bn. As a concept, mobile gaming is slowly but surely taking over the world and India is certainly no exception.

According to infotech. indiatimes.com, over eight million mobile games are downloaded every year in India which range from Rs. 15 to Rs. 150 per game. As would be expected, games that are cricket based are the most popular, followed by Bollywood, Hollywood and racing games. Not only do mobile games offer the player a chance to pit his wits against the AI of the game it also allows him to play against other humans via Bluetooth, if supported by the game. Further, 3D gaming for mobiles is starting to gain momentum; quite a few of the blockbuster PC and console titles like Splinter Cell and Prince Of Persia are also available for mobiles.

The mobile manufacturers themselves have helped in popularizing the concept of mobile gaming. Nokia has been marketing its gaming phone the N-Gage QD quite aggressively, and has even held a tournament for the same! With such enthusiasm from all parties involved, one can safely say that the future for mobile gaming is very bright indeed!

Gazing Into the Crystal Ball...

So what does the future hold for gaming? Well, the possibilities are limitless. Games are a dime-a-dozen and there are always a couple of good games around the block. PC hardware too is always being improved upon, with faster, bigger, more powerful components being announced everyday. As the joke goes- The rate of advancements is so fast that your hardware might turn obsolete as you read this!

Consoles are where things get interesting. All the major players in the console business have recently revealed their next-gen consoles, sparking off the so-called ‘console wars’. Microsoft with their Xbox 360 and Sony with their Playstation 3 are going to be the major players in the industry, with Nintendo and it’s Revolution having to be satisfied with a bit-part role. Apart from the good looks, it’s the hardware specs for each system that has captured the imagination of gamers worldwide. And it’s not difficult to see why. The Xbox 360 has a CPU with three IBM PowerPC 3.2Ghz cores, ATI 500MHz graphics processor, 48 billion shader operations per second, 512Mb GDDR3 RAM of memory, Removable and upgradeable 20Gb hard drive, Three USB ports and support for DVD-video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R, CD-DA, CD-R, WMA CD, MP3 CD, Jpeg photo CD. Overall, Microsoft claims this will give a teraflop of performance.

That’s quite a package and literally the stuff gaming dreams are made of. What really has everyone drooling though is the Playstation 3. It gives you a CPU Cell Processor running at 3.2 GHz with 7 special purpose 3.2 GHz processors, capable of 218, count them, 218 gigaflops of performance, Backward compatible, GPU RSX at 550MHz 1.8 teraflop floating point performance, 256Mb XDR main RAM at 3.2 GHz, 256Mb of GDDR VRAM at 700Mhz, Memory Stick Duo, SD, compact flash memory slots, Detachable 2.5 inch hard drive, Support for seven Bluetooth controllers, Six USB slots for peripherals, Supports Blu-ray DVD format, System Floating Point Performance of 2 teraflops, Communication Ethernet, Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11, Bluetooth, Output in HDTV resolution up to 1080p as standard. According to Sony, the PS3 will be 35 times faster than the current Playstation, the PS2

Although it would appear that the PS3 has a clear edge on the 360, this may not necessarily be true. Microsoft argues that Specs are irrelevant if you don’t have the tools to support developers. The two consoles are very evenly matched in all other aspects. Both have a number of games being developed for them already and both will be released within months of each other- the 360 is out in Christmas and the PS3 in spring 2006. So basically what all this means is, very soon it’s going to be a great time to be a gamer!

Online Games

Ever since the advent of broadband internet, online gaming has become very popular. No matter how good the Artificial Intelligence (AI) of a game is, it can never match up to a human mind. Thus online gaming has become the ultimate arena for gamers around the world. It has become an arena where modern day gladiators learn the tricks of the trade and master their skills.

Online gaming really took off when broadband internet became a reality for most people. This allowed smooth gameplay, without any lag, i.e. delay in time between your input and its actual in-game effect. But this was only half the reason for spectacular success of online gaming. The other half was good, even addictive.

A game like Half-Life: Counterstrike was revolutionary when it came to online multi-player games. It helped popularize the very idea of competing against a human player over the internet. Many updates and a sequel later, Counterstrike (or CS as it is called) remains among the most popular online games today.

Although virtually every game today comes with the option of online play, very few have been able to make an impact on the gaming world. One such game however is Battlefield. Battlefield became the second generation of online games. Games up until then had pitted a maximum of 10-15 players against each other in simple weapon-based combat. Battlefield up the ante and increased the number of players per map to hundreds.

Further, it added ground and air vehicles that could be used by the players. This gave it the feel of a real war, making it an instant hit with gamers around the world. Today Battlefield, along with its sequels, is arguably the most popular online game in the world. Looking at the future, it would seem that MMORPGs are the going to be the trendsetters. Already gaining popularity all over the world, games like World Of Warcraft are enticing more and more people everyday. India too is not far behind, with Ragnarok being offered to desi gamers.

They say that the internet has something for everyone, and this certainly holds true for games as well. So if you are just a casual gamer who enjoys simple, easy to understand and use games then the internet has plenty to offer. Simple, usually flash-based and supremely addictive, these are games for the masses. Whether you’re at the office getting bored or at home with nothing better to do, they’re the best way to pass time and have fun doing it. From the classics (chess, checkers, mah-jongg, sudoku) to the sporty (stick cricket, BMX star, Kingpin Bowling) to the absolutely ludicrous (Kill Harry potter, Punch the President, Stop Cockroach Chris, Parking Perfection) any and every type of game can be found online. Once you’ve had a taste of these, you’ll keep coming back for more! http://mousebreaker.com/ and http://iam-bored.com are two great sites for such games.

Games, Games, Games!

Now that you know all about PCs and consoles, it’s time to get down to the serious business of playing games! The bread and butter of every gamer, games too have advanced by light years over the last two decades। From the good-old days of 2-D Pac- Man to the ultra-real 3-D environments of Doom 3, there really is something for everyone, whether you enjoy a quiet game of chess or if frantic fragging is your thing. Here’s a look at the world of games.

Do the Genre thing

Due to the emergence of large numbers of games and gaming styles, it becomes necessary to classify them into genres. Each genre has its own distinctive features that set it apart from the others, although some games may borrow features from more than 1 genre. Basically the popular genres are-

1) First Person Shooter

Also known as FPS, it is arguably the most popular genre of gaming today. FPS’ place the gamer behind the weapon, only letting you see the hand of your character. This gives the gamer a first-person view of events and effectively simulates the feeling of being there. FPS games are fast paced and action based, requiring quick reflexes and good aim. The genre was made popular in the early 90’s by games like Wolfenstein and Doom. Today games like Halo, Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and Far Cry are the biggest names in this genre.

2) Sports

Sports games aim to realistically simulate a real-life sport on your PC/console. Every major sport today has at least 1 game based on it. These games may or may not require quick reaction times, depending on the sport in question (for e.g. a game like golf doesn’t require quick reflexes but a game like soccer does) Further some basic knowledge of the sport is necessary to play the game. FIFA 2005, Cricket 2005, Fight Night 2 and Top Spin are some of the big names in this genre.

3) Racing

Another popular genre, it places you behind the wheel of a fast paced car, and pits you against a number of opponents in a simple race. Gone are the days however of simple circuit racing. Today developers are adding more and more different styles to spice things up. For e.g. the drag and drift modes found in the latest edition of Need For Speed, and the hot pursuit mode found in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. The most popular games in this genre are the Need For Speed series, the Gran Turismo series and the Project Gotham Racing series.

4) Strategy

These games require careful planning and strategizing to win. Thus in simple words, strategy games make you use your brain! The games can be of two types, turn based or real time. Originally turn based strategy games were more popular, with games like Sid Meier’s Civilizations becoming huge hits and acquiring a cult following. Today however, most games are real-time strategy based. Of the real-time games, most are war-based and focus heavily on the military combat and tactics. The most popular games in this genre include StarCraft, WarCraft, Age Of Empires and Command And Conquer

5) Simulator

Simulator games try to accurately simulate a real-life situation, down to the last detail. For e.g. a flight simulator would simulate a real-life plane so accurately that it could be used to teach flying! Naturally having such detail and realism makes the game almost impossible to play without first reading the manual and/or practicing a lot. Microsoft Flight Simulator, Falcon 4.0 and IL2- Sturmovik are some of the popular games in this genre.

