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Glossary

Glossary 1	DV, DVD, VOB, ISO, VCD, SVCD, XVCD, XSVCD, VHS, VHSRip, SVHS, D-VHS, CD, CD-DA, CDA, DAT.
Glossary 2	3GP, ASF, AVI, MPEG, MP4, QuickTime, MOV, RA, RM, RMVB, WMV, DivX, XviD.
Glossary 3	AAC, MD, AC3, AIFF, FLAC, M4A, M4P, MIDI, MP2, MP3, ID3 Tag, M3U, OGG, Vorbis, VQF, WAV, WMA.
Glossary 4	NTSC, PAL, ASX, Codec, Region codes, Streaming, DRM, VoIP.

NTSC

NTSC stands for National Television System Committee.
Short for National Television System Committee. The NTSC is responsible for setting television and video standards in the United States (in Europe and the rest of the world, the dominant television standards are PAL and SECAM). The NTSC standard for television defines a composite video signal with a refresh rate of 60 half-frames (interlaced) per second. Each frame contains 525 lines and can contain 16 million different colors.
The NTSC standard is incompatible with most computer video standards, which generally use RGB video signals. However, you can insert special video adapters into your computer that convert NTSC signals into computer video signals and vice versa.

PAL

Phase-Alternating Line. The UK television broadcast standard. Uses 625 lines at a frame rate of 25fps. PAL, was the dominant television standard in Europe. The United States uses a different standard, NTSC. Whereas NTSC delivers 525 lines of resolution at 60 half-frames per second, PAL delivers 625 lines at 50 half-frames per second. Many video adapters that enable computer monitors to be used as television screens support both NTSC and PAL signals.

ASX

Short for ASF Streaming Redirector file, a Windows Media container file. ASX is an XML redirector file for ASF. ASX files are metafiles, i.e., they provide information about ASF media files, including descriptions of multimedia content. When a browser links to an ASX file, the ASX file in turn links to an ASF file on a server.

Codec

COderDECoder. A device that digitizes an input waveform, eliminating redundant information, reducing the number of bits needed to carry the same data, then decoding the data at the receiving end, hopefully with a high degree of sonic transparency.
A codec is technology (software or hardware) that compress and decompress data. By using codecs for compressing audio and video data into smaller packets that do not consume as much hard disk space or network bandwidth, multimedia applications can provide richer and fuller content.

Region codes

Due to the differing times that movies remain in theaters in different countries the producers of DVDs made regions. There are eight regions, region 1 is the US and Canada, region 2 is Japan and Europe, etc. These correspond to the region of DVD player sold in the respective country. Although this technique of region DVDs is still done, a lot of new DVD players are region less.
DVD movies are usually coded with what is called a country or regional code or a zone lock. The three names, however, mean the same thing. DVD movies are given a regional code and the code on the DVD movie must match that of the DVD player to be viewed. DVD region codes are numbered 1 through to 8; with the first six being specific geographical regions, and seven and eight being reserved for special play arenas.

Streaming

A technique for transferring data so that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream. Streaming technologies are becoming increasingly important with the growth of the Internet because most users do not have fast enough access to download large multimedia files quickly. With streaming, the client browser or plug-in can start displaying the data before the entire file has been transmitted.
For streaming to work, the client side receiving the data must be able to collect the data and send it as a steady stream to the application that is processing the data and converting it to sound or pictures. This means that if the streaming client receives the data more quickly than required, it needs to save the excess data in a buffer. If the data doesn't come quickly enough, however, the presentation of the data will not be smooth.
There are a number of competing streaming technologies emerging. For audio data on the Internet, the de facto standard is Progressive Network's RealAudio.

DRM

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, a system for protecting the copyrights of data circulated via the Internet or other digital media by enabling secure distribution and/or disabling illegal distribution of the data. Typically, a DRM system protects intellectual property by either encrypting the data so that it can only be accessed by authorized users or marking the content with a digital watermark or similar method so that the content cannot be freely distributed.

VoIP

Voice over IP refers to the capability to carry normal telephony-style voice over an IP-based Internet with POTS-like functionality, reliability, and voice quality. In VoIP, the DSP segments the voice signal into frames, which then are coupled in groups of two and stored in voice packets. These voice packets are transported using IP in compliance with ITU-T specification H.323.

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Glossary

NTSC

PAL

ASX

Codec

Region codes

Streaming

DRM

VoIP

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