Chapter 11: Essential Peripherals (220-9XX)

KVM Swicthes

A keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) switch is a hardware device that most commonly enables multiple computers to be viewed and controlled by a single mouse, keyboard, and monitor. Some KVMs reverse that capability, enabling a single computer to be controlled by multiple keyboards, mice, or other devices. KVMs are useful in data centers where multiple servers are rack mounted, space is limited, and power is a concern.

Gamepads and Joysticks

Are used for consoles and sometimes PCs.

Configuring FireWire

As with USB, the configurations are mostly the same. Install driver before device with FireWire, but 95 percent of FireWire devices are either external hard drives or digital video connections, the preinstalled Windows drivers almost always work perfectly. FireWire devices use more power than USB but they are designed to handle higher voltages.

Keyboards

Basic input device we use everyday. Modern keyboard connect via USB or wirelessly. Older keyboards connected via PS/2. Not too much to configure with Keyboards. There is configuration for keyboard in the Keyboard Control Panel applet. This tool enables you to change the repeat delay, the repeat rate, and the default cursor blink rate. To clean keyboard use compressed air, natural bristle brush, or a dampened cloth. If water alone doesn't do the job, use isopropyl alcohol on a cloth.

Blu-ray Disc Burners

Cost more than a standard optical drive. Can be connected internally or externally to a system. It is common for them to be connected externally via USB (3.0/3.1 usually) or eSATA, or internally through SATA. Modern Windows and Mac OS X OS support Blu-ray Disc burners and software.

DVD-Video

DVD-video supports TV-style 4:3 aspect ratio screens as will as 16:9 theater screens. DVD-video relies on the MPEG-2 standard of video and audio compression. MPEG is a group of compression standards for audio and video.

Hardware (VC)

From a digital signal, such as a modern camcorder that records directly to its own internal SSD, you simply run a cable from the USB out port on the camcorder to the USB port on your computer. When capturing from an analog source, such as a VHS cassette player or Hi-8 tape, yo will need some kind of connection and translation hardware. Some video capture device are external, while others as internal PCI or PCIe cards. You will need a decent computer with lots of free hard drive space and a substantial amount of RAM to import the video and audio streams from an external source. You will also need a good processor when it comes time to edit and compile a new video from the source material. There is no rule for how much resources you will need as different projects require different hardware.

General Port Issues

If port is not working try checking it with a known good device. If it works then you can assume that the original device was bad. If it doesn't work then you can assume it is a port issue. If you're pretty sure the port is not working go into the CMOS and see it it has been turned off. You can also use Device Manager to turn off ports. Windows has great built in drivers for all common ports so if you fail to see a port in device manager (and you know the port is on in CMOS) then you can assume it has a physical problem.

MIDI Enabled Devices

MIDI-enabled devices, also known as MIDI controllers, come in several form factors but most feel and look like standard music keyboards. Other use a grid or row of square buttons . Keep in mind that these devices do not play music; they are incapable of making noise on their own. Only combined with the proper software will a MIDI device be able to make music. In the past, MIDI devices used MIDI to derail or MIDI to joystick adapters, but all modern MIDI controllers use USB connections.

Smart Card Readers

Many enterprise level businesses use a smart card system to enable employees to access company resources and display proper credentials so they have proper levels of access too. A smart card reader comes in many forms, from small devices attached to a laptop computer to a panel next to a secure door. The smart card reader scans the chip embedded in such devices as ID badges to enhance access and security.

Tuner Software

Once you've installed the hardware, you need to load the specific application or applications that make the tuner work as a tuner. Windows Media Center or other third party application will work.

USB Thumb Drives

USB thumb drives make it simple to move data between computers. All thumb drives are hot swappable in modern OS. Before you pull it out of the USB port, make sure you eject it to prevent the clusters from getting damaged. You can also boot from a thumb drives; just set the boot priority in the CMOS.

Windows and CD-Media

Virtually all optical drives are ATAPI-compliant - meaning they plug into the ATA controllers on the MOBO, just like a hard drive, so you do not need to install drivers. You just plug in the drive and it appears in Windows.

