1080p: 1,920 pixels per line which has 1,080 horizontal lines – displayed progressively. Progressive Scanning – each line displayed following another. This is the one you want!
1080i: 1,920 pixels per line which has 1,080 horizontal lines – displayed alternately. Interlaced Scanning – all the odd lines are displayed, then followed by all the even lines.
720p: 1,280 pixels per line which has 720 horizontal lines – displayed thru Progressive Scanning – each line displayed following another.
16×9: Standardized aspect ratio of HDTV & Widescreen SDTV. It has a width of 16 units & a height of 9 units.
1920×1080: Refers to a digital sampling structure of 1920 horizontally & 1080 vertically. These images can be scanned either interlaced (1080i) or progressively (1080P).
24P: 24 full frames per second digital video progressively captured. This usually refers to the HD picture format of 1920×1080.
29.97P: 29.97 full frames per second digital video progressively captured.
30P: 30 full frames per second digital video progressively captured.
59.94i: Interlaced video signal where 1/2 of the total lines of the picture are captured & displayed every 1/59.94th of a second.
59.94P: Progressive video signal where all lines of the picture are captured & displayed every 1/59.94th of a second.
60i: Interlaced video signal where 1/2 of the total lines of the picture are captured & displayed every 1/60th of a second.
60P: Progressive video signal where all of the total lines of the picture are captured and displayed every 1/60th of a second.
720p: 1,280 pixels per line which has 720 horizontal lines – displayed thru Progressive Scanning – each line displayed following another.
480p: 720 pixels per line which has 480 horizontal lines which uses Progressive Scanning each line displayed following another.
480i: 720 pixels per line which has 480 horizontal lines displayed alternately. In other words
Interlaced Scanning where all the odd lines are displayed, then followed by all the even lines.
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A/D, ADC: Analog to Digital Conversion.
Aspect Ratio (Picture): Ratio of screen width to screen height. Can be Width by Height
(Example: 16×9, 4×3) or a calculated ratio (1.33:1, 1.78:1)
Some common aspect ratios:
1.33 (4×3) Standard Television or Academy Standard
1.78 (16×9) HDTV
1.85 Academy Flat
2.35 Cinemascope
Aspect Ratio (Pixel): Ratio of pixel width to pixel height. Standard NTSC digital video has rectangular pixels. Computers & HDTV have square pixels.
Analog: The recording of sound that resembles the original.
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Bandwidth: Is the width of a range of frequencies, measured in hertz.
Bitstream: Name given to a collection of data, (video or audio) that’s compressed
to a file or transmitted between devices. Blu-Ray: Blu-ray or Blu-ray disc is an optical disc storage medium. It was mainly developed to be use for recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD). Its physical appearance is the same as a DVD or CD.
Bonus View: This refers to Blu-ray players with Profile 1.1. They have Built-in persistent memory (64k), local storage capability (256MB), Secondary video decoder (Picture-in-Picture), Secondary audio decoder & virtual file system.
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CD: Compact disc containing digitally recorded sound.
CD-R: Recordable CD.
CD-ROM: Compact Disc-Read Only Memory, a CD with data files on it.
Codecs: a method of compressing stored audio/video more efficiently. This allows for either
low space usage or quality per megabyte. There are both lossless and lossy compression
techniques. BD-ROM has to support MPEG-2, MPEG4, and SMPTE VC-1 video codecs. Audio
codecs that have to be supported are Dolby Digital, PCM, and DTS Digital Surround.
Component video: This is color video transmitted with the luminance (Y) on one wire & the color
signals on other wires, or each color on its own wire. Examples: R,G,B; Y(R-Y)/(B-Y), Y/I/Q,
Y/U/V, 4:2:2.
Compression: This is the common process for storing digital data in a smaller space than it would normally take to hold the data.
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Digital media: Refers to both audio and video sources such as audio CD, DVD, and Blu-ray that can store audio and video in the digital format.
DRM: Digital Rights Management or DRM is used to try and deter piracy
of copyright content such as digital files.
DVD: Disc that can hold the data of 7 CD-ROMs and play full motion video and audio with good quality.
Dynamic range: Ratio comparing the lowest level of sound audible that’s above the noise of the machine with the highest level; this is the range of loudness a device can handle without
distorting the sound. Obviously, wider dynamic range represents truer sound fidelity.
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fps: Frames per second.
Frames: Individual video images that make up a moving sequence.
Frame rate: Playback speed as determined in frames per second.
