Rebirth of the Tech Madman

Although these practical features do not directly affect the video quality itself, they are of great significance to the viewing experience of the audience and the playback process of the radio station. * w.suimeng.lā

Take the subtitle function as an example. Due to the relationship between digital content, editing is far more convenient than analog content, and various languages ​​can be matched in every way.

The separation of audio stream and video stream can further assist the expression of video content in dubbing.

To sum up, it is actually the multi-subtitle and multi-channel support of video content that has been popularized in the original time and space for many years. The reason why it did not emerge with VCD was not perfected until the era of the Internet and high-definition, to a large extent. The reason is that the design itself is not in place.

Of course it is very different now, not only the VCD has changed a lot, but also these practical features are in place in one step.

In Tang Huan's view, these functions can greatly help his Chinese-language movies, Chinese-language TV series and other entertainment content at the technical level to reach a wider audience.

Of course, it is not only the Chinese-speaking family that has benefited from this, and the English language with the strongest economic strength must definitely come out on top. This is also something that can't be helped, the general trend is like this.

Ted Turner's focus is similar to Tang Huan's. After all, there is a project in front of him that requires extremely high-quality program production.

The Friendship Games he single-handedly promoted, although it may be the first, conforms to the general situation of the world. At present, it has been confirmed that more than 70 countries and more than 3,000 athletes will participate in the competition of 18 major events, and Turner Broadcasting The company expects to produce at least 130 hours of television programming itself.

Now that the stage is set and the drama is about to begin, the curtain caller must follow suit.

Although English is the mainstream in American society, the viewing status of small languages ​​such as Spanish cannot be ignored. Especially, CNN has an ambitious plan to expand its business to all over the world, so it needs friendly support for multiple languages. Tang Huan's broadcasting and television-level digital video broadcasting system DigitalVersatileObjects1——Digital Versatile Objects generation system, namely DVO-1 system, caters to such demands.

In the building where the equipment was being debugged, Ted Turner looked at the demos - Love to the Flower and Phantom of the Tomb: Wrath of the Dragon Emperor, which support multi-subtitle and multi-channel, and expressed his first impression, Your DVO-1 system is seamlessly connected with that broadcast and TV-level digital video non-linear editing system—Digital-1 system, directly covering the most important functional requirements of the TV station.

“It’s a matter of course product feature coverage.

The smug Tang Huan pointed at the TV screen quite complacently and said, Removing language barriers to cultural communication is just a side function of my product. More importantly, the era of standard definition programs will be led into the digital stage by it - the crown of digital standard definition belongs to me.

It's a pity that your digital standard-definition laurels can only be worn within the scope of the TV station at this stage. The TV signal is sent out and finally reaches the audience. It is still the traditional analog method, which is not so easy to change. Ted Thorough Na joked.

I believe that many people will find huge business opportunities in it, and then take the initiative to help me promote the changes of the times. Tang Huan replied confidently.

The so-called standard definition, that is, standard definition—Standard-, refers to the standard with a resolution of 720x576 pixels, and VHS video tapes are equivalent to this specification.

Tang Huan's home version of the VCD is not up to this standard, because its resolution is only a quarter of the VHS tape.

However, his radio and television grade VCD meets this standard. After all, in this high-end field, the cost factor can be placed behind. The DVO-1 system fully supports the output of standard definition programs, and the resolution supports 16:9 aspect ratio of 720x480 pixels, 4:3 aspect ratio of 720x480 pixels, and 4:3 aspect ratio of 640x480 pixels. The refresh rate can also be 24 frames per second, 30 frames or 60 frames per second.

It's as powerful and flexible as it gets.

This also shows from another aspect how different Tang Huan's VCD is.

In general, it has added and perfected practical features such as menus, subtitles, separation of audio streams and video streams, and digital video disc region code restrictions. Specifically, the products are divided into two directions: home consumption level and radio and television level, one high and one low. The video quality is similar to the VCD of the old version of the original time and space, and the latter is closer to the DVD of the original time and space.

Obviously, with the support for different video quality, there is an extremely obvious difference in data throughput between a home DVD player and a DVO-1 system.

The resolution of the home version VCD is 352x240 pixels and 352x288 pixels corresponding to the NTSC and PAL TV standards, which is about a quarter of the corresponding TV standard resolution.

Its data transfer rate is 1150kbit/s for video and 224kbit/s for audio, totaling 1374kbit/s.

This data concept can be compared with music CD and computer CD-ROM/RW more vividly.

The data transfer rate of an ordinary music CD is about 150kB/s. This indicator is defined as 1x speed in the computer field, but at this stage CD-ROM products generally support 2x speed, and the high-end can reach 8x speed.

Calculated according to the speed transfer rate of the home version VCD, it is roughly equivalent to an ordinary music CD. In other words, a standard 74-minute CD can store about 74 minutes of video in VCD format for home use.

Considering the space occupied by metadata for practical features such as subtitles and menus, a movie usually requires two CDs to store.

If you want to play this kind of video program on the computer, you only need a 1x speed CD drive in theory, but considering the actual smoothness, you need at least a 2x speed CD drive; The data transmission is not timely and the playback freezes.

