| A |
| AC-3 |
| The original name for what is now called
Dolby Digital |
| Anamorphic |
| A way of squeezing more resolution out
of a widescreen recording. The picture is stretched
vertically (imaging pulling the top and bottom of the
screen) to remove the familiar horizontal bars. The
recording can then use more 'lines' - the TV must squash
the picture back again upon playback to stop people
looking like they've been through Willy Wonka's Chocolate
Factory |
| Artifact |
| A word given to digital noise, usually
found on poorly compressed DVDs. |
| Aspect Ratio |
| A way of measuring how 'wide' and 'tall'
a recording is |
| C |
| Component |
| As in "component input/output"
usually only found on US TVs and projectors, the most
"raw" and therefore one of best ways of getting
DVD from player to screen |
| Composite |
| A composite video signal contains all
the video information mixed together and stuffed down one
wire |
| CDR/CDRW |
| Compact Disc Writable. Discs that have
normally be written on a PC. Some DVD players cannot play
those type of discs. CDR can only be written once CDRW can
be used many times. |
| D |
| DIVX |
| Mpeg4 compression, popular with internet
downloaders as high quality moves take up less space than
conventional DVD |
| Dolby |
| A company famous for its noise reduction
circuits, but also famous for developing extremely popular
surround sound formats for cinema and home cinema use |
| Dolby Digital |
| The latest Dolby surround sound format,
gives discrete audio to 6 channels |
| Dolby Pro-Logic |
| The home version of Dolby Stereo
(cinema), gives 4 analogue channels - "Front
Left", "Front Right", "Centre"
and "Rear". The rear channel is mono and
bandwidth limited |
| Dot Crawl |
| An effect that can occur when using
'less than the best' connections between DVD player and
TV. Looks like little white specks flashing around the
screen, a bit like a poor satellite broadcast. Nine times
out of ten, upgrading to a S-Video connection removes the
problem. |
| Double Sided |
| DVD's (unlike CD's) can be recorded with
data on both sides of the disc, allowing for a total
capacity of 18 Gigabytes of material. |
| DTS |
| The very latest digital discrete
surround sound format, stuffs more information into its
compressed signal than AC-3 |
| Dual Layer |
| The DVD is constructed with 2 layers,
rather than having 2 discs ! |
| DVD |
| Digital Versatile Disc - The newest
format for storing audio and video data , oh - it's also
the best! |
| DVD-R |
| DVD recordable disc (once only record,
with reasonable compatibility with existing DVD players) |
| DVD-RW & DVDRam |
| DVD Re-Writable disc (Record & erase
many times but with limited compatibility with existing DVD
players) |
| F |
| FBI Warning Skip |
| Allows you to skip past
warning/information screens that you normally have to look
at for a pre determined time |
| FPS |
| Frames per Second |
| Full Frame |
| A movie recorded in 'Full Frame' has an
aspect ratio of 4:3 |
| L |
| Line Doubling |
| An interpolation technique to get around
the problem of 'zooming' widescreen images on a 16:9 TV.
When you are only working with a few hundred horizontal
lines, most of which are black bars the movie is only
using 2-300 of those lines. Zooming this to fill a 16:9
screen will show these lines (I really need a picture for
this) A line doubler fills in the gaps to 'increase' the
resolution |
| M |
| Mac**ision |
| An effective (especially in its new
version) way of preventing copying of VHS tapes and DVDs.
It works by adding a signal to the picture that normally
cannot be seen, but confuses any video recorder that tries
to record the signal. Symptoms are extremely bad colour
transfer and 'fading' from bright to dark |
| Matted |
| When movies are filmed there are various
ways of changing the aspect ratio, one way is to put
'black card' over the camera to 'hard matt' the film into
a 2.35:1 or 1.85:1 or whatever aspect ratio |
| MPEG |
| (Motion Pictures Experts Group) These
guys are responsible for the technology that lets us fit
hours of high quality digital video and audio onto one CD
sized circular bit of plastic |
| MPEG-2 |
| This is the compression standard used in
DVD - in a nutshell it works by recording only the
information that changes from frame to frame. For example
if (for some reason) you were recording an airport runway
then for most of the time it would look exactly the same,
so this information is only recorded once (not 24 times a
second). It's only when a plane lands (or takes off) that
something different needs to be recorded |
|
MP3 |
|
A very efficient compression technology
that allow you to get around 10 cd's of audio onto 1 disc
with very little loss of quality. Some times MP3 tracks
can be downloaded off the internet.