Smart Media

A competitor to CF cards. No new devices use this.

Digitizers

A digitizer (otherwise known as a pen tablet) enables users to paint, ink, pencil, or otherwise draw on a computer. The digitizer receives input using a special surface. When a user presses against the surface, usually with a stylus, the surface transforms the analog movements into digital info. The drawing application receives the info from the digitizer and turns it into an image onscreen. If you draw a line on the digitizer, for example, that line should appear onscreen. You also might need to calibrate the digitizer to ensure that where you press matches up with where you want it on your monitor.

Playing Sounds

A large number of programs can play sounds on a typical computer. Virtually every Windows computer has Windows Media Player. You can download many other programs like iTunes. Streaming media is a broadcast of data that is played on your c mouser and immediately discarded. Streaming media is incredibly popular on the Internet.

Pointing Devices

A mouse or a touchpad is a device used to select things easier. Like keyboards, modern OS come with excellent drivers for all standard pointing devices; the exception is mouses with extra buttons. In Windows, you can adjust your mouse or touchpad settings through the Mouse Control Panel applet. Mac OS X has both Mouse and Trackpad applets in System Preferences. Modern pointing devices do not need cleaning.

Touch Screens

A touch screen is a monitor with some type of sensing device across its face that detects the location and duration of contact, usually by a finger or stylus. Touch screens can be categorized in two different groups: built in screens like the ones in smart phones, and standalone touch screen monitors like those used in many point of sale systems. Windows has an applet for configuring the touch screens on Tablet PCs. Windows 7/8/8.1/10 have Tablet PC Settings (it will only show if you have a touch screen computer). You can use this applet to adjust how you interact with the screen just as you would with a mouse or keyboard applets.

Jacks

Almost every sound card comes with at least three connections: one for a stereo speaker system, one for microphone, and one for secondary input called line in. On most systems, the main stereo speaker connector is green, the line in is blue, and the microphone is pink. Main speaker out: where you plug in speaker connector Line out: often used to connect to an external device such as a CD or MP3 player. Outputs sounds from the computer. Line in: connects to external an external device such as a CD or MP3 player to allow you to import sounds into your computer. Rear out: connects to rear speakers for surround sound. Analog/digital out: the multifunctional analog/digital out connection acts as a special digital connection to external digital devices or digital speaker systems, and it also acts as the analog connection to center and subwoofer channels Microphone: connects to an external microphone for voice input. Joystick: obsolete now, but connected a joystick or MIDI device to the sound card. The joystick port is a two row DB 15 female connection.

Bar Code Readers

Bar code readers read standard Universal Product Code (UPC) bar codes, primarily to track inventory. Bar code readers enable easy updating of inventory data bases stored on computing devices. Two types of bar code readers are commonly found with PCs: pen scanners and hand scanners. Pen scanners look like an ink pen and must be swiped across the bar code. Hand scanners are held in front of the UPC code while a button is pressed to scan. Older bar codes use PS/2 and modern ones use USB. No configuration is usually necessary, other than making sure that the particular car code reader works with whatever database or point of sale software you use.

Biometric Devices

Biometric devices and remember unique aspects of various body parts, such as your retina, iris, head image, or fingerprint, using some form of sensing device such as a retinal scanner. This info is used as a key to prevent unauthorized people from accessing whatever the biometric is securing. Biometric devices are also used for recognition. Recognition is different from security in that the biometric device doesn't care who you are; it just wants to know what you are doing. Best example is voice recognition.

Blu-ray Disc Media

Blu-ray is the standard that is replacing DVDs. It has a near perfect audio and video quality; mass acceptance by industry leading computer, electronics, game, music, retail, and motion picture companies; and huge storage capacities of up to 25 GB (single layer), 50 GB (double layer), and 100 GB (BDXL). Blu-ray Discs come in two physical sizes, standard and mini. The standard size matches that of earlier optical discs, such as CD-R and DVD-RW, and is what you will see used in computers and for movies. The mini-size discs are a lot smaller and, offer less storage. You will find mini Blu-ray Discs in very high-end camcorders. Mini disc Blu-ray stores 7.8 GB (single layer) and 15.6 GB (double layer). Advantages over DVD: -Uses a blue laser with a smaller wavelength. This allows them to be larger in space. - Blu-ray can handle HD video in resolutions far higher than DVD. -Blu-ray supports many more video compression schemes, giving producers more options for putting content on discs.

