Blu-ray
Blu-ray or Blu-ray Disc is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was designed to supersede the DVD format, is capable of storing several hours of video in high-definition and ultra high-definition resolution; the main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as feature films and for the physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. The name "Blu-ray" refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs; the plastic disc is 120 millimetres in diameter and 1.2 millimetres thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Conventional or pre-BD-XL Blu-ray discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual-layer discs being the industry standard for feature-length video discs. Triple-layer discs and quadruple-layer discs are available for BD-XL re-writer drives. High-definition video may be stored on Blu-ray discs with up to 2160p resolution and at up to 60 frames per second.
DVD-Video discs were limited to a maximum resolution of 576p. Besides these hardware specifications, Blu-ray is associated with a set of multimedia formats; the BD format was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group representing makers of consumer electronics, computer hardware, motion pictures. Sony unveiled the first Blu-ray disc prototypes in October 2000, the first prototype player was released in April 2003 in Japan. Afterwards, it continued to be developed until its official release on June 20, 2006, beginning the high-definition optical disc format war, where Blu-ray Disc competed with the HD DVD format. Toshiba, the main company supporting HD DVD, conceded in February 2008, released its own Blu-ray Disc player in late 2009. According to Media Research, high-definition software sales in the United States were slower in the first two years than DVD software sales. Blu-ray faces competition from the continued sale of DVDs. Notably, as of January 2016, 44% of U. S. broadband. The information density of the DVD format was limited by the wavelength of the laser diodes used.
Following protracted development, blue laser diodes operating at 405 nanometers became available on a production basis, allowing for development of a more-dense storage format that could hold higher-definition media. Sony started two projects in collaboration with Panasonic, TDK, applying the new diodes: UDO, DVR Blue, a format of rewritable discs that would become Blu-ray Disc; the core technologies of the formats are similar. The first DVR Blue prototypes were unveiled at the CEATEC exhibition in October 2000 by Sony. A trademark for the "Blue Disc" logo was filed February 9, 2001. On February 19, 2002, the project was announced as Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray Disc Founders was founded by the nine initial members; the first consumer device arrived in stores on April 10, 2003: the Sony BDZ-S77, a US$3,800 BD-RE recorder, made available only in Japan. But there was no standard for prerecorded video, no movies were released for this player. Hollywood studios insisted that players be equipped with digital rights management before they would release movies for the new format, they wanted a new DRM system that would be more secure than the failed Content Scramble System used on DVDs.
On October 4, 2004, the name "Blu-ray Disc Founders" was changed to the Blu-ray Disc Association, 20th Century Fox joined the BDA's Board of Directors. The Blu-ray Disc physical specifications were completed in 2004. In January 2005, TDK announced that they had now developed an ultra-hard yet thin polymer coating for Blu-ray discs. Cartridges used for scratch protection, were no longer necessary and were scrapped; the BD-ROM specifications were finalized in early 2006. AACS LA, a consortium founded in 2004, had been developing the DRM platform that could be used to securely distribute movies to consumers. However, the final AACS standard was delayed, delayed again when an important member of the Blu-ray Disc group voiced concerns. At the request of the initial hardware manufacturers, including Toshiba and Samsung, an interim standard was published that did not include some features, such as managed copy; the first BD-ROM players were shipped in mid-June 2006, though HD DVD players beat them to market by a few months.
The first Blu-ray Disc titles were released on June 20, 2006: 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, House of Flying Daggers, Underworld: Evolution, xXx, MGM's The Terminator. The earliest releases used the same method used on standard DVDs; the first releases using the newer VC-1 and AVC formats were introduced in September 2006. The first movies using 50 GB dual-layer discs were introduced in October 2006; the first audio-only albums were released in May 2008. The first mass-market Blu-ray Disc rewritable drive for the PC was the BWU-100A, released by Sony on July 18, 2006, it recorded both single and dual-layer BD-Rs as well as BD-REs and had a suggested retail price of US $699. As of June 2008, more than 2,500 Blu-ray Disc titles were available in Australia
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1975 British independent comedy film concerning the Arthurian legend and performed by the Monty Python comedy group of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, directed by Gilliam and Jones. It was conceived during the hiatus between the third and fourth series of their BBC television series Monty Python's Flying Circus. In contrast to the group's first film, And Now for Something Completely Different, a compilation of sketches from the first two television series, Holy Grail draws on new material, parodying the legend of King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail. 30 years Idle used the film as the basis for the musical Spamalot. Monty Python and the Holy Grail grossed more than any British film exhibited in the US in 1975. In the US, it was selected as the second best comedy of all time in the ABC special Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time. In the UK, readers of Total Film magazine ranked it the fifth greatest comedy film of all time.
