Entertainment part 2

(Note: this post about entertainment concerns life in the information age. My other post shows entertainment as an online service).

The information age has also seen the increase in popularity and use of entertainment that is offline as well as online. Today, offline entertainment still remains popular with examples such as television, gaming and cinema.

TV programmes

Although the television set has been available from the late 1920’s, the popularity of television rose after the World War II especially in America with 55% of the population owning a television set by 1954. The technology of the television set improved over time with colour television sets appearing during the late 60’s/early 70’s. Today, programmes on TV are still popular with hundreds of programmes and channels available to the user. There are also a number of different genres of programmes such as comedies and documentaries. TV services such as Sky mean that the user can find the exact programmes they want to watch by using features such as search and programme categories.

A Sky box allows television viewers to choose from many programmes and channels

Radio

Radio is another example of a popular form of entertainment available today. Despite this, radio programmes date back to 1897 when Nikola Tesla used radio frequency as a form of commination. Radio programmes became popular during the 1920’s with many channels broadcasting music, news and other forms of entertainment. This high level of popularity lasted until the 1950’s when more people could afford a television set instead. However, people continue to listen to radio programmes and other forms of radio technology developed over the second half of the 20^th century. Examples of these other forms include wireless networking and mobile communication. Today, many people listen to the radio as a form of entertainment with music and charts being the most popular form of radio entertainment.

During the 1950’s, the radio was popular and cheaper alternative to a television set

Gaming

Gaming is also another form of offline entertainment with apps and consoles being the most popular today. Gaming apps began with the release of the Iphone in 2007 and of the Apple App Store in the following year. Other companies followed with Blackberry and Nokia launching their app stores in 2009. The downloadable apps were instantly popular with 10 billion being downloaded from Apple App Store as of 2011.

Before online and app gaming, console gaming was a main form of entertainment which is still popular today. Console gaming began in the 70’s with simple games such as Pong. Because of the instant commercial success, more companies, consoles and games appeared during the late 70’s/early 80’s. The 1980’s also saw an increase in gaming popularity after console became more accessible to users. This also introduced rivalry between companies such as Nintendo and SEGA. The 1990’s was an even better decade for console gaming with more consoles being introduced (Examples include the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64). These consoles also introduced discs instead of cartridges and 32bit and 16bit instead of 8bit. Like previous decades, the 2000’s saw further improvements to console gaming. Today, console gaming include online play and despite this, original console gaming still remains popular.

Super Mario Bros remains the most successful video game franchise ever after its creation in 1985

Music

Music is another form of entertainment that is popular with many people today. Listening to music as a form of entertainment began back in 1920’s/30’s with early forms of vinyl and LP records. The record consists of an acetate disc which is coated in vinyl and other metals such as silver. The vinyl records were popular with their users and remain the main choice for music entertainment until the 1980’s when the CD (Compact Disc) was made and sold.

The CD became the first digital form of music entertainment. The digital format meant that there were many advantages to the CD. The compression of music was the main advantage as this allowed many music files to be stored together in mp3 format. Apple experimented with the idea of music compression and this lead to the Apple IPod. The ability to store thousands of songs made the IPod revolutionary for its time. However, the idea of portable music players had already been thought of by Sony with the Walkman. Players such as the Walkman and IPod were mainly responsible for the increased popularity of music entertainment. Music isn’t the only form of entertainment to take advantage of the mp3 format. One example would be E-readers using a similar storage to mp3 to store text files.

The convenience and popularity of the Ipod was one of the main reasons for the success of Apple today

Movies

A popular form of entertainment, movies (or films) began in the late 19^th/early 20^th century and consisted of a short, unedited clip shot though a certain type of camera. Movies had become especially popular during the late 70’s/early 80’s with the invention of the laserdisc.

The laserdisc was a type of storage disc that allowed users to watch movies at home after their cinema release. However, the idea of using laser technology for watching movies was expensive and many people preferred the VHS system. Because of this, most movies were made into VHS tapes instead. VHS remained popular until the early 2000’s, when the DVD format was widely released.

The DVD was a similar form of storage to the CD, which was based on the laserdisc. However, DVDs and CDs were cheaper than the laserdisc format. Eventually, the MPEG system introduced the ability to compress many movies into MP4 format. This compression was similar to the music compression of the MP3 format. Despite the lower quality, many people used the MP4 system instead of buying DVDs because of the ability to store movies and the convenience of the MP4 format. Today, both DVDs and MP4 are popular for watching movies.

Cinema

A popular form of entertainment and viewing movies, cinema has also been affected by the information age. Like movies, cinema and filmmaking began with the introduction of film cameras. Over time, cinema and filmmaking became more than recording clips with a camera. Computer technology opened the possibilities of making more complex movies which were not possible using a camera only.

Although there have been many uses for CGI, the impact made on cinema is arguably the largest and most significant. Not only did CGI allow the impossible to be done in terms of acting and filming, but it also introduced realistic effects and the option of convenience for filmmakers. For example, CGI may be used for a stunt although it is possible in real life with a stuntman. However, using CGI may be easier in this case.

The idea of 3D film as opposed to 2D film has also been used in cinema. 3D film used to consist of 2 cameras next to each other showing the same film. This would give a ‘layered’ effect to the film. Using filtered film and viewing glasses, the viewer would see the film with a 3D effect. Today, 3D film uses polarised light to improve the 3D viewing experience.

An example of modern 3D glasses without the red/blue filters

Recently, filmmakers have been experimenting with the number of frames per second. Originally, films were made at a rate of 24 fps (frames per second). Therefore, to improve the quality of the overall film, 48 fps can be used instead. ‘The Hobbit’ became the first film to used 48 fps per second after many years of the standard number of 24 frames. The success of ‘The Hobbit’ may mean that more films will use 48 frames in the future.