Optical Drives

CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray Discs come in a variety of favors and formats, enabling your to back up data, record music, master home videos, and much more. Optical disc is a generic term for all those different types of discs. Optical drives support optical discs. CD stands for Compact Disc, designed to replace vinyl records. The digital versatile disc (DVD) replaced the VHS cassette tapes from the commercial home movie market, and grew into a contender for backups and high capacity storage. Blue-Ray Disc (BD) eliminated the High Definition DVD (HD DVD) format to become the only high definition and high capacity optical format.

CD-RW

CD-RW drives took over the CD burning market from CD-R drives. CD-RW lets you burn to a disc, and lets you burn over existing data. CD-RW drive specs have three multiplier values. The first shows the CD-R write speed, the second shows the CD-RW rewrite speed, and the third shows the read speed. Example: 8x4x32x One of the goals with the introduction of CD-RWs was the idea of making a CD-RW act like a hard drive so you could simply drag a file onto the CD-RW (or CD-R) and just as easily drag it off again. Two developments, UDF and packet writing, enable you to treat a CD-RW just like a hard drive. UDF stands for universal data format (UDF). UDF is a replacement for ISO-9660 and all of its various extensions, resulting in a single file format that any drive and OS can read. UDF handles very large files and is excellent for all rewritable CD-media. Packet writing is a feature built into modern OS that enables easy adding and deleting of files on optical media.

Web Cameras

Cameras in or on computer monitors, webcams, enable people to interact over networks with both voice and video. The biggest issue with webcams is image quality. Webcams measure their resolution in pixels. The next issue with webcams is the frame rate, the number of times the camera "takes your picture" each second. Higher frame rates make for smoother video; 30 frames per second is considered the best. People also want a microphone. Many cameras come with microphones, or you can use your own. All webcams use USB connections. Windows and Mac OS X come with limited sets of webcam drivers, so make sure to install drivers before you plug in webcam. Most webcams use Hi-Speed or SuperSpeed USB.

Sound Cards

Computers capture sounds waves in electronic format through a process called sampling. Sampling rate measure in hertz (Hz). The more often a sound is sampled, the better the reproduction of that sound. Loudness = amplitude High or low tone = frequency Qualities that differentiate the same note played on different instruments = timbre Bit depth = number of characteristics of a particular sound captured during sampling Monaural is capturing a single track, stereo is capturing two.

DVD-Media

DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disc. DVDs replaced VHS. DVD comes in both single-sided (SS) and double-sided (DS) formats. A single sided DVD stores 4.37 GB and a double sided stores 8.74 GB. DVD uses smaller pits than CD media, which lets it store more data. DVDs come in single layer (SL) and dual layer (DL) formats.

USB Hubs

Each USB host controller supports up to 127 devices, but it is impractical because a MOBO manufacturer is not going to support 127 real USB ports. If you need to add more ports just install a network adapter or a USB hub. A 4 port USB hub would share the bandwidth of the port with all devices. Example: if you plug a USB hub into a USB 2.0 hub, then those 4 ports on the hub share the bandwidth on that port. So each port on the hub would have 120 Mbps. Hubs also come in powered and bus powered versions. Too many devices on a single USB root hub will draw too much power and create power.

MIDI

Every sound card can produce sounds in addition to playing prerecorded sound files. Every sound card comes with a second processor designed to interpret standardized musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) files. It is important that a MIDI file is not an independent music file. A MIDI file is a text file that takes advantage of the sound processing hardware to enable the computing device to produce sound. Programmers use these small files to tell the sound card which notes to play; how long, how loud, and on which instruments to play them; and so forth. MIDI files are small in size compared to WAV files. MIDI is hardware dependent, meaning the capabilities and quality of the individual sound card make a big difference on the sound produced.