|
| N |
| NTSC |
| (National Television Standards Comitee)
Video standard used in the USA and Japan - works at 60Hz
at 525 lines with about 30 fps |
| P |
| PAL |
| (Phase Alternate Line) Video standard
used in parts of Europe and Australia/New Zealand - works
at 50Hz at 625 lines with 25 fps |
| Pan and Scan |
| The method used to convert a widescreen
or letterboxed film to Full Frame (4:3 aspect). The
viewing area is panned from one side of the Widescreen
picture to the other - following the action so as little
as possible of the picture is lost. Some DVD discs are
provided in both Widescreen and Full Frame formats and
some are Widescreen and use the DVD players facility to
Pan-and-Scan the film on the fly. |
| Pull-down |
| A method of converting film (recorded at
24 fps) to PAL or NTSC (25 and 30 fps respectively). |
| R |
| Regional Coding |
| The system that the Hollywood studios
& DVD Consortium devised to control the release of DVD
titles across the world. The globe is divided up into 6
'regions' in which a disc designed for one region could
not be played on a player designed for another region.
Because movies are released in some countries months
before others, companies such as ourselves have developed
modifications for DVD players that allow them to play
discs from regions they were not originally designed to
play. |
| RCE |
| Regional Coding Enhancement - An attempt
to stop us watching Region 1 DVD's from the USA. However
all our players will now play those discs with out any intervention. |
| RGB |
| As in 'RGB input/output', stands for Red
Green Blue. Found on European TV's and projectors as
either 3x separate BNC/phono plugs or integrated into a
SCART socket (AV1 on most TV's) as an input. Found on
European DVD players as an output via the SCART socket,
usually selectable on the menu of the player. This is
regarded as the best DVD picture quality by many because
the picture is separated into three instead of two signals
as in S-Video. |
| RSDL |
| Reverse-Spiral Dual Layer - DVDs
recorded using this have two layers (hence the "dual
layer" bit) and start playing from the inside on
layer one, when they reach the outside the laser
re-focuses onto layer two and plays from the outside
towards the centre (hence "reverse-spiral). This cuts
the time it takes to resume playback to a minimum |
| S |
| SCART |
| 21 pin connector (also known as a 'Euro
Connector) designed to make connecting audio/video
components easier by eliminating the need for more than
one lead. Nearly all TV's, VCR's and DVD players supplied
in Europe are fitted with one. Uses for some of the 21
pins are: L/R audio in/out, Composite video in/out,
S-Video out, RGB video in/out, Auto-widescreen select and
the Status pin which automatically selects the AV channel
of your TV when the component is switched on (or a video
is played on a VCR). |
| SECAM |
| (System En Colour A Menoir [probably])
Video standard used in parts of Europe (e.g. France) - it
is very similar to Pal. |
| S-Video |
| S or Super-Video or S-VHS. System in
which the video signal is seperated into Chromanance and
Luminance or Y/C to increase picture quality. All DVD
players have this output as it is regarded as the
worldwide standard for high quality video transmission. |
| SVCD |
| Super Video Compact Disc. Mpeg 2
Compression. Better quality than standard VCD but not as
good as DVD. Limited compatibility with DVD players
though. Max time per CD about 40 minutes. |
| V |
| VCR Mode |
|
A mode we have added to allow you to
backup a DVD to a Video cassette recorder. However the VCR
will need to be able to record the same TV system as the original
disc is.
|
|
VCD
|
|
Video Compact Disc. Mpeg1 compression
technology. Basically its Video on a cd. Max time per disc
is about 80mins. Quality about the same as VHS video tape.
Commonly used for unofficially distributing pirate films
due to the very low production costs.
|
| W |
| Widescreen |
| "As it was meant to be seen"
(as the trailer says). Basically movies have traditionally
been recorded for a screen that is longer than it is high
(i.e. a rectangle), so when you watch movies on a square
(4:3) TV you either chop off huge chunks of the original
movie, or you pop black bars on the top and the bottom to
change the shape of your TV |
|
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