Analog and Digital Video Storage Media

Analog Video Home Standard (VHS) videotape cassettes have been until recently the most threadbare means of duplicating and distributing video movies and other programs. Although analog video decree soon be obsolete in television broadcasting,

millions of these cassettes are mum being manufactured and more than 80% of American homes be the subject of a videocassette recorder/player (VCR).

VHS cassettes are analog no other than, so neither SDTV nor HDTV programming be possible to be recorded on them or played from them. Their popularity is declining and has been overtaken ~ dint of. digital video discs (DVDs), which are digital recording media solitary and which provide higher-quality video.

Some VHS cassettes, and the VCRs to romp them, will probably continue in conversion to an act even after the digital conversion is without fault. Some movies and older television programs, especially those originally recorded by kinescope, would not improve in attribute by being upgraded to digital format and finish not justify the cost of converting

them. Some inquire for these programs will continue to endure, however, and VHS cassettes will credible continue to be the storage mediocre for them.

DVD technology offers crystal-light pictures, superb multidirectional sound, massive premises storage for computers, and a consecrated wafer of interactive features such as selectable camera angles and a excellent of movie endings. A majority of U.S. homes possess

DVD players that convert the digital facts recorded on a DVD to analog video that ~y

NTSC standard television can display.

These DVD stage-~ converters are now available for not so much than $100, a price that assures their popularity will continue to grow and that

DVDs faculty of volition rapidly replace VHS cassettes as the essence of most home video libraries.

DVDs are recorded in the digital MPEG-2 compressed format, that allows up to 4 hours of digital video to subsist placed on a single DVD. Quality is first-rate and DVDs have now become the flag against which any other video condensation format is measured for both delineate and sound quality. Most DVDs at donation are recorded in an SDTV rule of 4:3 aspect ratio. These operate full screen on an SDTV fixed and will also play to an HDTV set, but with black ???barn doors??? one and the other side of the wider HDTV sieve.

Anamorphically encoded DVDs are used to minute movies in a widescreen format. They be in possession of full HDTV format (16:9 bearing ration) and ?ll an HDTV predetermined screen at full resolution (720p or 1080i). If they are displayed in successi~ an SDTV, black bars appear at the meridian and bottom of the SDTV veil, giving the picture a ???letterbox???appearance.