Speaker Support

Every sound card supports two speakers and a pair of headphones, but many better sound cards support five or more speakers in discrete channels. These multiple speakers provide surround sound. Another popular speaker addition is a subwoofer. A subwoofer provides the amazing low frequency sounds that give an extra dimension to your movies, music and games. Almost all modern sound cards support both surround sound and a subwoofer advertise this advertise themselves as Dolby Digital or DTS.

Understanding FireWire

FireWire is similar to USB but has different connectors. FireWire has two types of connectors. The first is a 6-pin powered connector, the type you see on a desktop computer. The other type of connector is a 4-pin bus-powered connector, which you see on portable computers and such FireWire devices as cameras. This type of method does not provide power to the device, so you need to find another method of powering the external device. FireWire comes in two speeds: IEEE 1394a, which runs at 400 Mbps, and IEEE 1394b, which runs at 800 Mbps. FireWire devices can also take advantage of its bus and allow two FireWire devices to interact with each other, example would be a FireWire camera and external FireWire hard drive. FireWire has some differences from USB. A USB device much connect directly to a hub, but a FireWire device may use either a hub or daisy chaining. FireWire also supports a maximum 63 devices and has a maximum length of 4.5 meters.

USB configuration

If you get a USB device, like a scanner, you should install the driver first and then plug in the device. An exception to this is USB thumb drives because Windows has preinstalled drivers with the OS. Windows and Mac OS X include a large number of built in devices. The OS will recognize the simple items like keyboards, mice, and other basic devices with their built in drivers. If your keyboard or mouse has extra buttons then you will have to install the driver that comes with it. Another issue with USB is power. If you have too many USB devices plugged in, it could result in devices not working. If you're pulling too much power, you must take devices off that root hub until the error goes away. To check the USB power usage in Windows, open Device Manager and locate any USB hub under the Universal Serial Bus Controller icon. Right-click the hub and select Properties, and then select the Power tab. This shows you current use for each of the devices connected to that root hub. There is another problem with USB power: sometimes USB devices go to sleep and won't wake up. Actually, the system is telling them to sleep to save power. You should suspect this problem if you try to access a USB device that was working earlier but that suddenly no longer appears in Device Manager. To fix this, go to Device Manager to inspect the hub's Properties, but this time open the Power Management tab and uncheck the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" checkbox.

Thunderbolt Ports

Intel developed Thunderbolt ports as a high speed alternative to existing technologies such as USB, FireWire, and DisplayPort, tapping the PCI Express bus for up to six external peripherals. Apple adopted the thunderbolt port early , because the interface enabled the company to make thinner portable computers. The technology has since moved to the desktop in the form of Thunderbolt cards. Thunderbolt supports video (4K on a single monitor) and audio. Even data storage. Thunderbolt 1 and 2 connect computing devices with a Mini DisplayPort (MDP) connector. Thunderbolt 3 uses a USB Type-C connector. Thunderbolt can use copper or fiber cabling. With copper, Thunderbolt chains can extend up to 3 meters. With fiber a thunderbolt can extend up to 60 meters. Thunderbolt 1 runs full duplex 10 Gbps and thunderbolt 2 is 20 Gbps. Thunderbolt 3 is expected to be 40 Gbps. Thunderbolt 3 supports two 4K monitors.

Speakers

Investing in nice speakers can really improve your experience. Cheap speakers are stereo speakers. A 2.1 speaker system consists of a pair of standard stereo speakers called satellites combined with a subwoofer. Dolby Digital sound is designed to support five channels of sound: front-left, front-right, front-center, rear-left, and rear-right. Also supports a subwoofer. Called 5.1. Digital Theater Systems (DTS) also supports a 5.1 speaker system. Many sound cards come with Sony/Philips Digital Interface (S/PDIF) connector that allows you connect your found card directly to a 5.1 speaker or receiver. S/PDIF connections come in two types, optical and coaxial. Optical looks like a square with a small door. The coaxial is a standard RCA connector, the same type used to connect a CD player to your stereo. Does not matter which you use. Configure speakers and speaker settings with the Sound applet/preferences.

