Watching TV on your computer is becoming more and more commonplace, but the next step in home entertainment is finding a way to get Internet video, including streaming programs, video podcasts, and paid downloaded shows and movies, to play on your actual television. While it is possible today with a variey of hardware and software […]
By February, 2009, all television stations in the US are required by federal law to convert their over-the-air analog broadcasts to digital television (DTV) broadcasts. However, there is a lot of misinformation going around with regard to what that transition means to the consumer.
First of all, the transition will only impact free over-the-air broadcasts via […]
Blu-ray Disc (abbreviated either BD or BRD) is the brand name for a new type, or format, of optical media disc. Blu-ray discs are the same physical size as standard CDs and DVDs and look very similar. Its name comes from the fact that it uses a blue laser (actually the violet spectrum) to read […]
High-definition television (often shortened to high-def or abbreviated HDTV) refers to the increased level of detail and clarity which is possible on the latest generation of television displays.
Of course, terms like high definition are always relative to the previous technology, just as high fidelity audio in the 1950s was better than its predecessor, but not […]
The difference between an analog broadcast and a digital broadcast is difficult to explain without some prior knowledge of how radio and television signals get from the tower to your home in the first place. Suffice it to say that broadcast signals are a type of electromagnetic wave that carries data through space. How far […]
Size, compression, and resolution are three characteristics which determine the quality of a digital photograph. The size of a digital photo is usually expressed in terms of pixel dimensions, such as 1024 x 768. The quality of digital cameras is usually expressed in megapixels, which represents one million photo sensors in the camera.
While megapixels and […]
The Global Positioning System, abbreviated and more commonly known as GPS, is a tracking system that allows a GPS device on earth, called a receiver, to determine its precise location by measuring microwave signals from orbiting satellites. Since it uses extremely accurate clocks and makes this determination essentially instantaneously, it can use a series of […]
Satellite radio is a digital broadcast of traditional styles of radio programming available only by subscription. As the name implies, the radio signal is transmitted from communication satellites, instead of terrestrial radio towers.
In the US, the two providers are Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. In order to receive satellite radio, you have to […]