In 932 AD, King Arthur and his squire, travel throughout Britain searching for men to join the Knights of the Round Table. Arthur recruits Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Galahad the Pure, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot, Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film, along with their squires and Robin's troubadours. Arthur leads the men to Camelot, but sets off elsewhere; as they turn away, God gives Arthur the task of finding the Holy Grail. Arthur and his men search the land for clues to the Grail, they come to a castle occupied by French soldiers who claim to have the Grail and insult the Englishmen. Arthur and his men come up with a plan to sneak in using a Trojan Rabbit, but they mishandle its execution and are forced away. Arthur decides that the knights should go their separate ways to search for clues to the Grail's whereabouts. A modern-day historian being filmed for a documentary describing the Arthurian legends is abruptly killed by a knight on horseback, triggering a modern-day police investigation.
On the knights' travels and Bedevere attempt to satisfy the strange requests of the dreaded Knights Who Say Ni. Sir Robin avoids a fight with a Three-Headed Giant by running away. Sir Galahad is led by a grail-shaped beacon to Castle Anthrax, populated by 150 nubile young women, but to his chagrin is "rescued" by Lancelot. Lancelot, after finding a note from Swamp Castle believed to be from a lady being forced to marry against her will, rushes to the castle and kills nearly the entire wedding party, only to discover that the note was sent by an effeminate prince. Arthur and his knights regroup and are joined by three new knights as well as Brother Maynard and his monk followers, they meet Tim the Enchanter, who directs them to a cave where the location of the Grail is said to be written, but it is guarded by the deadly Rabbit of Caerbannog. After the Rabbit kills Sirs Gawain and Bors, Arthur uses the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, provided by Maynard, to destroy the creature. Inside, they find the inscription from Joseph of Arimathea.
After evading a giant monster, they arrive at the Bridge of Death and must answer three questions from the bridge-keeper to pass. Lancelot answers first and and passes on. Robin and Galahad fail to answer and are thrown over the bridge; when Arthur and Bedevere reach the bridge's end, they cannot find Lancelot, unaware he was arrested by the modern-day policemen investigating the historian's death. Arthur and Bedevere find the Castle of Aarrgh, they amass a large army of knights to assault the castle, when a large police force shows up, arrests Arthur and Bedevere for the historian's death, shuts down the film's production. Fifteen months before the BBC visited the set in May 1974, the Monty Python troupe assembled the first version of the screenplay; when half of the resulting material was set in the Middle Ages, half was set in the present day, the group opted to focus on the Middle Ages, revolving on the legend of the Holy Grail. By the fourth or fifth version of their screenplay, the story was complete, the cast joked the fact that the Grail was never retrieved would be "a big let-down... a great anti-climax".
Graham Chapman said. Neither Terry Gilliam nor Terry Jones had directed a film before, described it as a learning experience in which they would learn to make a film by making an entire full-length film; the cast humorously described the novice directing style as employing the level of mutual disrespect always found in Monty Python's work. The film's initial budget of £200,000 was raised by convincing 10 separate investors to contribute £20,000 apiece. Three of those investors were the rock bands Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, who were persuaded to help fund the film by Tony Stratton-Smith, head of Charisma Records. According to Terry Gilliam, the Pythons turned to rock stars like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Elton John for finance as the studios refused to fund the film and rock stars saw it as "a good tax write-off" due to UK income tax being "as high as 90%" at the time. Monty Python and the Holy Grail was shot on location in Scotland around Doune Castle, Glen Coe, the owned Castle Stalker.
