History of Digital Media from 1965 1989

Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital is the name for audio
compression technologies developed by
Dolby Laboratories. It was originally named
Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for
Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is
lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to
provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm
film prints. It is now also used for other
applications such as HDTV broadcast,
DVDs, Blu-ray Discs and game consoles.

In the cinemas
Batman Returns was the first film to use Dolby Digital technology when it
premiered in theaters in the summer of 1992.[1] Dolby Digital cinema
soundtracks are optically recorded on a 35 mm release print using sequential
data blocks placed between every perforation hole on the sound track side of
the film. A constant bit rate of 320 kbit/s is used. A charge-coupled device
(CCD) scanner in the image projector picks up a scanned video image of this
area, and a processor correlates the image area and extracts the digital data
as an AC-3 bitstream. The data are finally decoded into a 5.1 channel audio
source. All film prints with Dolby Digital data also have Dolby Stereo
analogue soundtracks using Dolby SR noise reduction and such prints are
known as Dolby SR-D prints. The analogue soundtrack provides a fall-back
option in case of damage to the data area or failure of the digital decoding; it
also provides compatibility with projectors not equipped with digital
soundheads. Almost all current release cinema prints are of this type and
may also include SDDS data and a timecode track to synchronize CD-ROMs
carrying DTSsoundtracks.

Video Cassette Recorder
Video Cassette Recording (VCR)
is an early domestic analog
recording format designed
byPhilips. It was the first successful
consumer-level home videocassette
recorder (VCR) system. Later
variants included the VCR-LP and
Super Video (SVR) formats.

The VCR format was introduced in 1972, just after the Sony
U-matic format in 1971. Although at first glance the two
might appear to have been competing formats, they were
aimed at very different markets. U-matic was introduced as
a professional television production format, whilst VCR was
targeted particularly at educational but also domestic users.
Unlike some other early formats such as Cartrivision, the
VCR format does record a high-quality video signal without
resorting to Skip field.

Home video systems had previously been available, but
they were open-reel systems (most notably made by
Sony) and were expensive to both buy and operate. They
were also unreliable and often only recorded in black and
white such as the EIAJ-1. The VCR system was easy to
use and recorded in colour but was still expensive: when
it was introduced in 1972 the N1500 recorder cost nearly
UK £600 (equivalent to £3,400 in 2014). By comparison a
small car (theMorris Mini) could be purchased for just over
£600.

The Philips VCR system was groundbreaking and brought together many advances
in video recording technology to produce the first truly practical home video
cassette system. The very first Philips N1500 model included all the essential
elements of a domestic video cassette recorder:
● Simple loading of cassette and simple operation by "Piano Key" controls,
with full auto-stop at tape ends.
● A tuner for recording off-air television programmes.
● A clock with timer for unattended recordings.
● A modulator to allow connection to a normal (for the time) television
receiver without audio and video input connectors.

Replacement
In the late 1970s, the VCR formats were superseded altogether by
Video 2000 (also known as 'Video Compact Cassette' or VCC). Due
to the similar initialisms, and the fact that both were designed by
Philips, the 'VCC' and 'VCR' formats are often confused. However,
the two systems are incompatible, and there are significant
differences between them. Some Video 2000 machines carry a
modified version of the "VCR" logo.

Desktop Computer
A desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location
desk/table due to its size and power requirements, as opposed to a laptop whose rechargeable
battery and compact dimensions allow it to be regularly carried and used in different locations. The
most common configuration is a computer monitor, keyboard and mouse, and a case that houses
the main components of the PC, namely the power supply, motherboard, hard drive, optical drive,
and previously the floppy drive. The form factor of the case is typically an upright tower or
(horizontal) desktop. All-in-one computers, that integrate the monitor and main PC components in
one unit, are often categorized under the desktop computer umbrella, particularly if they require an
external power source and separate keyboard/mouse. The desktop category has also
encompassed home computers and workstations.

