Topic 2: Home Entertainment

Examples of Home Entertainment

• Interactive TV
• Gaming
• Digital photography
• Webcam services
• Social networking
• Music and sound
• Mobile phones

Interactive TV:

Digital TV offers more facilities such as:

• Pay-to-view services, e.g. films, football matches and other sporting events
• Interactive services, e.g. shopping, betting, voting and dating

Services available through Interactive Digital TV:

• Sending in comments
• Viewing extra new stories of sporting activities
• Booking cinema tickets
• Playing games
• Shopping
• Email
• Voting on programmes
• Weather forecasts

Disadvantages of Interactive Digital TV:

• Cost of subscriptions
• Bad weather disrupting satellite signals
• Faulty equipment
• Freezing equipment

Pay to view service:

• Pay-to-view TV services are subscription-based. You pay a monthly or one-off fee for digital services that include:
• Satellite channels and other services
• Cable TV and other services
• Digital terrestrial TV and other services (like ordinary TV but with an encrypted signal)

Online betting:

If you go onto any sport website online you will notice  the large number of betting sites.

Advantages of online betting:

• Can do it from home
• Better deals online
• Quick and easy collection (money sent straight to credit card)
• Easier and quicker- you don't need to travel

Disadvantages of online betting:

• You need to create an account with a credit card before you can bet
• It can become addictive
• May gamble mor emoney because you are not physically handing over the money

Online dating:

There are lots of dating sites online and many people date this way because it is more convenient in their busy lives. You may feel you know more about someone by looking and their pictures and learning about their interests than you would from chatting at a bar.

Advantages of online dating:

• Some people are shy and this helps them meet people
• Some people are busy so they do not have time to go out and meet people
• You can get to know them before you decide to meet them

Disadvantages of online dating:

• You need to be careful, people can easily lie
• People could have fake pictures
• They could be meeting lots of other people

Advantages of voting online:

• Encourages more people to vote
• Cheaper because people are not needed to manually count the votes
• Results can be obtained faster
• People who are away can vote

Disadvantages of online voting:

• Not everyone has interest in it
• Would have a high inital cost

Online gaming:

Computers and computer consoles are used for playing games from chess to fast action games. Games can also be educational as children can learn through games.

• For fast action games it is neccessary to use:
• A fast processor
• A large screen
• A large amount of RAM
• Good security systems
• A disk drive with plenty of storage capacity
• A high quality graphics card
• A high quality sound card
• Large powerful speakers
• Specialist input devices such as, joysticks, game controllers, steering wheels etc.

Advantages of computer games:

• Young children can learn from them
• They can make learning fun
• Some are played online as a team, it encourages teamwork
• They can lead to well paid employments as a…