How Video Works

By the end of this article, you'll be able to watch movies and videos with a whole new understanding of the process of their production! There are a lot of things involved in showing theatrical movies on a television because movies and television are very different mediums. Movie film is a very physical medium.

How Video Works

It's exactly like the film in your still camera in that it records visual information with chemical reactions on special material. Video, on the other hand, stores visual information as an electronic signal that can be transmitted via radio waves , sent through coaxial cable, etc. Because of this, film and video have very different properties. For one thing, they don't split up still images the same way. Filmed movie frames must therefore be reorganized into a video format before a movie can be shown on a television. The more controversial formatting issue is changing the shape of a movie's picture so that it fills a television screen.

Video producers significantly change most movies from their original theatrical presentation because standard television screens have a different shape than standard movie pictures. A standard television has an aspect ratio , or ratio of width to height, of 4: Another way to express this ratio as 1. This means that a television screen is 1.

How Video Works - Marcus Weise, Diana Weynand - Google Книги

Theatrical movies are filmed using several different aspect ratios, almost all of which are somewhat wider than a television screen. Cable companies have to find ways to meet customer expectations, particularly in light of the fact that HD television providers already offer dozens of channels in HD format. Switched digital video uses a different delivery system.

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Instead of combining all channels into one programming stream throughout the network, the cable company selects only the most popular channels for a network-wide stream. For less popular programming, the company responds to individual customer demands as the customer tunes in to that channel.

Recensie(s)

In other words, the service provider sends only the channels customers are actually trying to watch. Because the system only sends customer-demanded channels, there's a lot of spare bandwidth left over for other services. According to IneoQuest, a company that offers SDV solutions to cable companies, around 80 percent of all viewers in a given area are watching the same top 20 channels [source: Switched Digital Video Solutions ].

Providing only the requested channel feeds would free up enough bandwidth for the cable company to:. In this article, we'll examine the architecture and equipment used in an SDV system, and we'll learn about the potential advantages and disadvantages of SDV.

We'll also look at some companies and markets that are already using SDV. Aside from bells and whistles like video on demand, digital phone and Internet, a cable company's mission is pretty simple and straightfoward. This video from HowStuffWorks explains the basics of cable television.

Are You a U. Do I really need a digital converter box for my TV? How Switched Digital Video Works.