Like any household, most of us have access to a camera or other type of film equipment. This allow us to create home movies, or just take pictures at home. Cameras are quite expensive if you want a good quality one, but for most of us, we have access to our smartphones. Nowadays, most phones have a camera included in them, meaning the need for cameras are becoming obsolete.
Cameras work by using a little light box, this light box lets in the tiniest piece of light to capture an image. Once the image has been taken, it is transported via electric signals to produce a pixel image. Depending on the pixel size, the better quality the pictures will be.
An image can then be taken into software such as After Effects, Photoshop or Sony Vegas. You can edit photos in Photoshop with distortion, colour changes or many other things. The reason Photoshop is increasingly popular is due to the rise of young women realizing they can edit themselves in photos to appear 'better' online.
With the rise of YouTube, and people realising they can make a career out of doing something they love. This leads to a need to buy Sony Vegas, or Premiere Pro. 'YouTubers' can edit these videos from home and use professional equipment, for the starting price of around £8.50 a month.
The only issue with all of the equipment is the price. The price for Sony Vegas is around £500, and this is extremely inaccessible for the normal person. This price has actually led Sony Vegas to be one of the most pirated pieces of software on the internet. This means it is becoming more accessible, but in an illegal way.
The good that comes out of all of this is the fact that you could use your knowledge to gain a job in editing or camera work for a film company. You could use this on your CV to make yourself stand out to the employer.
Satellite and Cable
A house must have either a Cable or Satellite connection. There are a couple of differences between the two and some have more benefits than the other. The first one we will look at is Cable. A cable connection to your house is underground. This is better if you don't get good signal in your area, or have a more modern house. Most modern houses run via cable nowadays, but this does mean the connection will be a little weaker. However, to upgrade your cabled connection you can use Fibre Optic which is an extremely popular method, but does require more money. Virgin and BT use cabled connection to send you television services, along with most ISP's doing the same. Fibre Optic cabling is easier to install than standard copper cabling due to the cables being stronger and lighter which means the engineers don't have to worry about being extremely careful when handling them, and they are also less prone to snap when being put in the ground.
Satellite is a signal which gets sent to your home via a dish on the top of your house. The signal is sent from Earth, to the satellite in the sky, the signal then bounces back down to produce a television service to your home. Sky is a company which usually uses these signals, but they usually only send their own signals via their own satellite.
Analogue and Digital
When TV first was released, it was always used via an Analogue signal. Since the 00's, companies rapidly started to progress towards a digital signal, which gave a wider variety of channels, whereas analogue only had a maximum of seven channels. In October 2012, it was issued to every signal house had to be upgraded from analogue to digital. As explained above, the reason for this switch was because digital had a wider variety of channels, and gave a much better signal overall. It also took up less space, and allowed time and space for the new 4G wireless signal which was in the works to be broadcast nationwide. While digital is far more expensive than analogue, it gives a wide variety of channels to watch. For example, Sky has around 900+ channels to watch, all with different content on.
Internet and Interactive
The internet has a wide variety of uses when it comes to viewing media content. For example, the recent takeover of Netflix and other streaming services allows users to simply watch films/shows at the comfort of their bed, over the internet. You can also use BBC iPlayer to catch up on TV you may have missed, using the internet to stream these shows. However, with this brings in a more popular method of watching shows, which is pirating. Pirating is either using a Torrent software or illegal streaming site to watch a film or show, for free. This means the copyright holder, or company who have created the media earn no money.
Companies can also interact with the users that buy their content, either by adding in games to DVD's or Blu-Rays, behind the scenes, or simply allow you to pause/play the film using your remote. They can also use the internet to promote the film using games, or ARG's (Alternate Reality Games) to bring the film to the real world. A popular example of a game which used an ARG recently is No Man's Sky. No Man's Sky is one of the most hated games in history, due to it being slammed for false advertising the entire game. The creator, Sean Murray, was hit with a lot of hate messages due to his perception of the game, but the game was far from how he said it would be at release, but using an ARG brought the game back to life, and made people think more positively for the game. Essentially, it was just advertising, but it involved people online (and in the real world) to help solve this puzzle!
HD and 3D
Most TV's released nowadays come pre-built for 1080p viewing. Some television sets still rely on standard quality, but most people opt for the HD due to the increase in audio and video quality. HD basically uses more pixels to produce a better image, the more pixels, the better the image quality. With the rise of 4K, and even 8K television sets, more people are opting in for clearer image quality. For comparison, 1080p uses 1920x1080 pixels, but 4K uses 3840x2160 pixels, double the image quality of 1080p.
3D is also very popular in cinemas, such as IMAX. This can often be quite expensive, and usually people seem to have trouble in the viewing experience due to it causing a whole range of health effects. However, more recent films have adapted 3D and made it more easier on the eyes, and using surround sound for a more compelling experience.
Pay-per-view, On-Demand, Streaming and Digital Recording
As previously said, the rise of Netflix has many people swarming to stream content. While Netflix is 100% legal, some sites offer free streaming for shows or films, which is illegal to watch. The good thing about streaming is the fact that the shows are always available, and you can watch for hours, go to work and then come back and not miss anything from your shows. However, for people without Netflix, using a Sky Box is an excellent way to catch up on TV. You can simply record an entire show or film, keep it there until you are ready to watch it, then delete it, or keep it there until you are ready to remove it. Digital Recording is quite expensive, and you will usually have to pay an upgrade fee for some services.
Pay-Per-View is like a digital ticket to an event. For example, when iTunes holds concerts, you can digitally stream it for an entry ticket price. Or, more popular events such as boxing hold quite steep pay-per-view prices, causing more people to use illegal streaming sites to watch these. Pay per View evens usually cost around £100 for a ticket to a popular event, such as the Floyd Mayweather fight, which took $500m in pay-per-view ticket sales alone.
While recording shows may seem fantastic, more people tend to stream nowadays due to the internet becoming faster, and streaming just becoming much easier to use. When you stream, data is transferred and then destroyed once the film has finished. When you download, data is transferred and it stays on your hard drive until you destroy it. Streaming takes up no space, and you wont have to worry about pausing, or removing films as the film will be there for eternity, ready for you to watch in days, months or even years. The reason
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