What Is Digital Entertainment?

For more than 10 years now, digital entertainment has been a part of our lives and it has steadily been improving and enriching the whole experience. But what exactly is digital entertainment? Can we point fingers and say that something is or isn't digital entertainment? Not quite. But in a rudimentary sort of way, we can say that any entertainment we enjoy using a medium that is dependent on digitisation is digital entertainment. Is it really necessary to classify it thus? No, for most of it today, is digital. From the music we enjoy to the movies we see to the games we play to even the TV we watch… everything forms a part of the umbrella that is digital entertainment.

Take the case of music. Moving from cassettes to CDs and now slowly to MP3 and other encoded formats, music has become increasingly digital. Over the last few years, it has not even been necessary for singers to be present when the instruments played. In fact, in some cases, this has provided better results! While this did give rise to issues such as filesharing and illegal swapping of music, on the whole, the experience has been easier. No longer is there the problem of degrading quality of tapes or cassettes because CDs last longer (unless scratched) and MP3s cannot be touched physically nor can they be affected by external atmospheric changes.

But this paradigm shift has brought about additional costs to the consumer in terms of investment of hardware, be it a MP3 player or a CD player. In any case, this hardly seems to have been a deterrent considering the sales figures!

Like music, television and video have also undergone a sea change and are today so different compared to 10 years ago that they are almost unrecognisable. The ubiquitous TV is also undergoing vast changes and is at the cusp of going high definition (HDTV) with improved audio visual quality. Once again, though, the initial costs could prove to be restrictive.

Video, too has changed dramatically from the handheld 16mm cameras of yore and are today capable of writing a DVD as they shoot. In-camera effects and transitions are the next stage as are different formats and quality levels that will soon enter this arena. And how can we forget the pint-sized wonder that is the cell phone? The cell phone is perhaps the first one to undergo a change in technology and also be accepted (or rejected). The day is not far when the cell phone could be test bed for the rest of the media.