The digital revolution is upon us and it is altering the way in which so many things are done.
Here are some of the most monumental changes we have seen to date
The Home PC
The home computer had its humble beginnings in the early eighties. Cmon, you can remember (even if youd prefer not to!) those ZX80s and ZX81s that were created by Sir Clive Sinclair! And how about those big, chunky BBC computers which were adopted by so many schools? Talk about solid... You could have used a few dozen of these to build a motorway flyover!
Computers really have come on a long way since then and they are set to get far better in the years to come; touch screen technology, 3D capabilities and a built-in pizza delivery service (What? You didnt know about that?). Its all going to get much more exciting yet!
The Satellite Dish
Analogue TV may have served us well for many years, but digital TV is so much better! When you think back to only having 4 channels (and even fewer before that) to choose from, it makes you wonder how we ever managed to cope at all!
These days we simply have to buy ourselves a satellite dish and we will immediately have hundreds of channels at our disposal!!! Now all we need is an improvement in the quality of our programmes...
The CD, MP3 and WMA
The digitization of music has been truly revolutionary! Gone are the days of those oh so easily scratched 12s and forever getting chewed-up cassettes. And jolly good riddance too! It would always be your favorites David Bowie tape that got shredded and never your naff Vanilla Ice cassette. Maybe all tape players had an inbuilt inverted quality sensor...
Of course, CDs were the first big thing to come along... and now we are even able to create our own Compact Disc recordings!
Some of us may get a little nostalgic when we think back to our much-loved vinyl or cassette collections, but it they just cannot compare to the mega quality and super convenience of todays MP3s and WMAs.
The DVD, AVI and MPEG
The film industry really was in desperate need of a digital overhaul. Clunky great big VHS tapes were an absolute bore, especially when they entangled themselves around the inner workings of your top-loading VCR!
Of course, the first exciting thing to come along was the Laserdisc. This was basically a prototype of the DVD. However, a Laserdisc was the same size as a vinyl album... which people were actively doing away with! Yup, the revolutionary Laserdisc was doomed!
But everything was rectified when some bright spark came up with the DVD... and AVI and MPEG files really are the icing on the hard drive!