The many castles seen throughout the film were either Doune Castle shot from different angles or hanging miniatu
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American space opera media franchise based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. The first television series called Star Trek and now referred to as "The Original Series", debuted in 1966 and aired for three seasons on NBC, it followed the interstellar adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew aboard the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century; the Star Trek canon includes The Original Series, an animated series, five spin-off television series, the film franchise, further adaptations in several media. In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry was inspired by the Horatio Hornblower novels, the satirical book Gulliver's Travels, Westerns such as the television series Wagon Train; these adventures continued in the 22-episode Star Trek: The Animated Series and six feature films. Five other television series were produced: Star Trek: The Next Generation follows the crew of a new starship Enterprise, set a century after the original series.
The most recent Star Trek TV series, entitled Star Trek: Discovery, aired on the digital platform CBS All Access. The adventures of The Next Generation crew continued in four additional feature films. In 2009, the film franchise underwent a "reboot" set in an alternate timeline, or "Kelvin Timeline," entitled Star Trek; this film featured a new cast portraying younger versions of the crew from the original show. Its sequel, Star Trek Beyond, was released to coincide with the franchise's 50th anniversary. Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called Trekkers; the franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, novels and comics. Star Trek had a themed attraction in Las Vegas that opened in 1998 and closed in September 2008. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world; the series has Klingon. Several parodies have been made of Star Trek. In addition, viewers have produced several fan productions; as of July 2016, the franchise had generated $10 billion in revenue, making Star Trek one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
Star Trek is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction. The franchise is noted for its progressive civil rights stances; the Original Series included. Star Trek references may be found throughout popular culture from movies such as the submarine thriller Crimson Tide to the animated series South Park; as early as 1964, Gene Roddenberry drafted a proposal for the science-fiction series that would become Star Trek. Although he publicly marketed it as a Western in outer space—a so-called "Wagon Train to the Stars"—he told friends that he was modeling it on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a morality tale. Most Star Trek stories depict the adventures of humans and aliens who serve in Starfleet, the space-borne humanitarian and peacekeeping armada of the United Federation of Planets; the protagonists have altruistic values, must apply these ideals to difficult dilemmas. Many of the conflicts and political dimensions of Star Trek represent allegories of contemporary cultural realities.
Star Trek: The Original Series addressed issues of the 1960s, just as spin-offs have reflected issues of their respective decades. Issues depicted in the various series include war and peace, the value of personal loyalty, imperialism, class warfare, racism, human rights, sexism and the role of technology. Roddenberry stated: " a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, Vietnam and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and they all got by the network." "If you talked about purple people on a far off planet, they never caught on. They were more concerned about cleavage, they would send a censor down to the set to measure a woman's cleavage to make sure too much of her breast wasn't showing"Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive political agenda reflective of the emerging counter-culture of the youth movement, though he was not forthcoming to the networks about this. He wanted Star Trek to show what humanity might develop into, if it would learn from the lessons of the past, most by ending violence.
An extreme example is the alien species, the Vulcans, who had a violent past but learned to control their emotions. Roddenberry gave Star Trek an anti-war message and depicted the United Federation of Planets as an ideal, optimistic version of the United Nations, his efforts were opposed by the network because of concerns over marketability, e.g. they opposed Roddenberry's insistence that Enterprise have a racially diverse crew. The central trio of Kirk, McCoy from Star Trek: The Original Series was modeled on classical mythological storytelling. There is a mythological component with science fiction. It's people looking for answers – and science fiction offers to explain the inexplicable, the same as religion tends to do... If we accept the premise that it has a mythological element all the stuff about going out into space and meeting new life – trying to explain it and put a human element to it – it's a hopeful visio
Commodore 128
The Commodore 128 known as the C128, C-128, C= 128, or CBM 128, is the last 8-bit home computer, commercially released by Commodore Business Machines. Introduced in January 1985 at the CES in Las Vegas, it appeared three years after its predecessor, the bestselling Commodore 64; the C128 is a expanded successor to the C64, with nearly full compatibility. The newer machine has 128 KB of RAM in two 64 KB banks, an 80-column color video output, it has keyboard. Included is a Zilog Z80 CPU which allows the C128 to run CP/M, as an alternative to the usual Commodore BASIC environment; the presence of the Z80 and the huge CP/M software library it brings, coupled with the C64's software library, gives the C128 one of the broadest ranges of available software among its competitors. The primary hardware designer of the C128 was Bil Herd, who had worked on the Plus/4. Other hardware engineers were Dave Haynie and Frank Palaia, while the IC design work was done by Dave DiOrio; the main Commodore system software was developed by Fred Bowen and Terry Ryan, while the CP/M subsystem was developed by Von Ertwine.
