SWE 423: Multimedia SystemsChapter 1: Introduction

What constitutes MultimediaMultimedia involves several major industries computing telecommunications publishing consumer audio-video electronics television/movie/broadcasting

Brief History of Multimedia Systems

YearEventsprior industrial RevolutionLate 1890sRadio was introducedEarly 1900sMovie was introduced1940sTelevision was introduced1960sConcept of hypertext systems was developedEarly 1980sPersonal computer was introduced1980-presentSeveral digital audio, image, and video coding standards have been developed.1983Internet is born, TCP/IP protocol was established. Audio CD was introduced.1990Tim Berners-Lee proposed the WWW. HTML was developed.1993-presentSeveral Web browsers, hypertext languages were developed.Mid 1990sHigh Definition Television standard was established.

Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC)Built at the University of Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1945 by two professorsOn the premise of replacing all computers!Women employed calculating the firing tables for the army's artillery gunsFilled a 6 by 12 meter room, weighed 30 tons!A Female Computer: I was astounded that it took all this equipment to multiply 5 by 1000

To perform

on ENIAC you had to rearrange a large number of patch cords and then locate three particular knobs on that vast wall of knobs and set them to 3, 1, and 4Circumference = 3.14 * diameter

Multimedia is still at its infancyCannot avoid fuzziness in scope, multiplicity of definitions and non-stabilized terminology.

MIT Media Lab in BostonOne of the first and best known institutes that studied multimediaInnovative applicationsPersonalized newspapersLife-sized hologramsTelephones that chat with callers...

Great Impact of MultimediaIntegrating all media in the computer allows using the existing computer power to represent information interactively.This can, also, be transmitted over computer networks.

Interdisciplinary Aspects of MultimediaTelecommunication industryConsumer electronics industryTV and radio broadcasting sectorPublishing industry

Multimedia Highlights