Help I'm surrounded

A dimly lit auditorium, the smell of popcorn and hot-dogs accompanied by the sound of fizzy drinks slurped through straws; the lights dim and a hush of expectation descends, sound fades in from all around, drawing the audience into the illusion of another reality. This is the world of the cinema, but is it possible to recreate this cinematic surround sound experience in the home? In order to address this question it is necessary to understand what is meant by "cinematic" surround sound and to consider some of the challenges faced by those seeking to translate it to the home environment. This article examines these issues through an exploration of the development of surround sound in the cinema and its transference to the home and concludes with a tentative look towards possible future developments

Digital recording of performing arts: formats and conversion

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IPEA: the digital archive use case

Now is the time to migrate tape-based media archives to digital file-based archives for television broadcasters. These archives not only address the issue of tape-deterioration, they also create new possibilities for opening up the archive. However, the switch from tape-based to file-based is something only the very big television broadcasters can manage individually. Outer- broadcasters should work together to accomplish this task. In the Flemish part of Belgium, the two largest broadcasters in Flanders, namely the commercial broadcaster VMMa and the public broadcaster VRT, the television facilities supporting company Videohouse, and different university research groups associated with the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology joined forces and started the "Innovative Platform on Electronic Archiving" project. The goal of this project is to develop common standards for the exchange and archiving of audio-visual data. In this paper, we give a detailed overview of this project and its different research topics