6) Role Playing Games

Also referred to as RPGs, they usually place you in a fantasy universe, where the game moves forward based on the players interaction with his environment. Further each character is given a particular set of skills, which he can improve as the game progresses. Popular RPGs include Diablo, Final Fantasy and the Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic series.

MMORPGs have arisen in recent times as an offshoot of RPGs. These are online games where thousands of players can interact with each other in the same virtual world. Most of them are subscription based and are available only in specific areas. EverQuest, World Of Warcraft, The Matrix Online and Ragnarok are popular MMORPGs Keep in mind though, that these are only broad generalizations.

Some games borrow heavily from more than 1 genre, and some cannot even be placed into any genre. A gamer’s personal choices also play a part here, therefore making it next to impossible to definitively mark out and define the various genres.

Consoles: Which one’s right?

A console is a dedicated gaming machine. Every gamer dreams of having one. Consoles today are scaled down versions of your average PC. How do they perform so well, you ask? That’s because all the games which are made for consoles are optimized for that particular piece of hardware, unlike PC games that have to be able to work with a wide range of hardware. For e.g. the game Halo for Xbox was optimized to work with it’s hardware and therefore gave stunning performance. Halo for the PC however, had to be able to work with low-end, average, as well as upper-end machines. Thus the performance of the game was not exactly stellar (no pun intended!) on the lower and average systems.

The main players in the console business are Sony and Microsoft with their respective consoles, The Playstation 2 and the Xbox. Nintendo were once top of the pile when it came to consoles, but even their new GameCube has been overshadowed by the two giants—PS2 and Xbox. While there isn’t much to choose between the big two abroad, living in India does change the equation. Here is how the two consoles compare to each other.

The Playstation 2

The Playstation 2 is the most popular console in the world today. And it’s easy to see why. With the original Playstation Sony captured the worlds imagination, all they had to do with the PS2 was iron out the creases. The PS2 also happens to be the only console to be officially launched in India which means easy availability of the console and its games, at least in the metros. While the number of games available may not be as high as its PC counterpart, the major ones are easy enough to find. They cost a bombshell when compared to PC games though, which explains the popularity of the PS2 mod chip that allows users to play pirated games. Be warned though, this is illegal and nullifies the warranty of the PS2. One excellent feature offered by the PS2 is backward compatibility which means that all of your PS1 games will work with the PS2, giving it the largest game library of all the consoles. Another nifty feature is full support for DVD’s, with support for surround sound systems via a Digital Out (Optical) connector along with a Dolby Digital/DTS certification.

The Xbox

The Xbox was pretty much a darkhorse when it first came out. It was attempting to infiltrate a market already dominated by Sony and Nintendo. Today it is a well-established console, fighting with the PS2 for supremacy. It has quite a few things going for it; for starters it’s the fastest console of the lot. But what really sets it apart from the competition is the superior graphical power. It blew the competition away on that front.

... And the winner is

Quite simply, the PS2 is the best console out there for Indian gamers. The easy availability of the console, an unparalleled game library and built-in support for DVD’s as well as surround sound make it the clear winner. Bear in mind though, that the next generation of consoles will be coming out soon, so it may be prudent to hold on for awhile, more on that a little later. But if you want a console today, then the PS2 is the best one out there.

PC: Getting the Hardware Right

PC gaming is all about having the right hardware. It can be the difference between having a good time and having a great time. And thanks to some cut-throat competition we’re spoilt for choice! With prices falling constantly, buying a gaming rig no longer requires a pocket deep enough to fit a Grand Canyon. Let’s see what type of hardware you need to look at, as a gamer.

Know you PC

Today, most games utilize almost every piece of hardware on your PC. From the motherboard to the soundcard, may be even your Ethernet card! Let’s take a look at the important components.

Processor

The most basic piece of equipment you will find in your computer is the processor. Quite literally it’s the brain of the computer, and can do calculations at the speed of light. Processors have come a long way from the early days of the 486 systems. Gone are the days when 133 MHz processors were called blazingly fast. Today processors have breached the 3.0 GHz mark and show no signs of stopping. And that’s not even taking into account 64-bit processors which are even faster!

In a game, the processor plays a major role. There are thousands of calculations and computations that need to be done every second. For e.g. Every movement you make and how it affects the environment around you, your interaction with the environment, the behavior of the AI and so on. All of this is done by the processor. Naturally a faster processor is very helpful, but its effectiveness depends on the rest of the hardware too.

Motherboard

The motherboard is like a switchboard at a telephone exchange. It connects the various hardware components. Every component is either directly or indirectly connected to it. It has a number of slots where you can plug in your hardware. These slots can either be of the PCI, PCI-E, AGP or IDE variety, apart from which you also have the memory slots for your RAM. A motherboard also has a chipset, which is its logic system, and the BIOS, which performs certain basic functions such as the boot-up procedure before the OS kicks in. The motherboard is not actively involved in any computations but it still forms an important part of your gaming PC. This is because every other component is connected to it. Therefore it is necessary to have a good motherboard with support for fast RAM, plenty of slots for upgrades, enough USB and/or firewire ports for external peripherals and so on.

RAM

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. Like the name suggests, it is a storehouse for memory. However what makes your RAM unique is the fact that data stored on it is not permanent. It is only stored as long as the program using the RAM requires it. Think of it as the short-term memory of the computer. You only keep information there as long as you need it, after which it is either forgotten or stored in the long-term memory.

RAM comes in a variety of sizes, speeds and standards. Today 1 GB RAM on a single chip is very common, as are speeds of 677-800 MHz that are found on the latest chips. For gaming, at least 256 MB of RAM, running at 333 MHZ is required for smooth gameplay.

3D Accelerator

The 3D accelerator is the component which renders all of your video. It can be of 2 types- 1) onboard, which is a part of the motherboard itself and uses a part of RAM as memory or 2) A standalone card, which plugs in to your motherboard and has its own memory, BIOS and Graphics Processing Unit or GPU. The old 3D cards used to connect to your motherboard via a PCI slot, but advances in technology meant that the data transfer rate that the slot allowed became too slow. This led to the creation of the AGP or Advanced Graphics Port. Today even AGP stands on the threshold of extinction, with PCI-E or PCI Express quickly becoming the favoured standard. Further, the newest developments have allowed user to buy two, yes two 3D cards and harness the power of both at the same time to give greater performance. This feature, known popularly as SLi graphics, is being offered by both the major players in the 3D accelerator businessnVidia and ATi.

Once again the equation is pretty simple- the better your graphics card, the better your visual performance. Your requirement is governed by the types of games you play. Thus, for e.g., someone who only plays the latest FPS games will require a cutting edge 3D card with the best features, but if Pac-Man is your thing then onboard graphics more than meet your requirements.

Sound

Until a few years ago, sound was probably the most ignored aspect of gaming. While everyone went gaga over the graphics of a game, sound would remain largely ignored. Things have changed though. With developers putting more and more thought and effort into the sound of the game, speakers and soundcards have become an integral part of a gamers hardware. The most commonly used surround sound speakers are of the 5.1 variety, which has 1 centre speaker, 2 main speakers and 2 surround speakers. The .1 denotes the sub-woofer, which is a separate unit. Choices are virtually unlimited however. From the traditional 2- speaker stereo systems to the cutting edge 7.1 surround sound systems there is something for everyone.

To enjoy the top-end sound systems, you will probably require a good sound card. Having said that, onboard sound is not too bad either. Just like 3D accelerators, motherboards come with onboard sound. In fact a top-end motherboard may even offer you features to rival any soundcard. This includes support for multi-speaker, surround sound systems. Soundcards however remain a popular choice for gamers. They provide top-quality sound, with support for the latest speaker systems and conform to most, if not all the quality standards such as THX and Dolby Digital. Creative are the most popular manufacturers of sound cards today.