Desktop Computer
Origins
Prior to the widespread use of microprocessors, a computer that could fit on a desk was considered
remarkably small; the type of computers most commonly used were minicomputers, which were
themselves desk-sized. Early computers took up the space of a whole room. Minicomputers generally fit
into one or a few refrigerator-sized racks.
The very first "programmable calculator/computer" was marketed in the second half of the 1960s starting
with the Italian machinery Programma 101 (1965) computer is typewriter size. More desktop models were
introduced in 1971, leading to a model programmable in BASIC in 1972. This one used a smaller version of
a minicomputer design based on read-only memory (ROM) and had small one-line LED alphanumeric
displays. They could draw computer graphics with a plotter.

Desktop Computer
A sophisticated programmable
calculator, theHP 9830A desktop
computers was actually an early
desktop computer with printer.

Desktop Computer
Growth and development
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s desktop computers
became the predominant type, the most popular being the
IBM PC and its clones, followed by the Apple Macintosh,
with the third-placed Commodore Amiga having some
success in the mid-1980s but declining by the early 1990s.

Desktop Computer
Early personal computers, like the original IBM Personal Computer, were enclosed
in a "desktop case", horizontally oriented to have the display screen placed on top,
thus saving space on the user's actual desk, although these cases had to be sturdy
enough to support the weight of CRT displays that were widespread at the time.
Over the course of the 1990s, desktop cases gradually became less common than
the more-accessible tower cases that may be located on the floor under or beside a
desk rather than on a desk.

Desktop Computer
As these tower cases had more room for expansion, and as this
freed up desk space for monitors which were becoming larger
every year. Desktop cases, particularly the compact form factors,
remain popular for corporate computing environments and
kiosks. Some computer cases can be interchangeable positioned
either horizontally (desktop) or upright (mini-tower), such as the
Quadra 700.

Desktop Computer
Influential games such as Doom and Quake during the 1990s had pushed gamers
and enthusiasts to frequently upgrade to the latest CPUs and graphics cards (3dfx,
ATI, and Nvidia) for their desktops (usually a tower case) in order to run these
applications, though this has slowed since the late 2000s as the growing popularity
of Intel integrated graphics forced game developers to scale back. Creative
Technology's Sound Blaster series were a de facto standard for sound cards in
desktop PCs during the 1990s until the early 2000s, when they were reduced to a
niche product, as OEM desktop PCs came with sound boards integrated directly
onto the motherboard.

Walkman
Walkman is a Sony brand trade name originally used for portable
audio cassette players, and now used to market Sony's portable
audio and video players as well as a line of former Sony Ericsson
mobile phones. The original Walkman introduced a change in music
listening habits by allowing people to carry music with them and
listen to music through lightweight headphones.

Walkman
The prototype was built in 1978 by audio-division engineer Nobutoshi Kihara for Sony
co-chairman Akio Morita, who wanted to be able to listen to operas during his frequent
trans-Pacific plane trips. The original Walkman was marketed in 1979 as the Walkman in
Japan and, from 1980, the Soundabout in many other countries including the US,
Freestyle in Sweden and the Stowaway in the UK. Advertising, despite all the foreign
languages, still attracted thousands of buyers in the US specifically. Morita hated the
name "Walkman" and asked that it be changed, but relented after being told by junior
executives that a promotion campaign had already begun using the brand name and
that it would be too expensive to change.

Walkman
A personal stereo audio cassette player, called Stereobelt, was first invented by the
German-Brazilian Andreas Pavel in 1972. Pavel filed a patent for his Stereobelt in
Italy in 1977, followed by patent applications in the U.S., Germany, the United
Kingdom and Japan by the end of 1978. His patent applications in the U.S. and the
U.K. were rejected.
In 1979, Sony began selling the popular Walkman in Japan, and in 1980 started
legal talks with Pavel regarding a royalty fee. In 1986 Sony finally agreed to pay
royalties to Pavel, but only for sales in Germany, and only for a few models, and
refused to acknowledge him as the inventor of the device.

Walkman
In 2001, Pavel threatened Sony with legal suits in every country in which he had
patented his invention. The corporation agreed to resume talks with Pavel and a
settlement was finally reached in 2003. The exact settlement fee is a closely
guarded secret but European press accounts said that Pavel received a cash
settlement for damages in excess of $10,000,000 and is now also receiving royalties
on some Walkman sales. The settlement also includes a clause which will prevent
Pavel from bringing future lawsuits.
The settlement grants Pavel the recognition from Sony that he was the original
inventor of the personal stereo.

