GLOSSARY
CD
A CD (Compact Disc) is a metal-coated plastic disc. It has a diameter of 12 cm and a thick-
ness of about 1,2 mm. It was developed by Sony and Philips in 1985. The advantages are
digital storage of music enabling very natural sound reproduction. Beyond this, the data is
stored more compact, the handling is easy. The long lifetime of the media and the fact that
usage does not decrease quality made the CD the ideal storage media.
In the meantime, 12 different storage media have been developed from the first CD. The
mostly used are CD-DA (Compact Disc - Digital Audio) , CD-ROM (Compact Disc - Read
Only Memory), and the DVD (Digital Versatile Disc). One can store about 74 to 80 minutes of
music on a CD (-DA). This is equal to 650 to 700 MB
Signal transmission is performed touchless with a laser beam. The CD is being read from the
middle to the outer side. The data or music is recorded in a spiral from the middle to the
outer side.A CD has pits and lands, the distance is about 1,6 mm. The laser light created by
a laser diode passes different mirrors and prisms and then is focused by a lens to a laser
beam. This laser beam scans the data spiral of the CD. On the pits, the laser beam is re-
flected in another direction and is detected by a photocell. The photocell transmits the signal
to a microprocessor, which converts the digital data to an audio signal. The rest is done by
the sound system.
CVBS
Composite Video Interface. The video signal is transmitted via a single signal line. CVBS
should only be used, if your playback device does not offer other interfaces for connection
with you Xoro TV set, as CVBS due to technical reasons delivers worst quality of all avail-
able interfaces (please also refer to YUV, S-Video, SCART and RGB). The CVBS interface
can easily be identified from the yellow colour of the RCA jack.
DTS®
DTS® is a coding standard similar to Dolby Digital®. DTS Digital Surround® is a multichan-
nel surround system from Digital Theatre Systems. Similar to Dolby Digital® it uses up to 5.1
channels. Different from Dolby, the data rate can be far above 1 Mbit/sec so the sound is not
compresses as strong as in Dolby Digital® resulting in a higher sound quality.
The frequency range is from 20Hz to 20kHz at 20Bit, but the subwoofer channel only trans-
mits frequencies below 80Hz. The coding system also is called CAC.
DVD
The DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) was introduced in 1995 and is a storage media with a large
capacity.
While a standard CD can store 650 MB of data, the DVD can store up to 9 GB. Especially
when it comes to video playback, a large storage capacity is important. Beyond its high ca-
pacity, the consumer enjoys high quality video and audio. A DVD can store up to 8 different
audio streams, so in best case, the movie can be watched in 8 different languages.
Photo-CD (JPEG CD)
A Photo-CD is a storage system for image storage on a CD-ROM in a platform independent
multi resolution structure (support of different resolutions and file formats, e.g. JPEG, BMP,
etc). As a single camera film dies not fill a complete CD, more films can be added to the CD
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