Digital Video and HDTV Algorithms and Interfaces (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)

Rapidly evolving computer and communications technologies have achieved data transmission rates and data storage capacities high enough for digital video. But video involves much more than just pushing bits! Achieving the best possible image quality, accurate color, and smooth motion requires understanding many aspects of image acquisition, coding, processing, and display that are outside the usual realm of computer graphics. At the same time, video system designers are facing new demands to interface with film and computer system that require techniques outside conventional video engineering.

Charles Poynton's 1996 book A Technical Introduction to Digital Video became an industry favorite for its succinct, accurate, and accessible treatment of standard definition television (SDTV). In Digital Video and HDTV, Poynton augments that book with coverage of high definition television (HDTV) and compression systems.

For more information on HDTV Retail markets, go to: http://www.insightmedia.info/newsletters.php#hdtv

With the help of hundreds of high quality technical illustrations, this book presents the following topics:

* Basic concepts of digitization, sampling, quantization, gamma, and filtering
* Principles of color science as applied to image capture and display
* Scanning and coding of SDTV and HDTV
* Video color coding: luma, chroma (4:2:2 component video, 4fSC composite video)
* Analog NTSC and PAL
* Studio systems and interfaces
* Compression technology, including M-JPEG and MPEG-2
* Broadcast standards and consumer video equipment
Customer Review: Very useful, but ...
This book is undoubtedly useful for any practicing video engineer and for anyone seeking to familiarize themselves with video standards and technology. It covers a broad range of topics under one cover. Depth is lacking in most parts, but then this book is not intended to be used for theoretical study. It is a handy guide to have at one's desk. My biggest and only complaint is about the way the material is presented, which, in my opinion, is highly unstructured and makes the book much more difficult to read than it needs to be. In almost every chapter, the author asks the reader to refer to the material in both future as well past chapters for details. As an example, the section on nonlinear image coding, on p.12, refers to the material in different chapters on pages, 197, 198, 203 and 257! Nonetheless, despite this writing flaw, the book is recommended.
Customer Review: Comprehensive and dense
Not an easy read for beginners. If you are serious about video (i.e. work related), get this, it is recommended reading in the field.

DLP Is The Technology For Really Big Screens

There are a lot of advantages to having the set up of using a DLP projector for your TV needs. The most obvious one- next to the huge screen size of course- is the fact that it's relatively easy to conceal a projector and a pull down movie screen. This makes a big difference as far as where you can set one up with respect to your home decor. Projectors can be mounted on ceilings and tables, and concealed on shelves or in any number of clever places. When you consider the fact that all of the cables and other attachments that need to be connected to any television set can be concealed along with the projector, using a DLP projector can really clean up the look of your home entertainment center. After all, a home entertainment center is something that you want to use, not look at!

Digital Light Processing was created by Texas Instruments and is based on a special kind of chip that's covered with microscopic mirrors. The chip controls each one of the mirrors so that it reflects light at a different intensity and wavelength. Each mirror also represents a single pixel on the TV screen. The result of this system is a rich variety of colors and very precise control over the actual pixels on the TV screen.

In general, if you want a really big screen for watching movies, TV, or playing video games; you can't go wrong with a DLP projector.

DLP projectors for private home use tend to be expensive, but when you take into account that they can produce good images on screens as large as fifteen feet across, they tend to be the best value in terms of getting large screen sizes. While a consumer DLP projector that delivers a screen size of seven feet might cost three or four thousand dollars (depending on the brand and model) a flat panel display of comparable size might cost thirty thousand dollars!

One application of DLP technology that gets around the problems of the bulk and space consumption of projection screen TV sets- and that many people largely ignore- is using it in an actual movie projector. There are a number of commercial applications for this. In fact some movie theaters use commercial grade DLP projectors to put their movies onto their big screens. There are also projectors that work this way available for private home use.

Because of the way that DLP technology works, it can't be used in a flat panel display- it simply requires too much distance for the light to be projected onto the screen. For that reason, Digital Light Processing is best utilized in projection screen TV's. Of course projection screen TV's have a number of disadvantages stemming around the fact that they have to be large and therefore difficult to transport, find a space for, and install.