The C128's keyboard includes four cursor keys, an Alt key, Help key, Esc key, Tab key and a numeric keypad. None of these were present on the C64 which had only two cursor keys, requiring the use of the Shift key to move the cursor up or left; this alternate arrangement was retained for use under C64 mode. The lack of a numeric keypad, Alt key, Esc key on the C64 was an issue with some CP/M productivity software when used with the C64's Z80 cartridge. A keypad was requested by many C64 owners who spent long hours entering machine language type-in programs. Many of the added keys matched counterparts present on the IBM PC's keyboard and made the new computer more attractive to business software developers. While the 128's 40-column mode duplicates that of the C64, an extra 1K of color RAM is made available to the programmer, as it is multiplexed through memory address 1; the C128's power supply is improved over the C64's unreliable design, being much larger and equipped with cooling vents and a replaceable fuse.
The C128 does not perform a system RAM test on power-up like previous Commodore machines. Instead of the single 6510 microprocessor of the C64, the C128 incorporates a two-CPU design; the primary CPU, the 8502, is a improved version of the 6510, capable of being clocked at 2 MHz. The second CPU is a Zilog Z80, used to run CP/M software, as well as to initiate operating-mode selection at boot time; the two processors cannot run concurrently, thus the C128 is not a multiprocessing system. The C128's complex architecture includes four differently accessed kinds of RAM, two or three CPUs, two different video chips for its various operational modes. Early versions of the C128 experience temperature-related reliability issues due to the use of an electromagnetic shield over the main circuit board; the shield was equipped with fingers that contacted the tops of the major chips, ostensibly causing the shield to act as a large heat sink. A combination of poor contact between the shield and the chips, the inherently limited heat conductivity of plastic chip packages, as well as the poor thermal conductivity of the shield itself, resulted in overheating and failure in some cases.
The SID sound chip is vulnerable in this respect. The most common remedy is to remove the shield, which Commodore had added late in development in order to comply with FCC radio-frequency regulations; the C128 has three operating modes. C128 Mode has both 40 - and 80-column text modes available. CP/M Mode is able to function in both 40 - or 80-column text mode. C64 Mode is nearly 100 percent compatible with the earlier computer. Selection of these modes is implemented via the Z80 chip; the Z80 controls the bus on initial boot-up and checks to see if there is a CP/M disk in the drive, if there are any C64/C128 cartridges present, or if the Commodore key is being depressed on boot-up. Based on these conditions, it will switch to the appropriate mode of operation. In 1984, a year before the release of the Commodore 128, Commodore released the Plus/4. Although targeted at a low-end business market that could not afford the high cost and training requirements of early IBM PC compatibles, it was perceived by the Commodore press as a follow-up to the 64 and would be expected to improve upon that model's capabilities.
While the C64's graphics and sound capabilities were considered excellent, the response to the Plus/4 was one of disappointment. Upon the Plus/4's introduction, repeated recommendations were made in the Commodore press for a new computer called the "C-128" with increased RAM capacity, an 80-column display as was standard in business computers, a new BASIC programming language that made it easy for programmers to use the computer's graphics and sound without resorting to PEEK and POKEs, a new disk drive that improved upon the 1541's abysmal transfer rate, as well as total C64 compatibility; the designers of the C128 succeeded in addressing most of these concerns. A new chip, the VDC, provides the C128 with an 80-column color CGA-compatible display; the then-new 8502 microprocessor is backward-compatible with the C64's 6510, but can run at double the speed if desired. The C64's BASIC 2.0 was replaced with BASIC 7.0, which inc
Europe
Europe is a continent located in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, it comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Since around 1850, Europe is most considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Although the term "continent" implies physical geography, the land border is somewhat arbitrary and has been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity; the division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East-West cultural and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border does not follow political boundaries, with Turkey and Kazakhstan being transcontinental countries. A strict application of the Caucasus Mountains boundary places two comparatively small countries and Georgia, in both continents.
