12 Glossary
A
Aspect ratio
Aspect ratio refers to the length to height ratio of TV screens. The ratio of a standard TV is 4:3, while the ratio of a high-de nition or wide TV is 16:9. The letter box allows you to enjoy a picture with a wider perspective on a standard 4:3 screen.
D
DivX®
The DivX® codec is a patent-pending, MPEG-4 based video compression technology developed by DivX®, Inc. It can shrink the le size of digital video and still maintain the high visual quality.
Dolby Digital
A surround sound system developed by Dolby Laboratories that contains up to six channels of digital audio (front left and right, surround left and right, centre and subwoofer.)
H
HDCP
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection. This is a speci cation that provides a secure transmission of digital contents between different devices (to prevent unauthorised copyright.)
HDMI
High-De nition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a high-speed digital interface that can transmit uncompressed high de nition video and digital multichannel audio. It delivers high quality picture and sound quality, completely free from noise. HDMI is fully backward- compatible with DVI.
As required by the HDMI standard, connecting to HDMI or DVI products without HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) will result in no Video or Audio output.
J
JPEG
A very common digital still picture format.
Astill-picture data compression system proposed by the Joint Photographic Expert Group, which features small decrease in image quality in spite of its high compression ratio. Files are recognised by their le extension ‘.jpg’ or ‘.jpeg.’
M
MP3
A le format with a sound data compression system. MP3 is the abbreviation of Motion Picture Experts Group 1 (or MPEG-1) Audio Layer 3. With the MP3 format, one CD-R or CD-RW can contain about 10 times more data than a regular CD.
MPEG
Motion Picture Experts Group. A collection of compression systems for digital audio and video.
