Frequency (audio) - Frequency, in music, refers to the pitch of a sound. The frequency of a sound is measured in cycles per second. One cycle is one complete audio waveform. Bass frequencies have a lower number of waveforms per second. Treble frequencies have a very high number of waveforms per second.
Imaging - The recreation of sound instruments, voices or non-musical elements of a movie soundtrack in a specific location. Imaging is judged to be successful when all of the sounds produced by a single, stationary sound source appear to emanate from a single location.
IEEE 1394 - Also called Firewire or iLink. Originally a serial bus for PCs, 1394 may or may not become the interconnection standard for DTV products. It is competing with DVI. IEEE 1394 is a spec for a hardware interconnect plus a software shell. But additional software, such as HAVi, is required for connected units to actually talk to each other. Some day 1394 may dramatically simplify the way DTV products interconnect.
Ultra Compact Camera - Ultra compact cameras are generally one inch or less thick, and small enough to be held in the palm of a hand. While these cameras do not offer all the manual controls of larger models, they still are capable of producing high quality images.
Short Wavelength Red Laser - Supplies the shorter wavelength needed to match the tiny DVD pits. The laser has a noise reduction function to suppress interference and it exhibits stable oscillation at high temperature (60 degrees Celsius).
Process Color - The colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, plus Black, used for offset printing.
SmartMedia - A digital camera memory format currently used by some Olympus and Fuji cameras. These companies are using xD-Picture cards in their newer cameras, raising the possibility that the SmartMedia format is on the way out. SmartMedia cards are available in sizes up to 128MB.
16 Base - The 2048 x 3072 pixels image that is scanned and stored on a Photo CD and suitable for digital imaging and desktop publishing applications.
3:2 pull-down - This is the process of converting a 24 frames/sec image into a 30 frames/sec image. Some line-doublers will reverse this process to acquire the original, and then re-perform it.
Aspect Ratio - the ratio of image width to image height. The term may apply to the display device configuration, or the shape of the content being displayed. (See Letterboxing) HDTV uses an aspect ratio of 16 units wide by 9 units high. Conventional television programming and displays are at an aspect ratio of 4 - 3. Digital SDTV programs may aspect ratios from 4 - 3 to 16 - 9, dependant on content and its source (e.g. upconverted NTSC is likely to be 4 - 3).
Comb filter - A circuit in NTSC sets that separates the color information from the brightness information.
Descreening - A feature of some scanners that allow them to eliminate moir‚ patterns that can occur.
Franklin eBookMan - A line of eBook reader and content playing handhelds developed by Franklin.
Hertz (Hz.) - A scale used for measuring the number of cycles per second.
IEEE1394 - High-bandwidth digital connection that uses MPEG-2 compression. Requires a decoder for playback and offers networking capabilities.
Interlaced Scanning - Some HD televisions and most conventional televisions use the "interlace" method of scanning, in which the picture is transmitted and painted on the screen in two passes. In the first pass, every other line is painted and in the second, the lines in between. Some display types, such as LCD, plasma and DLP cannot display directly images transmitted as interlaced signals and must convert them to a progressive format prior to their display.
Sampling - This is the digital process by which analog information is measured, often millions of times per second, in order to convert analog to digital.
Surround Output Level - Allows adjustment of the rear speaker level relative to the front speaker level according to viewing location and individual preference.