What To Buy You Need You Should Buy Basic Gaming machine A simple inexpensive machine that lets you play a few of your favourite games, performance doesn’t really matter Processor: AMD Athlon64 3200+ RAM: 512 MB Transcend Graphic Card: NA Motherboard: MSI RS480M2 Powerful but affordable gaming PC A machine that gives you the flexibility to play the demanding games, without going bankrupt to pay for it Processor: AMD Athlon64 3800+ RAM: 512 MB Transcend Graphic Card: XFX 6600GT Motherboard: ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe The best system money can buy The best of the best. Money is of no concern. Processor: AMD Athlon X2 3800+ RAM: 1 GB Transcend Graphic Card: XFX 7800 GTX Motherboard: ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe

The right speaker-sound combination for you depends what you will use the two for. For e.g., if you play the occasional 2-D game and listen to some music, a 2 speaker setup with onboard sound is more than sufficient. But if you want to play the latest games and experience mind-numbingly realistic surround sound then the 7.1 speaker system and a top-end soundcard is what the doctor ordered!

Now that you know all about the hardware involved in gaming, you’re probably wondering which components best suit your needs. Although having unlimited choice is a great thing for any buyer, it can be a bit daunting to make a final decision. But fear not! We are here to solve your dillema. Deciding which hardware to buy is as simple as glancing at the table “What to Buy”!

Games People Play

Gaming is not only a big industry today, it is also considered the ultimate pastime by many. But what really is it all about? What are various formats and what’s the best gaming experience? We examine the options.

You Should Know...

Gaming Today

Games... where would we be without them? In a relatively short span of time, gaming has revolutionized our lives. It has grown from being a simple tool to pass our free time to a worldwide phenomenon. The video game industry itself is estimated to be worth $10 billion per year. Believe it or not, this is more than what even Hollywood rakes in!

One of the paradigm shifts to have taken place here over the last few years has also seen games appeal to a wider audience and not just teenagers. In countries like the US, gaming has even become a career option with players such as "Fata1ity" making a good living by winning some tournaments. Make no mistake: Gaming today is serious business.

Gaming Lingo and its Meaning

Like anything else related to computers, gaming has its own unique parlance. Here are some of the most commonly used words and their meanings:

1) FPS

a) First Person Shooter; which refers to the genre of game. For e.g.: Doom 3, Half Life 2
b) Frames Per Second; which refers to the number of frames displayed on the screen per second. Higher the number of frames, the smoother the performance.

2) RPG

Role Playing Game; which refers to the genre of game. E.g., Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

3) MMORPG

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game; a relatively new entrant into the gaming arena, it’s quickly gaining popularity with games like World Of Warcraft and Ragnarok.

4) Frag

One kill. Thus, the player with the highest ‘frags’ in Doom 3 is the one who killed the most demons.

5) Boss

Refers to a special type of enemy who is tougher to beat and usually appears towards the end of the level.

6) Camper

Refers to a person who stays hidden during a multiplayer game, and waits for people to come to him before attacking. Used in a derogatory sense.

7) Newbie

Inexperienced player. Again, not used in a good way!

8) NPC

Non Player Character. They are part of the game but controlled by the computer.

9) AI

Artificial Intelligence.

10) Cut-scenes

Small cinematic scenes that are thrown in during the game to liven things up.

PC or Console?

PC or Console?

Ever since the PC became a potent gaming device, one question has haunted all gamers: PC or Console? Both have their pros and cons, not to mention a dedicated fan base. Let’s take a look at the positives and negatives of each.

PC’s Rule...

PC’s are very popular for gaming. The biggest positive is that its uses are not restricted simply to games. You can use a PC for a million other things like browsing the web, creating and viewing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, or to listen to music, watch movies and so on.

At the same time, for people who only enjoy simple online games, PC is the only solution. In India, PC hardware is relatively easy to find, and PC games are available a dime-a-dozen. Further, if something goes wrong (which it invariably does) it is easy to locate a technician who can solve your problem in a jiffy.

Another, often overlooked point is the use of a keyboard and mouse. Since we have been using them all our lives, some people find it is much easier to play games with them, as opposed to a console where one has to first get used to a gamepad. Multiplayer online gaming is another big positive for PCs. All you need is a legitimate copy of the game and a decent Internet connection and you’re good to go.

Nothing in life is perfect though, and the PC is no exception. The biggest drawback of the PC is the fact that one needs to upgrade the hardware on a regular basis to play the newer games. With newer games pushing the envelope in terms of sheer power, often the low and mid-range systems can’t keep up. Thus, to stay contemperory one needs a bank account the size of London! Then there’s the ever-present problem of viruses. All it takes is one mistake and your computer could be lost forever. Not only does that mean giving up games until the problem is solved (an appalling suggestion in itself), it also means that if you’ve not backed up your game’s ‘save’ files, you will lose all your progress (major bummer).

Consoles are not bad either Consoles have been around much longer than the PC. From the humble beginnings of the very first Nintendo console to the ultra-modern PS2 or Xbox, it’s been a long journey for the gaming devices. With the PS3 and Xbox 360 all set to rock the world, it really is a great time to be a console gamer.

Consoles score big points where hardware is concerned, even though they effectively run on relatively old PC hardware. This is because all the games are optimised for that particular piece of hardware. If we take a look at the graphics, e.g., a PC game has to be built assuming that the gamer could be using either a low- or a top-end graphics card, and the game must perform acceptably in either case.

For a console, however, the hardware is always constant and thus the games look good enough to drool over without any issues like poor frame-rate. At the same time, this also means that there is no need to constantly upgrade the hardware, which allows you to save big bucks.

Further, consoles have traditionally been given preferential treatment over PCs, hence many games are either released exclusively for consoles (FIFA Street, Star Wars Episode 3) or are released on consoles months before they are released for the PC (GTA: San Andreas) Sadly, consoles are not easily available in India. PS2 is the only console which is officially available and this invariably forces the true enthusiast to turn to the local grey market to get anything else.

The paucity of consoles naturally leads to a shortage of games, legal or illegal. And even if you were to find the game of your choice, sky-high prices are sure to send you home empty handed. Online gaming is a major letdown since you need to pay to join an online gaming service such as Xbox Live, and most of these services are not available in India. As you can see, one can make a compelling case for both the PC and the console. While the jury is still out on console gaming in India, there is no doubt about its power and ‘game-friendliness’.

If you want a machine that is a jack of all trades, the PC is your best choice. If you want a hardcore gaming machine-lack of legally available hardware and software notwithstanding-there is no doubt that the console is what you are looking for.

Media Wars

In an ideal home theatre, the video aspect usually involves a largescreen or a high- definition television, or a projection system with a movie screen to project the image on.

In most cases, a projection TV is preferred; however, the astronomical cost of the television is the biggest hindrance. Most households substitute the projection or plasma television with their existing CRT television. Another option is to set up your home theatre with your personal computer acting as the media centre. With flat screens and LCD displays available in the market, the computer monitor is no longer a pariah in your entertainment centre. Of course, if you really are in the mood to splurge, you can go in for the 30-inch wide-angle display by Apple - running up expenses is not a very difficult thing!

A decently beefed-up computer can munch through large amounts of data without much trouble. A SoundBlaster card, a mid-level graphics card, and a 5.1 channel sound setup - and you have a decent media centre without going in for those big screen televisions or rear-projection televisions. The fact that your computer can do so much more than just let you watch movies or programmes makes it a very attractive alternative to a complete home theatre setup. Broadband Internet and media streams such as streaming video and Webcasts are a major reason as to why the computer would score over the television as the prime component of your media centre. You might not get the big-theatre experience while watching a movie on a 17-inch LCD screen, but for everything else, it works just as fine.