Secure Digital

Most common flash media format today. They are about the size of a postage stamp. SD cards come in two smaller firms called Mini Secure Digital (MiniSD) cards and Micro Secure Digital (MicroSD) cards. They're extremely popular in cellular phones that use flash memory, but see little use in other devices. SD cards come in three storage capacities. Standard SD cards store from 4 MB to 4 GB, Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) cards store from 4 GB to 32 GB, and Secure Digital Extended Capacity (SDXC) have a storage capacity from 32 GB to 2 TB. Early SD readers and devices cannot read the SDHC or SDXC cards, though the later standards provide backwards compatibility. SD cards developed out of an older, slower flash memory technology called MultiMediaCard (MMC). You can use an MMC card in almost any SD card slot. SD cards are a little thicker than MMC cards, so the reverse is not true. You will see the embedded version of MMC cards, called eMMC, in very wide use, especially in mobile devices.

Installing Optical Drives

Most internal optical drives use SATA and support the ATAPI standard. External drives often use USB, FireWire, eSATA, or Thunderbolt connections. Plug them in and go.

Sound Card Standards

Most sound cards follow on of two standards, AC'97 or Intel High Definition Audio, although no rule says that manufacturers must follow these standards. This applies to onboard and ad-on sound cards. The AC'97 standard applies to lower end audio devices, having been created when most folks listened to stereo sound at best. Both playback and recording capabilities of such sound cards offer adequate quality. When you want to go beyond average, get an add on sound card or MOBO that offers a newer standard. Intel designed the Intel High Definition Audio (HDA) standard to support features such as true sound with many discrete speakers. AC'97 offers 6 channels at 48KHz/20 bit quality, HDA offers 8 channels at 192 KHz/32 bit quality. HDA also offers support for sending multiple streams of audio from one computer to different output devices. So you can have a radio in one room and a CD playing in the other.

Motion Sensors

Motion sensors respond to external movements to update some function of the computing device. Cameras can have motion sensors that, when triggered ,send a signal to the computer to start recording.

Compact Flash

Oldest, most complex, and physically largest of all removable flash cards. Roughly one inch wide, use a simplified PCMCIA bus for interconnection. Come in two sizes: CF 1: 3.3 mm thick and CF 2: 5 mm thick. CF 2 cards can't fit into CF 1 slots. Manufacturers repurposed the CF form factor to create the micro drive. Microdrives are true hard drives, using platters and read/write heads that fit into the tiny CF form factor. They are slower and use more power than flash drives and, when they were first introduced, cost much less than an equivalent CF flash card. These days micro drives are pretty much obsolete.

Understanding USB

The USB host controller, an integrated circuit that is usually built into the chipset, controls every USB device that connectsto it. Inside the host controller is a USB root hub: the part of the controller that makes the physical connectiom to the USB ports. A single host controller can theoretically support up to 127 devices. This number is impractical though cause MOBO manufacturers would not support that many. Every USB device connected to a single host adapter/root hub shares that USB bus with every other device connected to it. The more devices you place on a single host adapter, the more the total USB bus slows down and the more power they use. USB devices need power to operate. A powered USB device comes with its own electrical cord that is usually connected to an AC Adapter. Bus-powered USB devices take power from the USB bus itself; they don't bring AC or DC power with them. When too many devices take power from the bus, it can cause your device to lock up or not work.

Quality (DC & C)

The amount of information a camera can capture is expressed in megapixels. Instead of light sensitive film, digital cameras and camcorders have one CCD (charged coupled device) or CMOS sensor covered with photosensitive pixels (called photo sites)to capture the still image or video; the more pixels on the sensor = higher resolution. Another feature of most digital cameras and camcorders is the capability to zoom in on your object. The way you do this is with the camera's lens. Most cameras have some form of optical zoom, meaning zoom is built into the lens of your camera, but almost all have digital zoom, accomplished by software in the camera.

xD Picture Card

The proprietary Extreme Digital (xD) Picture Cards are about half the size of an SD card. They are almost exclusively used in Olympus and Fuji-Film digital cameras, although Olympus (developer of xD technology) produces a USB housing so you can use an xD Picture Card like any other USB flash memory drive. Come in three types: original, Standard (Type M), and Hi-Speed (Type H). The standard cards are slower than the original cards but offer greater storage capacity. The Hi-Speed cards are two or three times faster than the others and enable you to capture full motion video.

