The history of digital video

Digital video has become something that we are used to seeing on a regular basis.Digital video also has a place in many of our households.Many of us own small digital cameras or digital camcorders.We have the means by which we can take amazing photos from devices that would fit inside a pocket.But ask your parents or grandparents about what kind of digital innovations they had and they may tell you that the word itself did not exist.

As with many technological innovations it was the government that first made headway into the digital world. During the 1960's NASA was actually transitioning the process of using analog signals to digital signals in order to send signals obtained by space probes back to the earth so that images of the surface of the moon could be seen and studied.NASA also had the benefit of having computers that were highly sophisticated for the time.These computers and new digital images were fine tuned and eventually a great complimentary relationship evolved between computers and digital images.Nowadays we see computers and digital images in much the same light, but this was not always the case.The two had very separate and different characteristics.

Around this same time the government was also using digital imaging in the form of spy satellites. Obviously some of this technology remained confidential but what information that was made available was enough to get individuals in the "private sector" thinking.

The government may have been the first to have used digital technology to their advantage, but since that time many other companies have improved upon digital video in ways much more sophisticated than the early days of space exploration.The first company to take the lead of NASA was Texas Instruments.In 1972, Texas Instruments actually became the first company to produce a film-free electronic camera.

In August, 1981, Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the camera which was the first commercial electronic camera. Images were recorded onto a mini disc and then put into a video reader that was connected to a television monitor or color printer.This early camera was not without its flaws. Nevertheless it was credited with starting the digital camera revolution and would later be called the video camera that took video freeze-frames.

Digital video is recorded as having been first introduced to the market in 1983.Sony (a recognized leader in audio-visual technology by this time) was the first company to record a "standard definition component video signal" in digital instead of high band analog form.Obviously as this was a new innovation it was quite expensive and only the large television networks were able to afford this emerging technology.

As time went on Sony's camera was replaced by cheaper systems that used more compressed data.Consumer digital video was first offered by Apple Computer's QuickTime which entered the market around 1990.Although the introduction of this technology was met with mixed and unexcited reviews, things have certainly made a change.What started as a low quality mock-up would grow to become features that Americans used almost daily as they went about their regular duties.

Next to be introduced were the MPEG files and then DVD transmission for the media.Then the DV tape format was introduced and we were able to record directly to digital data and greatly simplify the process of editing films.Desktop computers were equipped with similar digital imaging capabilities.We are now developing even faster, higher quality forms of digital video that 50 years ago was only clear enough to give us vague pictures and general outlines.