Another option in solving the media centre puzzle is the IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television. Revolutions in television broadcast such as TiVo and video-on-demand has pushed IPTV to the forefront and made it a strong contender as the centre of your media hub. It has also made it imperative that you merge your data and entertainment centre. With this merger, you can now watch live and recorded TV broadcasts, movies, browse through a library of digital photos, and stream MP3 music to your audio system - all from a central location. The idea is, in effect, to create a media centre that can store all your data (television programmes, movies etc.), act as your workspace, and also as a home theatre. Electronics companies are coming up with high definition LCD TVs that can access networks via broadband. These televisions can browse and play data stored on your computer’s hard drive - this will give you the necessary freedom to separate your workspace from your entertainment needs.

So would you lean towards a 17-inch LCD or CRT monitor, a stand alone 29-inch television, or a projection TV - or would it be the new age IPTV? As of today, in India, with broadband technology yet to get to the end user and with the cable television industry unregulated, it is best to de-link your workspace from your entertainment centre. A TV with network access capabilities and one that can directly access your hard disk via a home network seems to fit the bill quite well. This ensures that the big screen television can be used in one room while you work on a presentation on your computer and yet watch movies stored on your hard disk on the big screen TV when it catches your fancy.

That is what we call the perfect media hub. Of course there’s a price you’ll pay, and we are talking hard cash. How much?

Let’s Talk About Money, Baby!

Costs of consumer electronics are falling everyday. New discounts and lower prices are making high-end televisions and audio equipment accessible to the common man. DVD players which, until a few years ago, cost well over are now available for less than half that price. So is your home theatre soon going to be a reality?

To get a grip on the real price of an entire home theatre setup, we need to scratch below the surface and all the marketing gimmicks. The first task is to identify a true-blue home theatre system. A set of five speakers and a DVD player coupled with your existing television is what masquerades as a home theatre in most cases. As mentioned earlier, the sound format and your TV or any other viewing platform are two of the vital elements in your home cinema experience. Now let us assume two scenarios, one with the computer as your media hub and the other with the television.

For your personal computer to double up as a television you would need a TV tuner card. These cards are relatively cheap and a good quality card would cost you around Rs.3,000. In addition to this you would also need a good sound card that can handle 5.1- channel sound. (This is the minimum prescribed specification for a surround sound experience). A Creative Audigy Sound Blaster would lighten your pockets by a little over Rs 12,000. Instead of this, you could opt for a midrange card that sets you back by around Rs 8,000. Of course, to get the surround sound you would also need to install a 5.1 channel speaker system.

A good quality speaker would cost you a little over Rs.5,000. Of course, we’re assuming you wouldn’t want to watch movies on a 14-inch or 15-inch CRT. For an okay-ish movie experience you would need a 17-inch screen. That would put you back by Rs 6,000. If you are in a mood to splurge, you can go in for a 19-inch or 21- inch LCD display - and don’t get us started on the 30-inch wideangle display by Apple.

A DVD player is a necessity, and most computers today are equipped with a DVD drive. So the total cost of setting up a media hub with your PC as its centre would put you back by around Rs 25,000. You would get a decent enough viewing experience with the above-mentioned system, but don’t expect that 70mm feel. For that you would have to shift from your study to your living room. A home theatre with the television as the centrepiece is what most people look for. A 29-inch television, a DVD player and a surround sound system. The entire setup could easily put you back by Rs 35,000 or 40,000. If you go in for a rear-projection television or plasma screen, then you push the price into six figures, but that would ensure you’d never miss the big picture.

The Final Cut

If you’re not a movie buff and watch one only over the weekends or occasionally, then we’d suggest you just rig up the audio setup to your existing television or even your computer, provided you have at least a 17-inch monitor.

Think about it: do you really want a wide-screen TV and surround sound for those daily soaps? Someone in your household might, and thinking a little rationally will save you a lot of trouble. On the other hand, if movies are a daily diet and you have tonnes of cash to blow, then go ahead and splurge.

Go in for a 52-inch monster and blast the living daylights out of your neighbours with a 7.1-channel sound system. For your first home theatre, though, we’d suggest you rein in your aspirations and play it safe. Go in for a mid-range system that would make sure the five-day test match and the latest Spielberg film are given their due.

The Home Theatre

The movies are set to move from the cinema house into your living rooms। The home theatre experience is becoming a reality in many Indian homes। Here we take a quick glance at what makes that perfect home theatre setup.

Wouldn’t it be nice to watch the latest movies in the comfort of your home while still getting the theatre experience? It’s not the popcorn we are talking about - something more along the lines of surround sound and the big picture. Home entertainment just seems to be getting bigger and better, what with the advent of flat-screen TVs and DVD players, both of these well within the budget of an average household.

A number of companies offer what they call a home theatre experience. In most cases though, these setups are nothing more than a few speakers bundled with a DVD/VCD player. (The TV remains your existing model.) A real home theatre setup, however, requires more than just wiring up a few speakers and placing them in the four corners of your living room. There is a fair bit of acoustics involved in getting the right home theatre experience - this includes speaker placement and also selection of the size of your screen.

Stereo, 7.1 And More

Sound systems and speakers have come a long way from the simple phonogram. Today you have a variety of systems to choose from, be it satellite speakers placed in the corner of your room and subwoofer at the foot of your TV stand, or the elaborate multiple speaker setup that can reproduce each little sound. So moral of the story is that the more the number of satellite speakers you have the better it is, right? Wrong! Though a multiple-satellite-speaker setup will give you richer sound compared to simple stereo speakers, for a true theatre experience it is also important to have a good sound format.

DTS (Digital Theatre Surround) and Dolby Digital are two of the most commonly used sound formats across the world. DTS is a multi-channel surround-sound format used for commercial and consumer applications, that is, in movie halls and home theatre systems. It is primarily used for in-movie sound, both on film and on DVD. The basic and most common version of the format is a 5.1 channel system, supporting five primary speakers and a subwoofer. However, newer variants currently available support up to nine primary audio channels.

DTS’ main competitors are Dolby Digital and SDDS (Sony Digital Dynamic Sound), although only Dolby Digital and DTS are used on DVDs and implemented in home theatre hardware. Once you have the sound format figured out, it’s all about the speaker setup. The most commonly used setup is 5.1. This requires a left, centre and right front speakers, left and right surround speakers, and a subwoofer that produces the bass from all the main channels - or which may only do so for those speakers incapable of doing so. 6.1 channel sound is similar to 5.1, but there is an added centre-rear channel. The number of speakers in a setup can thus be increased for richer sound quality.

It is important to note that the sound channels offered to the speakers may be original, individual channels - or they may decode additional channels from the surround channels.

For the true movie-going experience, however, you’d need surround sound, and stacking up your 5.1-channel sound setup in a cluster is not the way to get it. As per the definition, surround sound is the spatial imaging of sound from one dimension onto two or three dimensions. Surround sound is generated in many ways. The simplest is to use several speakers around the listener to play audio coming from different directions. Another method involves processing the audio using sound localisation techniques to simulate a 3D sound field using headphones. More importantly surround sound is not limited to placement of speakers along a flat (two-dimensional) plane. Vertically-located audio sources should also be considered.

A very common question is, how do additional speakers yield a better home theatre experience? The centre or middle channel ensures that dialogues always seem to be coming directly from the screen. So viewers sitting at the side, too, would feel as if it’s emanating from the screen. Your additional speakers at the side relay the ambient sound and the secondary audio, such as the background score. The heart-pounding bass is, of course, courtesy the subwoofer. Once you have a sound idea about the audio setup, it’s time to take a look at the big picture.

Movie Lovers

Some of us are a lot more than movie lovers. We are movie maniacs! The reason why there are home theatre systems available that cost as much as a car (and some as much as a small bungalow), is because there are some people with enough money and passion for movies and audio to buy such systems.

When it comes to personal entertainment, nothing beats a great 5.1 home theatre system with a wide flat screen plasma display. It’s like being at the movies; but without the irritating cell phones ringing, talkative people, lines, dirty seats and bad food. The fact that you have a pause button for when the phone rings or nature calls is like icing on the cake!

Enough! There’s no need to beat this dead horse, we all know how great home theatres can be. We all want one! However, are there any available that suit our needs, or more importantly, our pockets?