Recordable DVD

There are five distinct standards of DVD media: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW. Both DVD-R standard discs and DVD+R discs work like CD-Rs. You can write to them but not erase or alter what's written. DVD+R DL can be written onto two layers, doubling the capacity.. DVD-RW and DVD+RW can be written and rewritten like CD-RW.

Tuner Hardware

Tuners come in just about every expansion option available for computers: expansion cards that use PCI or PCIe; PC Card or ExpressCard for portable computers; and HiSpeed or SuperSpeed USB for desktop and laptop computers. To pick up a signal on the Tv tuner, you need some source. Most can handle a cable TV connection or an over the air antenna. Tuner hardware comes with a standard coaxial connection. You can plug in a cable or satellite source just as you would with and regular television.

USB Standards and Compatibility

USB 1.1: had two speeds. 1.5 Mbps (low speed) and 12 Mbps (full speed). 5 meters maximum. USB 2.0: 480 Mbps (known as Hi-Speed). 5 Meters maximum USB 3.0: 5 Gbps (SuperSpeed), ports are blue or yellow depending on manufacturer. Keep cable length no more than 3 meters. USB 3.1: 10 Gbps. Colored teals. USB 3.0 cannot be plugged into 2.0 and 1.1 but 2.0 and 1.1 can be plugged into 3.0. Will only run as fast as device (if you plug a 2.0 in 1.1, it will only go at 1.1 speeds.)

USB Cables and Connectors

USB connectors and ports come in multiple sizes: A, B, mini A, mini B, micro A, micro B, and type C. USB A ports and connectors are for interfacing with the PC. Most peripherals use B, mini B, micro B connectors and ports. Micro connections are popular on smartphones. Type-C connectors enable any USB device to connect.

Codecs

Video files use standard audio codecs for audio tracks, such as WAV or MP3, but vary widely in the type of video codecs used. Just as with audio codecs, video codecs take a video stream and compress it using various algorithms. Here are some standard video codecs: MPEG-2 Part 2, used for DVDs MPEG-4 Part 2, often used for Internet broadcasts H.264, used for high definition movies on Blu-Ray discs Windows Media Video (WMV), family of Microsoft developed codecs TrueMotion VP6v used in Adobe Flash; and VP7, used for Skype video conferencing VC-1, a Microsoft designed codec that competes with H.264 and other high end codecs for able-Ray developers; usually wrapped in. WMV container file

Flash Cards

Way people store data on small appliances. Digital cameras, smart phones, and MP3 players all come with slots for some type of memory card.

Wrappers

When both the video and audio streams of your video file are compressed, the file is placed into some sort of container file or wrapper. A wrapper file doesn't necessarily specify how the video audio tracks were encoded. If you look at two different movie files, both saved with .MOV extension, and find that one will play audio and video just fine in Windows Media Player, but the other one might play only the audio and not the video because Media Player lacks specific codec needed to decide the video stream. Here are some examples of the standard video wrappers: ASF, a container used for mainly WMA and WMV streams. AVI, standard file container for Windows FLV (Flash Video), a container file for streams encoded with various codecs, such as H.263 or VP6 MOV, a standard container file for Apple QuickTime for both Mac OS X and Windows MPEG-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-TS), a container for broadcasting that can handle many streams.

Card Readers

Which ever type of flash memory you use, your computer must have a card reader to access the data on the card directly. A number of inexpensive card readers are available and some computers co e with built in card readers.

TV Tuners

With a TV Tuner, you can have it all in one package: a computer and the latest TV show. Need four components to make the TV tuner experience happen: a tuner device, an antenna or cable connection, a tuning application, and some sort of program guide.