Walkman
Sony Walkman WM-2, the best-selling model,
with plastic battery case and belt clip (1981)

Tin Toy
Tin Toy is a 1988 American computer-animated
short film produced by Pixar and directed by John
Lasseter. The short film, which runs five minutes,
stars Tinny, a tin one-man-band toy, attempting to
escape from Billy, a destructive baby. The third short
film produced by the company's small animation
division, it was a risky investment: due to low revenue
produced by Pixar's main product, the eponymous
computer to manage animations, the company was
under financial constraints.

Tin Toy
Lasseter pitched the concept for Tin Toy by storyboard to
Pixar owner Steve Jobs, who agreed to finance the short
despite the company's struggles, which he kept alive with
annual investment. The film was officially a test of the
PhotoRealistic RenderMan software, and proved new
challenges to the animation team, namely the difficult task
of realistically animating Billy. Tin Toy would later gain
attention from Disney, who sealed an agreement to create
Toy Story, which was primarily inspired by elements from
Tin Toy.

Tin Toy
The short premiered in a partially completed edit at the
SIGGRAPH convention in August 1988 to a standing
ovation from scientists and engineers. Tin Toy went on to
claim Pixar's first Oscar with the 1988Academy Award for
Best Animated Short Film, becoming the first CGI film to
win an Oscar. With the award,Tin Toy went far to establish
computer animation as a legitimate artistic medium
outside SIGGRAPH and the animation-festival film circuit.
Tin Toy was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being
"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 2003.

Tin Toy Production
In the spring of 1988, cash was running so short that Jobs convened a meeting to
decree deep spending cuts across the board. When it was over, Lasseter and his
animation group were almost too afraid to ask Jobs about authorizing some extra
money for another short. Finally, they broached the topic and Jobs sat silent, looking
skeptical. The short would require close to $300,000 more out of his pocket. After a
few minutes, he asked if there were any storyboards. Catmull took him down to the
animation offices, and Lasseter started his show. With the storyboards pinned on his
wall, Lasseter did the voices and acted out the shots—just as story men had done on
the Disney lot for decades—and thereby showed his passion for the project. The
stakes here were much higher than before, however. Ralph Guggenheim, manager of
the animation unit, recalled, "We knew that he wasn't just pitching for the film, he was
pitching for the survival of the group." Jobs warmed up to the project and agreed to
provide the money. "I believed in what John was doing," Jobs later said. "It was art.
He cared, and I cared. I always said yes." His only comment at the end of Lasseter’s
presentation was, "All I ask of you, John, is to make it great."

Tin Toy Production
That fall, after completion of Red's Dream, most members of the
company gathered at Stillwater Cove, near Fort Ross, to design a
new software that was designed completely for the work of an
animator. From the meeting came Menv software ("modeling
Environment"), the first program specifically designed to facilitate the
workflow of an animator, separating the various phases of the
animation (modeling, animation and lighting), later
renamedPuppets.[To show the application of the new program, it
was approved the production of a short. Inspired by the birth of his
daughter Julia, William Reeves proposed the idea to create a human
baby. Lasseter had an inspiration for the new opera based on the
observation of his nephew, intent to put any toy in the mouth on the
way. Lasseter said "In terms of toys the child must have seemed a
terrible monster!"

Tin Toy Production
The story was about Lasseter’s love, classic toys, and was
inspired by a visit made in 1987 at the Tin Toy Museum in
Yokohama, Japan. It was told from the perspective of a toy
one- man band named Tinny, who meets a baby that charms
and terrorizes him. Escaping under the couch, Tinny finds
other frightened toys, but when the baby hits his head and
cries, Tinny goes back out to cheer him up. Tin Toy was
inspired much like Luxo Jr., namely, Lasseter's observations
of a friend's baby. This time, he opted for a more ambitious
task, attempting to mimic a human baby in its appearance,
the movement of its arms, and its fickle moods.