Playing Director

Not all the fun of digital video lies in watching! After all, as the cameras in phones get better, and the market penetration of digital cameras soar, people are fast becoming directors in their own little movie worlds!

So whether it’s making a video CD out of your still photographs, or editing a home-movie that you shot yourself, a digital camera, a PC and a CD-writer is all you need to make your own movie and send it to your friends and family!

A large population run Windows XP on their systems, and as a result, have Windows Movie Maker pre-installed. Unfortunately, most of us don’t realise the power that this little “free” software has. Let’s learn more about Movie Maker:

The first step is to get the latest version of Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker from the windows update site. Visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=3646727 to update your Windows installation and get the latest version of Movie Maker. If you have a decent Internet connection and have Automatic Updates enabled on Windows XP, you probably will not need to update your version of Movie Maker.

Before you begin shooting or editing your movie, you need to make sure you have a decent system, capable of editing video. The minimum recommended system configuration is as follows:

- 1.5 GHz CPU
- Windows XP + SP2
- 256 MB RAM
- 64 MB video memory with 3D graphics acceleration
- Support for DirectX 9
- 4 GB free hard disk space
- CD-Writer or DVD-Writer drive
- Sound card + speakers or headphones
- Internet connection

If your system is underpowered, the editing will still work, but please don’t blame us for the sudden loss of hair or fingernails, brought on by irritatingly long waits and software crashes!

Your graphics card also needs to have an analogue input port (such as an S-Video port, or composite video) if your camera has only an analogue output. For most digital cameras, a FireWire (IEEE 1394) port should suffice. If you plan to use a Webcam, the standard USB connector will do as well.

Of course, all the above is necessary if you are planning on shooting the movie live. If you have already shot the video and have transferred it to your computer, all you have to do is import the movies into Movie Maker from their location on your hard disk and begin splicing them together!

Now that you’re all set to make your movie, your first hurdle is where to begin. As with any professional movie, what you need is a storyboard!

Storyboards

Storyboards are nothing but plans and blueprints of anything. We say anything because you can create a storyboard for a movie, a play, a presentation and even an article-yes we writers do it all the time as well!

The first step when building a storyboard is to import your movies into Movie Maker. When you start Movie Maker, you’ll see a column on the extreme left that is called ‘Movie Tasks’. Here you see 3 basic steps: “1. Capture Video”, “2. Edit Movie”, “3. Finish Movie”.

Under ‘Capture Video’, step you will see the “Import Video” link. Click on it and you can choose video files from anywhere on your hard drive. You can also choose to import still images here. Once the video and image files are imported to the collection, you will see thumbnails of them in the middle column. If you select a file, on the right you will see how it appears in Windows Media Player.

Now you can start dragging and dropping files from the Collection view to the storyboard at the bottom. You can press [Ctrl] + [W] to view the movie as it stands currently.

Editing

In the bottom pane you should see a ‘Show Timeline’ button. Click on it. You will see the length of each movie clip. Move the blue slider to a position in a clip where you want to cut it, and then drag the edge of the clip to that point. This is how you edit clips to shorten them.

If you want to break a clip up into two parts, just select it in the Timeline view and copy and paste it (using [Ctrl] + [C] and then [Ctrl] + [V]), and then edit the two clips into smaller parts. Windows Movie Maker automatically breaks large movie clips into smaller parts, so you should be able to edit them all easily, and even delete a few scenes in the middle.

Effects And Transitions

Once your storyboard is ready and you have edited the clips, you can add Video effects and transitions to them. To add effects, just right-click on a clip in either the Timeline or Storyboard view and choose Video Effects.

Here, you should be able to add from a list of effects on the left. If you just want a simple Fade In or Fade Out effect, right-click on a clip and select either Fade In or Fade Out, instead of clicking on ‘Video Effects’.

Transitions are easily achieved from one clip to another, much like it is in Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. Just click on the “Edit Movie” option in the left pane and you should see an option titled “View video transitions”. Click on this to get a list of transitions in the middle pane. Double clicking on a transition will preview it in the Media Player pane on the right. To add a transition, just drag and drop it into the timeline view at the appropriate spot.

You need to remember that effects are applied to a clip and transition applied between clips. So a transition will always occur between clips, and not in the middle of one. If you want a transition to occur in the middle of a clip, you will need to split that clip into two separate clips by using the copy + paste method described earlier.

Titles And Credits

Titles and credits can be used at the beginning and end of your movie. You can also overlay text on a clip so that it appears while the clip plays.

In the left pane, under the Edit Movie option, you should see a “Make titles or credits” link. Click on it and you will see the following options:

Add title at the beginning of the movie:
This will add a title to the beginning of the movie, such as introductory statements.

Add title before the selected clip in the timeline:
You can insert titles between clips using this option

Add title on the selected clip in the timeline:
This will overlay the title on the currently selected clip

Add title after the selected clip in the timeline:
You can insert titles between clips using this option

Add credits at the end of the movie:
This is where you are most likely to give yourself credit for making the movie Select the desired and relevant title, and then click on the “Change the title animation” and “Change the text font and color” to change the setting for the title. You can get loads of animation here, including the classic perspective scroll of text used in the beginning of every Star Wars movie made.

Finally, you should also choose the correct Credits’ animation and font style and colour and then click on ‘Done’.

Saving the Movie

Once you are done with everything, you can save your movie by selecting any one of the following, available under the “Finish Movie” option in the left pane:

- Save to my computer
- Save to CD
- Send in e-mail
- Send to the Web
- Send to DV camera

These options are self explanatory, and the most common choice will be “Save to my computer” anyway. And that’s how you can create decent looking movies using Windows Movie Maker.

Portable Fun

Perhaps the best thing about digital video is the fact that we can store it on portable devices for viewing on the road. Today, the amount of portable devices and gadgets available that can store and playback audio and video is on the rise.

Earlier, we would have to rely on laptops to carry entertainment with us. Though portable audio gadgets have been getting smaller and smaller, video face the problem of requiring a screen for viewing. This puts a limit on the amount that manufacturers can shrink a device, and thus affects portability.

Thankfully, major manufacturers have found a way to offer us just the right mix of portability and viewing comfort, in gadgets such as the iRiver and PDAs.

Yes, even PDAs are capable of storing a full movie or two: the Palm Zire 72 for instance, can store a full 700 MB movie on a 512 MB card, thanks to its Palm Desktop software, which compresses a video by reducing its size to fit the Zire 72’s screen. This obviously makes the file about four times smaller, and makes even this PDA a potential portable movie player.

We say potential, because, unless you have a dual-Athlon FX 57 with two 7800’s in SLi mode, converting a full length DivX movie for transfer to your Palm will have you staring at your screen for a few hours at least! Most other PDAs should also offer such functionality, for those of us crazy enough to wait three hours just to have The Matrix on our PDAs, to show off to friends!

We would recommend that people who need to have digital video entertainment on the move opt for a device that was made for video. Devices are available from most major brands, such as Archos, iRiver, Creative, Samsung, Viewsonic, etc. Even more devices are appearing in grey markets from manufacturers such as Dream’eo, Odd-i, Technova, MSI, etc.

The recent trend of adding more powerful processors and external memory card support to mobile phones means that we can soon expect to see video on demand services available to cell phone subscribers.

Overall, the most exciting leaps forward are being made in the portable device section, whether it’s for digital video or entertainment as a whole

DVD

Perhaps the most common form of digital video today is DVD video. A lot of us have DVD players at home, or DVD-ROM or DVD-RW drives that we use to watch DVD movies with. All home theatre systems are based on DVD video quality, and newer technologies such as High Definition Television (HDTV) will allow us to watch movies in even better quality.

The DVD is as good as it gets for personal entertainment currently, and it’s necessary that we understand what all that jargon means when talking about DVDs.

Given below is a jargon buster that will demystify a lot of terms and specifications that you will come across, and also help you understand how DVD video works.