Software (VC)

With editing software, such as Sony Vegas or Apple Final Cut, you can import and edit videos. Once you have finished the siting process, you can export to a file for archiving via USB stick, Optical disc, etc., or post to a video sharing site. A video is more complicated than audio. It is more than just saving it as a MP3. A video is two or more separate tracks, moving picture and audio, that each go through a compression algorithm. The compressed tracks then get wrapped up into a container file, what is often called a wrapper.

Storage Media - Digital Film (DC & C)

Use removable storage media. SD cards usually.

Compressing WAV Files to MP3 Format

Using MP3 compression, you can shrink a WAV file by a factor of 12 without losing much sound quality. When you compress a WAV file into an MP3 file, the key decision is the bit rate. The bit rate is the amount of info (number of bits) transferred from the compressed file to the MP3 decoder in 1 second. The higher the bit rate of an MP3 file, the higher the sound quality.

BD-R and BD-RE

Blu-ray Discs come in two writable formats, BD-R (for recordable) and BD-RE (rewritable). You can write to a BD-R disc on time. You can write to and erase a BD-RE several times. There are also BD-R and BD-RE versions of mini Blu-ray Discs.

Video Capture

Capturing video on your PC. You have to have the right hardware to do this.

Digital Cameras and Camcorders

Digital cameras and camcorders capture video.

DVD-ROM

Equivalent of CD-ROM, except that is able to store up to 16 GB of data.

BD-ROM

Equivalent to DVD-ROM, except it can store more data and producers superior audio and video. Almost all BD-ROM drives full backward compatible and support DVD-video as well as most CD-ROM formats.

Flash Memory

Flash memory comes in two types: USB thumb drives and memory cards. USB thumb drives have standard USB connection. Memory cards are used in cameras, smartphones, and other devices.

Form Factor (DC & C)

Form factor is the size and layout of the camera. How big it is, how many connectors it has.

Microphones

If you want to input audio into a computer use a microphone.

CD-R

In the mid-1990s, the CD industry traduced CD-recordable (CD-R) standard,which enables affordable CD-R drives, often referred to as CD burners. CD-R comes in two varieties: a 74 minute disc that stores 650 MB, and an 80 minute that stores 700MB. Once something is burned to the disc, it cannot be erased or changed short of destroying the disc itself. Early CD-R drives required that the entire disc be burned in one burn session,messing any unused part of the CD-R disc. Theses were called single session drives. All modern CD-R drives are multisession drives, so you can go back and burn additional data onto the CD-R until the disc is full. CD-R drives have a record and read speed. A CD-R with a specification of 8x24x would burn at 8x and read at 24x

Recorder Sound Formats

Oldest sound format is pulse code modulation (PCM). PCM was developed in the 1960s. PCM is still used but it is more often referred to as WAV in the PC world. WAV files are great for storing recorded sounds and music but it comes with a price. WAV files can be huge, especially when sampled at high frequency and depth.

Storage Devices

Removable media is any type of mass storage device that you may use in one system and the physically remove from that system and use in another. Removable media is perfect for backups, distribution, data archiving. Removable media broken down into these two groups: optical discs and flash memory. Flash memory: USB thumb drives to flash cards Optical discs: disc technology, like CDs, DVD, and Blu-Ray Discs

Memory Stick

Sony made this proprietary format. If you are using something Sony and it uses flash memory, you'll need a memory stick.

CD Formats

The first CDs were designed for playing music and organized the music in a special format called CD-Digital Audio (CDDA), which we usually call CD-audio. CD-ROM is read only. Each sector holds 2353 bytes. Has its own file system called CD File System (CDFS). The vast majority of CD-ROMs today use this format.

Connection (DC & C)

These days, digital cameras plug directly into a USB port. Another common option is to connect only the camera's storage media to the computer, using one of the many digital media readers available. Many digital camcorders use USB connections, although there are some FireWire connections on older models.

Smart TV and Set Top Boxes

Two types of devices function as computing devices, enabling you to watch content streamed over the Internet. A smart TV is a television with network capabilities, both hardware and software, so you can plug in and hit the Web. A set top box is an alternative computing device that you can use if you have a dumb TV. The box handles the Internet connectivity and interface.