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GB: Gigabytes (billions of bytes). A gigabyte actually represents the closest binary power of 2 to a billion or 1024 cubed.
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HDTV or High-Definition Television: It’s a method of displaying sharper, wider TV pictures than the present NTSC system. Pictures are shaped into a 16:9 aspect ratio, composed of 1,125 scanning lines, each line with 1,920 pixels.
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Infrared: Red Light that’s invisible to the human eye.
Interlacing Scan: A scanning method which uses two fields to create a frame. One containing all the odd lines in the image, the other containing all the even lines of the image.
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Letterbox: Common technique used to display a widescreen video image of 16:9 aspect ratio on a standard television display which has a 4:3 aspect ratio. So that whole widescreen
image fills the screen’s width, with black bars above and below it.
Lossy: Compression method which discards data & degrades the image quality. Result: high degrees of compression are possible.
Lossless: A compression scheme that doesn’t degrade sound or video quality. It uses a nondestructive method that retains all the original information.
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MB: Megabytes – millions of bytes.
MP3: An audio file format which uses lossy compression to significantly reduce file size, but often with little perceptible loss in sound quality.
MPEG: A family of popular multimedia file formats & associated compression schemes
defined by the Moving Pictures Expert Group.
MPEG-1: An older digital video compression format developed in the early 1990s by the Moving Picture Experts Group. MPEG-1 video was designed for lower-resolution video played
from CD-ROM and provides picture quality somewhat comparable to VHS (typically 352×240
resolution). Used for Video CD discs.
MPEG-2: A TV-quality digital video compression format developed in the mid-1990s by the Moving Picture Experts Group. MPEG-2 video provides high-quality full-screen full-rate video
(720×480 resolutions for NTSC) with smaller file sizes than MPEG-1. Used for DVD discs, and
also scales to high-definition resolution and bitrates.
MPEG-4: video that is designed for a broad range of multimedia applications such as for the web and wireless streaming video. It was developed in the 1990s by the Moving Picture Experts Group.
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NTSC: National Television Standards Committee. American organization that developed the NTSC video standards which ensure that all TV signals in the United States are compatible.
NTSC video: National Television Standards Committee method used in the U.S. States for electronically creating a color TV signal. The color and brightness aspects of the image travel together on the same wire.
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PAL: This is the phase alternate line—a European video standard which is incompatible with the U.S. NTSC system.
PCM: Pulse Code Modulation, a second method of recording hi-fi sound with 8mm and Hi 8 VCRs. Unlike AFM, PCM audio can be edited without affecting the picture.
Picture-in-a-picture (PIP): Digital effect where one picture is adjusted smaller and placed over
another.
Pixels: Tiny dots that make up the image on a display.
Posterization: Visual effect of reducing a picture’s different brightness levels down to just one or two, giving the picture a flat poster-like or cartoon-like look.
Profiles: “Profiles” are used to catalogue Blu-ray players. Blu-ray Profile 1.0 was the first set of features and functions labeled for discs and players. Then came Profile 1.1, which included
picture-in-picture capability, plus players had a second audio and video codec, along with
256MB of non-volatile memory. The last is Profile 2.0 (BD-Live). It has Internet access for
bonus content, and players have 1GB of non-volatile memory. No matter what Profile a players
processes, it will play all Blu-ray discs, but do not support the extra features.
Progressive scan: Method of making a computer image by drawing all the scan lines
sequentially from top to bottom.
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Region codes:This is very similar to DVD regional codes in that it PREVENTS certain regions of the world to play the Blu-ray disc. So Blu-ray disc players which are sold in some parts of the world may ONLY play discs which are encoded for that region.The main reasoning behind such a system is to allow the movie studios total control of when a disc is released in different parts of the
world. Often it lets these studios add extra features or bonus material unique to each region.
Regions for Blu-ray standard:
A: East Asia (except Mainland China and Mongolia), Southeast Asia,
North America, South
B: Africa, Europe (except Russia), Southwest Asia, Oceania
dependencies.
C: Central Asia, East Asia (Mainland China and Mongolia only), South
Asia, central Eurasia, plus their dependencies.
Resolution: Picture sharpness, usually measured in “lines”. The greater the number of lines, the
sharper the image.
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True color: Ability of a graphics card or electronic device to display millions of colors, as opposed to just a select 64 or 256 from a palette.
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Windows Media Video (WMV): The Microsoft Windows Media format for compressed video & audio files on CD and DVD discs.