DVD: Digital Video Disk / Digital Versatile Disk. This is a media format that can hold between 4.7 GB and 17 GB of data. Physically, it is the same size as a Compact Disc (CD)

DVD-ROM: The first DVD format, or a DVD drive that can read, but cannot write to a DVD disc

DVD-5: Single-layered, single-sided DVDs with a capacity of just under 5 GB (4.7 GB approximately)

DVD-9: Dual-Layered, single-sided DVDs with a capacity of 8.5 GB

DVD-10: Double-sided, single-layered DVDs with a capacity of 9.4 GB

DVD-18: Dual-layered, double-sided DVDs with a capacity of about 18 GB

DVD-R and DVD+R: A DVD disc that can be written to once, the + and - stand for the different formats supported by different DVD manufacturing conglomerates

DVD-RW, DVD+RW: A re-writable disc similar to CD-RWs, where data can be written and then erased and rewritten

DVD-RAM: A now outdated re-writable disc that needs a special hardware recorder. DVD-RAM discs generally come enclosed in plastic cassettes with a sliding opening that gives access to the disc-much like a floppy

Single-layer: A DVD disc that has only one writeable layer per writeable side. Data is “burnt” onto this layer using a laser when storing data

Dual-layer: A DVD disc that has two writeable layers per writeable side, effectively doubling the capacity of the disc as compared to normal single-layer DVDs

DVD-Video: This is the most common usage of DVDs today, and is almost always what people relate the word DVD with. A DVD movie disc is an example of a DVD-Video disc

DVD-Audio: A relatively new form of audio discs that can contain 5.1 channel sound, instead of the normal stereo sound of CDs. These discs contain high definition, high bit-rate audio that has been recorded in true surround (5.1 channel). Though still rare, this format is likely to grow more popular as more audio is recorded for DVD-Audio distribution

DVD Region Code: Every DVD disc can be coded specifically for use only in a particular geographical region. In order to assist this, DVDs can be region coded.

DVD players have a fixed region code that can only be changed a maximum of five times. This region coding is especially used in DVD movies to prevent people from viewing a movie on DVD before it is released in theatres.

For example, say a movie is released on DVD in the US, but has still not even been shown in theatres in India, then without region coding, people would import discs from the US to India and distribute them freely here. This would affect box office sales, and directly hurt the pockets of the movie’s producers. There are six regions in total, read on…

DVD Region 1
USA, Canada

DVD Region 2
Greenland, Europe, the Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Japan

DVD Region 3
Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia

DVD Region 4
South America, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Caribbean

DVD Region 5
India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Most of Africa, North Korea, Mongolia

DVD Region 6
China

Region Free DVD
In addition to the six regions, there is another symbol you might see on your DVD which symbolises that the DVD does not have region coding, and can be played on a DVD in any zone.

Codecs, Again?

Digital Video has its very own list of Codecs that help compress videos into manageable sizes।

The term Codec actually stands for code-decode. A Video Codec is a compression tool that encodes and compresses video data so as to make it more manageable-especially for transfer or broadcast over the Internet. Even for storage, raw (uncompressed) digital video can eat up thousands of mega bytes of your hard disk space. Codecs step in and code the video data and make it much smaller.

However, since these tools (mainly just mathematical algorithms) are used on one computer to encode and compress the file, another computer will need the same tool to decode and decompress the encoded video. This is where Codecs lose in terms of functionality. Though there are thousands of Codecs available, you will mostly come across only a few. The popularity of these few have ensured that 99 per cent of the video files you find on the Internet have been encoded using one of the Codecs mentioned here.

Video Codec is made up of both visual and audio components. The audio stream of a video is encoded using an audio Codec, and the video stream using a video Codec. This section only covers video Codecs!

Codecs

Since all Codecs have one common aim, to reduce file size as much as possible without affecting the quality of a video or audio stream, we will only be looking at the ones that work well here. Also, since the size of a video stream is orders of magnitude larger than its audio stream, compression is even more vital a matter for video Codecs.

DivX

DivX is a video compression format that is used to create and distribute multimedia content. Perhaps the most popular of video Codecs, DivX is used by hundreds of millions of users across the globe to either encode or decode compressed video.

The DivX bundle is available for free download, which includes a DivX movie player and the Codecs necessary to decode videos coded using the DivX algorithm. In order to encode video using the DivX algorithm, you have to purchase the DivX encoder. The freely available download of the decoder is available at http://www.divx.com/divx/download/.

XviD

Another popular video Codec today is the XviD Codec. This Codec, unlike DivX, is open source, and all developers are welcome to help with the project. A lot of movies and video clips available on the Internet are encoded using this Codec.

Currently, skilled video and software engineers from across the world are working on improving this Codec. You can download a Windows binary (installer) from http://www.xvidmovies.com/Codec/. If you are looking for the source code for XviD, visit http://www.xvid.org.

3ivX

Available at http://www.3ivx.com, this Codec is also popular online. Their 3ivX Filter suite let’s you create and play MP4 files. The 3ivX Codecs are also used to encode MOV files, both for the MAC as well as Windows platforms.

Avid

This is another popular Codec that is used quite widely for files available on the Internet. It is developed by Avid Technology, and is available at http://www.avid.com.

Windows Media Video 9 Series

Abbreviated as WMV9, this Codec now comes inbuilt with Windows Media Player, and gives you great quality encoding, though you will spend a lot more time encoding a video in this format. However, for making presentations where you need to capture your monitor screen as a video, this Codec is a great help.

You will also find quite a few videos online that use this Codec. Thankfully, there’s no Codec download or installation necessary to play files encoded with this Codec.

You can read more about it at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/Codecs/video.aspx

QuickTime

Apple Computer, the maker of Macintosh computers, is well known for building computers and operating systems with loads of visual appeal. They also have one of the most popular video formats around, especially if it’s movie trailers you want to watch online.

We should mention that QuickTime is not a Codec, but actually a player for playing video in the .mov file format. You can still find many tools to convert MPEG or AVI files to MOV files with smaller file sizes using lossless compression.

If you think that this is a lot of Codecs, and things seem to be getting complicated, you should pay a visit to http://www.fourcc.org/Codecs.php for an even bigger list of hundreds of Codecs, all of which you may come across when working with or viewing video files. There seems to be no limit to the amount of Codecs out there, and we wouldn’t blame you for being overwhelmed by the amount of reading you and downloading you would need to do to get all of these.

Though your media player should automatically download a required Codec when it comes across a video file that uses an unsupported one, this doesn’t always work out as well. As a result, if you are a Windows Media Player user, generally, you end up getting a dialog box that says something to the effect of “Codec not found”. Thankfully, as is usual, others have had the same problems, and found a solution for you.

Codec Packs

You can now get what are called Codec packs from the Internet. These packs contain the most commonly used Codecs for video on the Net, and install them all automatically.

KLite Codec Pack

This is a Codec that was popularised by users of KaZaA Lite, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing application. It contains a pretty impressive list of audio and video Codecs.

KLite Mega Codec Pack

This also includes codes for Real Media files and QuickTime files. It is one of the most comprehensive bundle of Codecs available.

Nimo Codec Pack

This Codec pack was popular until recently, and developers only recently stopped updating it. However, it is still an impressive Codec pack for Windows Media Player 9 and 10 users. A full list of other such Codec packs is available at http://www.free-Codecs.com/Codec_Packs.htm

Basics Of Video

So What is Video?

Video is nothing but a series of still images, displayed fast, one after the other. Each still image is called a frame, and the rate at which the images are displayed are called a video’s frame rate. Since the human eye is only capable of seeing less than 25 different images per second, any video that has a frame rate of 25 frames per second (fps) or more appears to have smooth movement, just as we perceive movement in real life!

If a video displays less than 25 different frames per second (fps), it appears to be jerky, and our eyes can perceive the breaks in movement.

At 25 fps or faster, however, video always looks realistic and smooth. The standard frame rate for analogue video is 25 fps for PAL (Phase Alternation Line) video, and 30 fps for NTSC (National Television Systems Committee) video. PAL and NTSC are the different kinds of video formats we receive TV signals in. Most countries use the standard PAL video format. NTSC is more prevalent in the US.

