MULTIMEDIA APPLIANCES: HYBRID DEVICES As the lines blur between devices, we will find that hybrid devices emerge to find their niche in our lives. Will the TV just be a TV in the future? Will the phone remain just a phone, or do the appliances of today get morphed into something else? The first stage is the development of hybrid devices which combine two or more existing ones. Computer-Based Video Phone The telephone is easily [...]

Input technology: portability and new interaction Modes People are always looking for a better user interface to new technology- a user interface that will be intuitive person. The trick is that the definition of the average person is changing. People are being exposed to computer technology at a younger age. Telephone answering machines, fax machines, infrared remote controls, home computers, calculators, bar code scanners in the supermarket, 24-hour automated teller machines, and credit cards, to [...]

Presentation Technology in LCD Color LCDs are fairly new. Digital watches and calculations were the first commercial use of LCDs in large volume. Calculators and watches require displays with very few segments, which are easy to make. For TV or computer displays, a dot matrix displays is needed. Dot matrix displays require a much larger number of segments or pixels. To keep the electronics economical, each dot must be multiplexed at 100:1 or 200:1. This [...]

Presentation Technology The applications for video will be expanding in the next decade due to its digital future, and hence will create the necessary for improved presentation technology. Color LCD displays from postage is much more mature and less expensive, LCDs will have their day. From DICK Tracy TV watches to home projection TV theatres to Star Trek-like touch screen notebooks, it’s all coming. The CRT technology contained in most color TV sets and computer [...]

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS Multimedia devices and communications are becoming practical because of trends in electronics, telecommunications and displays. The continued progression of these technologies will play a determining role in what can be achieved in the next decade. Elements: increasing Circuit Density Besides co-founding Intel with Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore is probably best known in the semiconductor world for his profound prediction in 1964 of the growth rate of semiconductors. Mr. Moore predicted that the numbers [...]

WHAT IS MULTIMEDIA? The concepts behind what is emerging today date back to over four decades to a series of visionary thinkers who foresaw the evolution of computers towards richer personalized devices that would become an extension of the individual. In 1945 Vannevar  Bush, then the director of the office of Scientific Research and Development in the U.S. government, suggested that one of the future devices available for individuals would be a memex. The memex [...]