Obviously, if you add the hardware decoding expansion card necessary for the computer system, as well as high-specification CPU, large-capacity memory and other hardware, this will be a bit of a luxury solution, and market development is still needed to reduce the cost to the general public acceptable level.

As for the manufacturing cost of home DVD players, it is not so pessimistic. The high cost of the computer system is largely due to the strict requirements of the computer system for data accuracy. Compared with music CDs without error correction functions, computer CD- There is a three-layer error correction mechanism in ROM products to ensure the accuracy of the data, and at the same time increase the cost; moreover, the CPU used by the computer is a general-purpose microprocessor, which can neither achieve the highest efficiency for video applications, nor Waste of performance and cost. In contrast, home DVD players can achieve multiple goals by directly adopting a dedicated decoding chip overall solution.

The gap between household consumer-level VCD and broadcast TV-level VCD can also be vividly described by a comparison.

At present, the price of home VHS video recorders on the market is around a few hundred dollars, while the initial price of a freshly released home VCD player is several thousand dollars; as for the DVO-1 system of broadcasting and television level, the cheapest price is tens of dollars. Ten thousand U.S. dollars.

Such a disparity is not only caused by the market positioning, but also because the broadcast TV level VCD, which is close to the DVD technology in the original time and space, is expensive in itself, and its speed transmission rate is several times that of the household consumer level. DVO-1 The cables used for data transmission inside the system even use the latest fiber optic technology.

At the same time, the storage media and drives of broadcast and TV-level VCDs did not directly adopt the low-cost solution of off-the-shelf CDs, but redesigned a set of solutions from scratch: DigitalVersatileObjects——Digital Versatile Objects or DVO , a solution between VCD and DVD in the original time and space, it can smoothly replace the existing CD, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, VCD in the future.

This is also a point that Philips and Sony are very afraid of. Tang Huan has proved that he has the strength to kick them out of another set. The reason why the storage medium and drive system of the household consumer-grade VCD adopts the CD solution is only because of its It has been proven that the market is willing to accept it, and it is just a matter of saving trouble!

The most obvious difference between the two storage media and drive systems is also in the data throughput.

Music CDs, computer CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and household consumer-level VCDs are all based on music CD storage and drive solutions, so their basic unit of data transfer rate is based on music CDs, that is, about 150 kilobytes per second, and the data transmission rate of more than 1,300 kilobits per second for household consumer-level VCDs is also to cater to this limitation.

DVO also has the concept of data transmission speed similar to CD, but its double speed has reached 600 kilobytes per second.

On a deeper level, this difference stems from the invisible and intangible multimedia compression standard MovingPictureExpertsGroup - the Moving Picture Experts Group, or MPEG.

In this set of multimedia compression standards, it is mainly divided into two areas - video and audio, and each of them is divided into four levels, namely Layer1, Layer2, Layer3 and Layer4.

Layer1 belongs to lossless compression, the main purpose is to facilitate data organization, and it has little meaning for actual multimedia playback, at least at this stage.

The video is similar to Huffyuv, and the audio is equivalent to the FLAC that appeared in the 21st century in the original time and space.

Starting from Layer2, the compression standard belongs to lossless compression.

Both video and audio, the application targets are broadcast TV grade, and it is also the compression standard adopted by the expensive DVO-1 system.

The video is the video compression standard used by home consumer-level VCDs, but due to the current resource overhead required for decoding, the audio compression standard is adopted.

As for what was temporarily put on hold, it was basically the famous MP3 in the original time and space.

Both video and audio applications are aimed at network-based streaming media, and they can only appear in special occasions such as laboratories for the time being.

Surrounding such a set of complete and complex multimedia compression standards, thousands of patents have been generated, and they are the cornerstones for Tang Huan, who is behind the scenes, to prepare for future multimedia applications.

Of course, the current situation is as analyzed by Ted Turner just now, the technical influence of the DVO-1 system can only be limited to the scope of the TV station, the transmission of TV program signals, and the program receiving terminal on the audience side ——The TV will still be in the analog mode, which is due to the precipitation of decades of industry development. It is impossible to switch to the digital mode in one step, but whether its application should wait until it is still under study After the launch of the high-definition stage, it will enter the actual stage, which depends on Tang Huan's ability to put creation into action.

If standard definition and digital start to marry now, the most direct benefit is that compared with analog signal modulation, the precious program transmission channel will be able to transmit multiple digital signals at the same time more efficiently.

At the same time, although the digital standard-definition TV system has the same effect as the general NTSC, PAL, and SECAM analog TV systems, it can effectively reduce the occurrence of ghost images, snowflakes, and noise.

Again, the road map has been made very clear by Tang Huan. I believe that some people will see the huge business opportunities contained in it, and take the initiative to come and promote it in groups to seize market opportunities.

As for home DVD players, because the prices remain high for the time being and the viewing quality of programs is about the same as that of VHS video recorders, the temporary cold reception in the market is predictable.

However, Tang Huan will see how well his Chinese-language movies and TV series are accepted worldwide, and accelerate the price drop of home DVD players at any time, so that it can use its multi-subtitle and multi-dubbing functions to help out, or even simply replace it with high-end DVO.

In short, Tang Huan's entertainment media industry is slowly approaching the IT industry, and thus an unimaginable chemical combination will occur, allowing him to continue to win the future.

? (To be continued.)