What Is Analogue Video?

Analogue video transmits or stores video data in a continuous wave of red green and blue (RGB). The signal is varied using different frequencies of each colour’s wave to display changing images at the receiver’s end. Since this format involves an unbroken transmission of wave data, it is prone to noise (distortion). However, since this continuous stream of data is very similar to the way we humans perceive the world-our eyes receive a continuous stream of light waves, which our brain perceives as moving images (video)-analogue video data represents reality better.

What Is Digital Video?

Digital video is nothing more than a series of images, all stored in digital format (ones and zeroes) that is displayed in quick succession on a screen (such as a computer monitor).

A digital video recorder, for example, takes analogue signals (light waves) and records them into a digital representation of the analogue data. So almost all digital video is nothing but a computer’s understanding of analogue video. There are exceptions, such as in the case of, say, games, where there is no analogue data to begin with, and all the data is created and displayed digitally.

Which Is Better?

Though there is no perceivable difference between analogue and digital video to the human eye, digital video is preferred because of the ease with which it can be manipulated.

In order to, say, edit a video, or to store it easily, digital format offers a great advantage. You can just open up a software and start editing your digital video, or store hundreds of movies, or movie clips, on your hard drive, or even make copies of your personal videos and share them easily with your friends or family. With computers in our lives, doing all this has become a no-brainer, for most.

With analogue video, you would need to store each video on a video cassette, and making copies of that cassette would involve two video cassette recorders-one playing back the cassette, and another recording the video in real time on to another cassette which is a very tedious task. With digital video, the same task becomes as easy as copying the video file to another computer or device, or even e-mailing it to hundreds of friends and family members. This is where digital video has the definite upper hand.

Where Do I See Digital Video?

Since we only see through our eyes, and our eyes are analogue video receivers, one could say that you NEVER see digital video at all!

However, we’ll leave such philosophical thoughts behind us within this book and consider only the way in which videos are created, stored, or displayed as the parameters of segregating them into digital or analogue.

Most people don’t realise it, but every second you spend in front of your computer, you are seeing digital video. Every movie or video clip you watch on your computer is digital video; every DVD you pop into the DVD player or DVD-ROM drive is an instance of digital video; the same goes for VCDs, and the MMSes you send and receive; even animated GIF files on the Internet are the same, as are streaming movies or clips. The list is endless.

Even satellite television is transmitted today using digital signals, which are converted to analogue at your cable-provider’s premises, before being transmitted to you. Perhaps our only interaction with analogue video today is when watching a movie in a theatre and when watching or recording videos video cassette players or cameras.

How Does A Computer Display Digital Video?

This is perhaps the most basic of questions that all of us want to know. Let’s start with how a computer displays data on the monitor:

The Monitor

Let’s get to know the computer monitor better first. The most important human interface device in a computer is the monitor, because it is what we humans look at to understand what is currently happening inside our computer system. Even though the computer has no use for text and graphics and works only in terms of ones and zeroes (data), the computer display shows us text and graphics, which our minds are able to understand.

Most of us work with Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors, which are much like the TVs we all have at home. A few of us choose to pay that little extra and opt for Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) monitors (as on laptops).

The words we most often hear when dealing with monitors are “refresh rate” and “resolution”. Here, maximum resolution is the maximum number of dots (pixels) that a monitor can display along its horizontal axis and vertical axis. Thus, a monitor with a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 can display a maximum of 1024 pixels along its horizontal axis and 768 pixels along its vertical axis.

The refresh rate of a monitor is pretty straight forwardly, the number of times it can draw a whole screen of pixels (1024 horizontal and 768 vertical, in the previous example) per second. So a refresh rate of 85 Hertz (Hz, or number of times per second) at a resolution of 1024 x 768 means that a monitor is drawing the whole screen of 1024 x 768 pixels 85 times per second.

Another term you will come across is wide-screen. In order to explain wide-screen, we first have to talk about aspect ratios: The aspect ratio of a display is the ratio of the number of horizontal pixels to vertical pixels. The most common aspect ratio is 4:3 for most computer monitors. However, in order to display certain games and most DVD movies optimally, the wide-screen display was made.

Wide-screen displays have an aspect ratio of 16:9. Many people are confused by the difference between 4:3 and 16:9, as at first glance they seem to be the same ratio. A simple math calculation will show you that 4:3 = 1.333, whereas 16:9 = 1.777. So it’s quite clear that the 16:9 ratio means a much wider screen! Most computer monitors are analogue display devices.

This means that although the computer produces digital signals, the monitor only accepts analogue signals. The monitor connects to the video adapter or graphics card inside the computer to receive analogue signals.

The Graphics Card

This is the device that converts a computer’s digital data output stream into analogue, so that the monitor can understand and display correctly. The graphics card receives digital data from the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Random Access Memory (RAM) inside your computer, converts it all into an analogue signal and then sends the analogue signal to the monitor. This is what you finally see.

Most graphics cards also do advanced graphical computation and take away computing load from your CPU. These involve complex 3D computations that are required by most games of today.

How They Work Together

When you move your mouse, the mouse senses movement and sends the necessary data to the CPU, which in turn, makes sense of the movement and translates that into X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) coordinates. This data is sent to the graphics card or video adapter, which in turn, moves the mouse pointer that’s displayed on your screen to the correct co-ordinates. Since this all happens in millionths of a second, when you move your mouse, it appears to move smoothly across your screen, just as if there is a video playing. This is perhaps the most basic for of digital video that you see everyday on your computer!

It’s the same basic operation for everything you see on your computer, whether it’s moving a mouse, typing on the keyboard and seeing letters appear on your screen, or even watching a movie or playing a game. It’s all video, and all digital. If both monitor and graphics card support digital video inputs and outputs, respectively, you can have digital video all the way from the CPU to the monitor! Of course these are more expensive and rare, but are catching on fast.

Let’s move on to the real meat of Digital Entertainment, movies and movie clips that you watch, edit or shoot with the help of your computer!

Digital Video

When it comes to digital entertainment, video is perhaps the most important aspect. All of us love movies, music videos and even love to play director with our own home movies. This chapter will give you a better understanding of how to use video as your primary source of leisure and entertainment.

The Evolution Of Video

The entire concept of video is only a few centuries old and true video broadcasting systems are even younger. Like most other technologies, video has grown immensely in the last couple of decades, from something that only professionals or the rich could afford, to a tool for everyone. Within half a century, we’ve gone from the marvels of silent movies on the big screen to personal video recording devices that rival the clarity and colour reproduction of big budget production houses.

The movie industry never looked back after the debut of the first full-colour talking movie, Becky Sharp, released in 1935. In the 70-odd years since, video has taken over our lives. Today, thanks to a combination of hardware and software that most people can afford, you could sit at home and make a pretty decent home movie, complete with special effects and great editing-the only thing holding you back is your talent and understanding of the magic that is digital video.

The first colour movies were made using cameras that passed light over three different coloured films (red, green and blue-RGB), this was later upgraded to film capable of capturing RGB colours. All this was analogue back then, obviously.

However, even with digital imaging, the basic definition of video remains unchanged: “Many still images being displayed one after another at a very fast rate so as to give the ‘illusion’ of movement.” Basically, whether digital or analogue, video works exactly the same way!

Workshop

In this workshop, we will talk about choosing the best codec for your needs be it for encoding your files or making your own recordings. Although here we are only looking at four major codecs which are MP3, AAC, WMA and Ogg Vorbis (not necessarily in that order). For our experiments, we will take a source file that is an uncompressed PCM .wav file approximately worth 43MB of disk space. Using software that is freely available on the Internet, for instance the LAME MP3 encoder we will encode this file to a smaller size both using lossy and lossless formats and compare these results. So let’s get on with it.

Windows Media Player 10

We have chosen this particular version of Windows Media Player since it lets you encode files in the MP3 format too, other than Windows Media Audio.