Tin Toy Production
The film was officially a test of the PhotoRealistic RenderMan software.
This was the only Pixar short rendered on the RM-1, a RenderMan
specific computer that was never sold to the public. As with Luxo Jr. and
Red's Dream, it was also a chance for Lasseter to one-up his earlier
efforts, taking his animation and storytelling to another level. The baby
proved very difficult to model and animate; "it just became an incredible
burden," remembered Flip Phillips, a new member of the team at the
time. In early attempts at a model of the baby's head, he appeared to
have the face of a middle-aged man. The final version of the baby
(known to the team as Billy) had a much-improved face, but his skin had
the look of plastic. When he moved, moreover, his body lacked the
natural give of baby fat and his diaper had the solidity of cement—
compromises made necessary by lack of time and the still-developing
technology.

SimCity
SimCity, later renamed SimCity Classic, is a city-building simulation video
game, first released on October 3, 1989, and designed by Will Wright. SimCity
was Maxis's second product, which has since been ported into various personal
computers and game consoles, and spawned several sequels including SimCity
2000 in 1993, SimCity 3000 in 1999, SimCity 4 in 2003, SimCity DS, SimCity
Societies in 2007, and SimCity in 2013. Until the release of The Sims in 2000,
the SimCity series was the best-selling line of computer games made by Maxis.
SimCity spawned a series of Sim games.
On January 10, 2008 the SimCity source code was released under the free
software GPL 3 license under the original working title- Micropolis.

SimCity
SimCity was originally developed by game designer Will Wright. The inspiration
for SimCity came from a feature of the game Raid on Bungeling Bay that
allowed Wright to create his own maps during development. Wright soon found
he enjoyed creating maps more than playing the actual game, and SimCity was
born. While developing SimCity, Wright cultivated a real love of the intricacies
and theories of urban planning and acknowledges the influence ofSystem
Dynamics which was developed by Jay Wright Forrester and whose book on the
subject laid the foundations for the simulation. In addition, Wright also was
inspired by reading "The Seventh Sally", a short story by Stanisław Lem, in
which an engineer encounters a deposed tyrant, and creates a miniature city
with artificial citizens for the tyrant to oppress.

SimCity
The first version of the game was developed for the Commodore 64 in 1985; it
was not published for another four years. The original working title of SimCity
was Micropolis. The game represented an unusual paradigm in computer
gaming, in that it could neither be won nor lost; as a result, game publishers did
not believe it was possible to market and sell such a game successfully.
Brøderbund declined to publish the title when Wright proposed it, and he pitched
it to a range of major game publishers without success. Finally, founder Jeff
Braun of then-tiny Maxis agreed to publish SimCity as one of two initial games
for the company.

SimCity
Wright and Braun returned to Brøderbund to formally clear the
rights to the game in 1988, when SimCity was near
completion. Brøderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don
Daglow saw that the title was infectious and fun, and signed
Maxis to a distribution deal for both of its initial games. With
that, four years after initial development, SimCity was
released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed by
the IBM PC and Commodore 64 later in 1989.

SimCity
The original version of SimCity was developed by Maxis on the Commodore 64,
and ported to various platforms, including the Macintosh. Maxis licensed the
Macintosh SimCity source code to DUX software, to port to Unix. DUX Software
contracted Don Hopkins to port SimCity to Unix, and he developedSimCity
HyperLook Edition, while working at The Turing Institute on HyperLook with
Arthur van Hoff. The user interface was written in PostScript, which ran on the
NeWS window system on Sun workstations, and it supported multiple zoomable
views, pie menus, annotating and printing maps, and many user interface
improvements.

SimCity
After Sun canceled NeWS, DUX Software contracted Hopkins to rewrite the
HyperLook user interface in TCL/Tk for X11, and he developed a multi-player
networked user interface using the X11 protocol. The TCL/Tk version of SimCity has
been ported to various Unix and non-Unix platforms, includingSunOS, Solaris, IRIX,
HP-UX, OSF/1, Quarterdeck Desqview/X, NCD X Terminals, Warp, and Linux. The
contract to sell SimCity for Unix expired after ten years, so the TCL/Tk version was no
longer commercially available. OLPC SimCity is based on the TCL/Tk version of
SimCity, a trademark of Electronic Arts. Don Hopkins adapted it to the OLPC, thanks
to the support of John Gilmore. OLPC SimCity will be shipped with the OLPC, and it
has been run through EA's quality assurance process and reviewed for integrity. EA
reserves the right to review and approve any version of the game distributed under
the name SimCity.

History of Digital Media from 1965 1989

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History of Digital Media from 1965 1989