How Television Works Television has been around long enough to seem entirely ordinary, but the box that brings TV shows into your home is an amazing device. What kinds of signals are being transmitted? How is the picture formed? Where does the color come from? Find out what’s going on inside a TV set. Learn […]
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Monster-sized headphones became all the rage back in the 1970s. Portable music players began to emerge in the 1980s, and headphones began to shrink. Then Apple debuted the iPod in 2001, and included a pair of sleek, white earbuds in every package [source: Hormby]. Suddenly, earbuds were all the rage for listening to music on
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Creating the Picture The heart of an SED-TV is the millions of miniature CRTs, called surface-conduction electron emitters (SCEs). An SCE is microscopic, and it consists of a layer of carbon with a gap down the center. One half of the carbon layer connects to a negative electrode, and the other connects to a positive
What’s Your Type? The television is one of the most significant inventions of the 20th century. For the whole picture, read How Television Works. In the past few years, there have been tremendous leaps in TV technology. Twenty years ago, TV shoppers had very few choices. These days, several TV technologies are competing with one
The TV Show Pitch Now you have a meeting with a network executive. Maybe an actor pal set it up for you, or you hired a fantastic agent who got you a few minutes with someone at CBS. Or you got in to Comedy Central and now you’re ready to meet with them in person
How Getting Your Show on TV Works Read More »
The Business As we saw in the last section, the Phantom does not have a CD-ROM drive like a standard PC or game console, and it doesn’t have normal access to the Internet either — it works through a specialized VPN. In other words, the only way to get a game into the machine is
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Canceled Video Games A definitive list of all the games that companies have canceled over the years could fill a book. Here are just a few video games that gamers never had the chance to play: “Journey to the Centre of Arcanum” was meant to be a sequel to the computer role-playing game (CRPG) “Arcanum”
What are the best video games that were never made? Read More »
Digital Picture Size The picture size is measured in pixels, so you need to pay attention to how many pixels wide and high the pictures you take are. Generally, a computer screen is 800 to 1200 pixels wide, with 800 being the most common setting. If you are e-mailing someone a picture that they are
What are the best settings for e-mailing or printing digital pictures? Read More »
The Tour Begins When Pete returned, he started the tour. He took me through the main work area — a large, dark space with desks and cubicles arranged as if they were meant to stop an oncoming invasion. Most of the desks were empty on November 3rd — Pete explained that many Bungie folks were
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The Flexplay Twist The secret to Flexplay discs is an extra layer added to a standard DVD structure. This specialized layer includes a chemical compound that readily combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form a new chemical compound. While the original chemical compound is transparent, the new chemical compound is opaque. When the layer
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