Windows Media Player does not let you encode .wav files off your hard drive. What you can do is rip music of a CD. Nevertheless, here is how you can compare your results. First off, rip the song that you want to encode to a .WAV file using a free software such as EAC or dBPowerAmp to your hard drive. Next use Windows Media Player to rip the same song from the CD to a .WMA file and compare the results. The steps below will make this more clearer for you.

In Windows Media Player 10, click on the Rip tab in the default Window or from the Menu Bar, click on View-Go To- Rip. This will take you to the CD track list window.

Now click on Tools-Options. This will open a new window. Click on the Rip Music tab in this Window. In the Rip Settings box, under the Format drop down list you will see the options available for ripping the track from the CD.

Choose any of the option that you want. If you are of the audiophile kind, the best would obviously mean choosing the Windows Media Lossless. As part of the Microsoft DRM program, this option lets you choose if you want to copy protect the music. You can check this box if you want. Now, that we are done with the settings lets start with the ripping. For this, just press the Rip Music in the Windows Media Player window.

Lets compare the sizes now. After ripping the song using the lossless codec, the file size 30.1MB is about 11MB lesser than the original .WAV file. What about the sound quality? Much, much better than the regular 128Kbps MP3 file. The average bit rate for this file is 1041Kbps which is much higher than the even the highest MP3 encoding rate which is 320Kbps.

In a similar manner, you can choose MP3 to be the file type of the music that you are ripping in the Rip Music options and rip the song. Our 43MB file in this case is compressed to approximately 10MB file at a bit rate of 320Kbps. Sound quality is good but if you listen really closely, there will be points where you can make out the difference between the original and the compressed files.

AAC

AAC or Advanced Audio Coding is a MPEG-2/MPEG-4 and is the audio codec of choice for Internet, wireless and digital broadcast. This is a good option if you want to stream audio or want your audio to consume a smaller footprint of your total data. AAC encoding is extremely efficient and easily surpasses the MP3 codec and provides surround sound options. The MPEG group that includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony and Nokia developed AAC, top of the line companies, also involved in manufacturing equipment that affects our daily lives.

For converting our .WAV audio file to an AAC file, we will need to use iTunes which is freely downloadable from the Apple website. Once you have downloaded and installed the software, follow these instructions to create your AAC file.

First click on File -> Add File to Library, then browse, and locate the file that you want to encode.

After adding the file, we will need to set the settings for encoding this file. For this go to Edit-Preferences and in the new window that opens click on the Importing Tab. Here you will see that, similar to Windows Media Player, above there are a lot of codec options including Apple Lossless for you to encode your .WAV file with. You will also see a WAV file encoder that will let you encode your Audio CD tracks to WAV files using iTunes. Next, we choose the AAC Encoder option. By default the option is set to 128 Kbps which we will not choose. Click on the drop down list and choose Custom which will pop up a new window asking you to configure the various settings as you like.

Once you are done making the changes, click on OK twice. Now right click on the file that you want to encode to AAC and then click on the Encode to AAC option. This will start the process. After encoding the file at 320Kbps, the file size is similar to the MP3 file that we made earlier. The sound quality, though, is better than the MP3 file.

Ogg Vorbis

Ogg Vorbis is an open-source audio codec that is still being developed as an answer to both MP3 and AAC. It supports multi-channels and also high bit-rate encoding that rivals the sound quality of any MP3 or for that matter any AAC file. For our workshop, we will use a tiny utility called the oggdropXPdV.

This is a tiny (literally) GUI utility that lets you encode your WAV files to Ogg Vorbis format files.

For this simply drag your .WAV files in the fish box as seen in the screenshot to start encoding.

But before we start encoding we will need to set the encoding quality options, that will let us compare it with our previous files. For doing this, simply right click on the Fish icon box and then click on Encoding options. The above image is what you will see. Here click on the radio button under Bitrate Management and choose CBR mode and choose the nominal bitrate as 320Kbps. You can also go higher, but lets keep it at this to be able to compare the resultant file with the previous files. Now, drag your .WAV file in to the Fish icon box and the encoding process starts. Even this file is the same file size at 320Kbps. The sound quality is better than MP3 and easily comparable to the AAC file.

This workshop was intended to provide you with a glimpse of what you can do and what options are available for you to use when encoding music. Of course, audio is very subjective and you will need to carry out your own experiments to come up with the best solution for your specific needs.

Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD)

The SACD has been developed by the same two companies, which gave us the CD, Sony and Philips. While both these companies are also a part of the DVD Forum, they have gone ahead and brought out a product that directly competes with the DVD-Audio format.

The SACD utilizes a completely different way of encoding music on to a CD. While DVD-Audio discs use PCM (Pulse Code Modulation)/LPCM (Linear PCM) and MLP (Meridian Lossless Packaging) {PPCM- Packed PCM} techniques to contain music on a disc, SACD utilizes a technology called DSD (Direct Stream Digital) and DST (Direct Stream Transfer). Both these technologies are innovative but it is PCM, which represents music more truly than the SACD DSD technology. However, the bandwidth provided by these technologies for playing music is more than enough for pleasing any audiophile.

One of the main drawbacks of the SACD is that the current implementation of the SACD is audio only and does not contain any other information for the tracks that some DVD-Audio discs offer। However, the SACD has an advantage in terms of market acceptance since there is a version of SACD available called the Hybrid Disc.

Comparing the newer formats
		DVD Video		DVD Audio		SACD		DVDPlus\DualDisc
High resolution audio		No		Yes		Yes		Yes
Multi-channel audio		Yes		Yes		Yes		Yes
Audio coding		DD/DTS/PCM		PCM/MLP		DSD & DST		PCM/MLP
Max bit rate		6.144		9.6		—		9.6
(Mb/s)
Video and still images		Yes		Yes		No		Yes
Menus & Navigation		Yes		Yes		No		Yes
Copy protection		Weak		Strong		Stronger		Strong
Plays on DVD-V player		Yes		Yes		No		Yes
Plays on DVD-A player		Yes		Yes		No		Yes
Plays on CD player		No		No		Yes (Hybrid)		Yes

which has been available for a long time even before DVDPlus discs were introduced. Similar to the DualDisc, the Hybrid disc contains one high-density SACD layer that is only visible to SACD players while the CD layer is visible to the regular CD players. So you get the best of both worlds. So how do these formats compare with each other? Let this table give you a heads-up on that.

With these newer formats, digital audio has been completely transformed. Technologies such as MLP and DSD have packed more information on one single disc without losing information that the quintessential audiophile will miss. Welcome to the new wave of audio!

Companions on the move

The Walkman or for that matter the Discman remains the mode of portable music for people on the move. However, with the advent of digital music and the iPod (of course!) the Digital Audio Player is now on the warpath to become the new portable audio solution for people on the move.

Digital Audio Players or MP3 players as they are known commonly debuted in September 1998 with the release of the Rio 300 portable MP3 player from Diamond Multimedia. Nevertheless, with that came a lawsuit from the RIAA that prevented Diamond from selling its players to prevent piracy. Diamond counter-sued and after a bitter legal battle, Diamond Multimedia finally won the lawsuit. By the summer of 1999, the Rio 300, along with the Creative Nomad and other portable players, became the new, must-have gadgets around the world.

The first players were only able to playback MP3 files and were not free of the occasional hiccups that made the pleasure of listening to music on the go, a sudden death wish. The players would hang playing music or playing back VBR encoded MP3 files that was a more common malady. Nevertheless, as with every new technology, each new generation brings in improvements and newer additions. Today, a MP3 player or Digital Audio Player (to be more politically correct) can playback MP3/WMA/OGG/ASF/AAC and other file formats. Even the most basic Digital Portable Audio Players available today can playback MP3 and WMA encoded files while the other file types are optional.

Talking about Digital Portable Audio Players, how can we miss the Apple iPod? One look at an iPod and anyone will be hooked on to it. The Apple iPod is more than responsible for making Digital Portable Audio Players a rage amongst the masses.

Newer players that do not sport the iPod tag are also available and their features sometimes far surpass those present on the iPod. However, the iPod still remains an icon when it comes to owning a Digital Portable Audio Player.