Europe covers 2 % of the Earth's surface. Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 741 million as of 2016; the European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast. Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization; the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, exploration and science led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at various times the Americas all of Africa and Oceania and the majority of Asia.
The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic and social change in Western Europe and the wider world. Both world wars took place for the most part in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the idea of unifying Europe to achieve common goals, it includes all European states except for Belarus and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation.
The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most used among Europeans. In classical Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess; the word Europe is derived from her name. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, "wide, broad" and ὤψ "eye, countenance", hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean "wide-gazing" or "broad of aspect". Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for "west", this being either Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set" or Phoenician'ereb "evening, west", at the origin of Arabic Maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav. Michael A. Barry, professor in Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department, finds the mention of the word Ereb on an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night, sunset", in opposition to Asu " sunrise", i.e. Asia.
The same naming motive according to "cartographic convention" appears in Greek Ἀνατολή. Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is poor." Next to these hypotheses there is a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning "darkness", which produced Greek Erebus. Most major world languages use words derived from Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu. In some Turkic languages the Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa; the prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects. Some film directors and enthusiasts disapprove of pan and scan cropping, because it can remove up to 45% of the original image on 2.35:1 films or up to 53% on earlier 2.55:1 presentations, changing the director or cinematographer's original vision and intentions. The most extreme examples remove up to 75% of the original picture on such aspect ratios as 2.76:1 in epics such as Ben-Hur and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World. Lawrence of Arabia is an exception to the 75% rule, because its aspect ratio is 2.20:1. The vertical equivalent is known as "tilt and scan" or "reverse pan and scan"; the method was most common in the days of VHS, before widescreen home media such as Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray. Center cut is similar with the difference as the name suggests that it is a direct cut of the material from the center of the image with no horizontal panning or vertical tilting involved.
This method doesn't require the permission or availability of the film maker or director to identify the most important part of each frame. Most video displays have three options for 16:9 widescreen frame formatting, which are either center cut, letterbox or full frame; the first two options are reliant on the video stream's aspect ratio flag being set correctly. For the first several decades of television broadcasting, sets displayed images with a 4:3 aspect ratio in which the width is 1.33 times the height—similar to most theatrical films prior to 1960. This was fine for pre-1953 films such as The Wizard of Casablanca. Meanwhile, in order to compete with television and lure audiences away from their sets, producers of theatrical motion pictures began to use "widescreen" formats such as CinemaScope and Todd-AO in the early to mid-1950s, which enable more panoramic vistas and present other compositional opportunities. Films with these formats might be twice as wide as a TV screen. To present a widescreen movie on such a television requires one of two techniques to accommodate this difference: One is "letterboxing", which preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio, but is not as tall as a standard television screen, leaving black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.
Pan and scan cuts out as much as half of the image. In the 1990s, when so-called "Sixteen-By-Nine" or "Widescreen" televisions offered a wider 16:9 aspect ratio, they allowed films made at 1.66:1 and 1.85:1 to fill most or all of the screen, with only small letterboxing or cropping required. DVD packaging began to use the expression, "16:9 – Enhanced for Widescreen TVs." However, films shot at aspect ratios of 2.20:1, 2.35:1, 2.39:1, 2.55:1, 2.76:1 might still be problematic when displayed on televisions of any type. But when the DVD is "anamorphically enhanced for widescreen", or the film is telecast on a high-definition channel seen on a widescreen TV, the black spaces are smaller, the effect is still much like watching a film on a theatrical wide screen. Though 16:9 remain standard as of 2018, wider-screen consumer TVs in 21:9 have been released to the market by multiple brands. During the "pan and scan" process, an editor selects the parts of the original filmed composition that seem to be the focus of the shot and makes sure that these are copied.
When the important action shifts to a new position in the frame, the operator moves the scanner to follow it, creating the effect of a "pan" shot. In a scene in which the focus does not shift from one horizontal position to another—such as actors at each extreme engaging in rapid conversation with each other—the editor may choose to "cut" from one to the other rather than panning back and forth. If the actors are closer together on the screen, the editor may pan alternately cropping one or the other partially; this method allows the maximum resolution of the image, since it uses all the available vertical video scan lines—which is important for NTSC televisions, having a rather low number of lines available. It gives a full-screen image on a traditional television set. However, it has several drawbacks; some visual information is cropped out. It can change a shot in which the camera was stationary to one in which it is panning, or change a single continuous shot into one with frequent cuts. In a shot, panned to show something new, or one in which something enters the shot from off-camera, it changes the timing of these appearances to the audience.
As an example, in the film Oliver!, made in Panavision, the criminal Bill Sikes commits a murder. The murder takes place offscreen, behind a staircase wall, Oliver is a witness to it; as Sikes steps back from behind the wall, we see Oliver from the back watching him in terror. In the pan-and-scan version of the film, we see Oliver's reaction as the murder is being committed, but not when Sikes steps backward from the wall having done it. In a pan and scan telecast, a character will seem to be speaking offscreen, when what has happened is that the pan and scan technique has cut his image out of the screen; as television screenings of feature films became more common and more financially important, cinematographers began to work
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 known as the C64 or the CBM 64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 10 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware; the C64 dominated the low-end computer market for most of the 1980s. For a substantial period, the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two million units sold per year, outselling IBM PC compatibles, Apple computers, the Atari 8-bit family of computers. Sam Tramiel, a Atari president and the son of Commodore's founder, said in a 1989 interview, "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years."
In the UK market, the C64 faced competition from the BBC Micro and the ZX Spectrum, but the C64 was still one of the two most popular computers in the UK. Part of the Commodore 64's success was its sale in regular retail stores instead of only electronics or computer hobbyist specialty stores. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control costs, including custom integrated circuit chips from MOS Technology, it has been compared to the Ford Model T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative and affordable mass-production. 10,000 commercial software titles have been made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office productivity applications, video games. C64 emulators allow anyone with a modern computer, or a compatible video game console, to run these programs today; the C64 is credited with popularizing the computer demoscene and is still used today by some computer hobbyists. In 2011, 17 years after it was taken off the market, research showed that brand recognition for the model was still at 87%.
In January 1981, MOS Technology, Inc. Commodore's integrated circuit design subsidiary, initiated a project to design the graphic and audio chips for a next generation video game console. Design work for the chips, named MOS Technology VIC-II and MOS Technology SID, was completed in November 1981. Commodore began a game console project that would use the new chips—called the Ultimax or the Commodore MAX Machine, engineered by Yash Terakura from Commodore Japan; this project was cancelled after just a few machines were manufactured for the Japanese market. At the same time, Robert "Bob" Russell and Robert "Bob" Yannes were critical of the current product line-up at Commodore, a continuation of the Commodore PET line aimed at business users. With the support of Al Charpentier and Charles Winterble, they proposed to Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel a true low-cost sequel to the VIC-20. Tramiel dictated. Although 64-Kbit dynamic random-access memory chips cost over US$100 at the time, he knew that DRAM prices were falling, would drop to an acceptable level before full production was reached.
The team was able to design the computer because, unlike most other home-computer companies, Commodore had its own semiconductor fab to produce test chips. The chips were complete by November, by which time Charpentier and Tramiel had decided to proceed with the new computer; the product was code named the VIC-40 as the successor to the popular VIC-20. The team that constructed it consisted of Yash Terakura, Shiraz Shivji, Bob Russell, Bob Yannes and David A. Ziembicki; the design and some sample software were finished in time for the show, after the team had worked tirelessly over both Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends. The machine used the same case, same-sized motherboard, same Commodore BASIC 2.0 in ROM as the VIC-20. BASIC served as the user interface shell and was available on startup at the READY prompt; when the product was to be presented, the VIC-40 product was renamed C64. The C64 made an impressive debut at the January 1982 Consumer Electronics Show, as recalled by Production Engineer David A. Ziembicki: "All we saw at our booth were Atari people with their mouths dropping open, saying,'How can you do that for $595?'"
The answer was vertical integration. Commodore had a reputation for announcing products that never appeared, so sought to ship the C64. Production began in spring 1982 and volume shipments began in August; the C64 faced a wide range of competing home computers, but with a lower price and more flexible hardware, it outsold many of its competitors. In the United States the greatest competitors were the Atari 8-bit 400, the Atari 800, the Apple II; the Atari 400 and 800 had been designed to accommodate stringent FCC emissions requirements and so were expensive to
