Comparison of digital video formats

With the old analogue TV signal finally consigned to the history books, pretty much everything that we watch on TV and video is coming to us in digital format.

From YouTube to iPlayer, we’re exposed to more digital video than ever before. This means that the race is on for manufacturers and developers to create the ‘go to’ format that will dominate the world of digital viewing. Until the next big thing comes along that is.

So what is the difference between HD and AVI and what does it actually mean in terms of quality and user experience? Here’s a quick guide to help you tell your MPEG from your DVD so that you can get the most out of your viewing time.

YouTube 

For many of us, YouTube was the place that we first saw any kind of digital video online.

Created in 2005, YouTube originally only offered one level of video quality. Today it has multiple options, from very basic to HD and supports a number of digital formats for upload.

The quality that you’ll actually be able to view videos in will depend on your computers capability, your bandwidth and the size of the video. YouTube was the original home of internet based digital video.

MPEG 

MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group and is very popular in the world of digital video.

There are three main types of MPEG, MPEG-1 gives you rather poor video quality, sometime no better than old-fashioned VHS videos, whereas MPEG-2 gives much better results and is the compression technology behind much HDTV as well as DVDs.

One of the fastest growing MPEG formats is the MPEG-4 or MP4. The format is easily streamed over the internet and so is used by iPods and iTunes as well as video sharing websites.

AVI 

Created by Microsoft, AVI or Audio Video Interleave can be played by almost any digital video player and so has become one of the default video formats.

The downside to AVI is that the files don’t contain pixel aspect ratio information and so videos can appear stretched or squeezed when played back.

MOV 

The MOV format was created by Apple so that users could store and play videos on their devices.

Now compatible with both Windows and Mac platforms, this format can only be played on QuickTime player, but does offer great compression ability so is perfect for storing lots of films and TV series.

Created by Apple, MOV is great for storing all of your digital video files.

720p HD 

As video makers and video consumers begin to demand better quality, the move towards HD video will become unstoppable.

The first step in this revolution is 720p HD, which is half the quality of ‘true’ HD. Seen by many as a poor man HD, the format doesn’t have the sharpness or clarity of HD, but is a big improvement on previous formats.

Thanks to its smaller size, more people are able to view 720p as it doesn’t clog up as much of your precious bandwidth.

Full HD 

At 1080p or 2.1 mega pixels, full HD is significantly bigger than 720p, and the proof is very much in the pudding.

Watch any video in full HD, and the difference between it and other formats will be immediately obvious.

The downside though is the size and capacity needed to play HD videos over the internet.

However there’s no doubt that as technology improves, the number of videos available in HD will increase, something which can only mean good news for the viewing public.

Digital video formats are evolving and developing constantly. Always looking for ways to advance their products, manufacturers never tire of bringing out new formats and improving old.

So watch this space for new digital video formats that haven’t even been though up yet, they’re likely to be even bigger and better than you can imagine.


Author bio: Tom Reynolds works for Bushey DVD, the vhs to dvd converting service. Picture credits: Wikipedia 1 & 2

Free Tools for Managing Social Media Accounts – a look at what it says in the title

The debris of social media can weigh users down on a daily and even hourly basis. And without the right tools it’s a cluttered world out there in the big wide world of the likes of Twitter. Thankfully, however, there are some great tools for managing social media accounts. And they cost absolutely nothing, so here’s some of the best currently on offer.

Klout

Have you got Klout? You might be dipping your toe into the social media waters, or it could be your job and passion, whatever stage you’ve reached, it can worth examining the effectiveness of what you’re doing. And Klout is the handy tool for just this. It measures your power via the likes of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, crunching the numbers to tell users about their influence. Klout is scored on a scale of one to one hundred with the average score being 40. So log in and find out about your Klout.

Hootsuite

As the popularity of Twitter grows, so people find themselves in the position of having multiple Twitter accounts: one for work, one for personal use, and perhaps one for a hobby or side project. So it left people pondering how to keep track of all of this Twitter information without letting important tweets or messages fall through the cracks. Handily Hootsuite offers just the solution to this problem. Its web-based dashboard allows users to keep track of several social accounts, all from the once place. And it’s all for free. Hootsuite also offers the opportunity to up the social ante with additional paid features which include Facebook integration and the Hootsuite Conversations. This works almost like an instant messaging service.

Followerwonk

With some 72 million active account and around 400 million tweets being sent every day, using Twitter to its full business advantage, can be a tricky task. Some people tweet fervently, some knowledgeably and some not at all. So how do you sort for wheat from the chaff in a social world? Well, try using Followerwonk. This free tool works on different levels. Users can search via Twitter bios those of potential interest. It is also possible to identify about your most influential followers and when the best time is to engage via Twitter.

Twellow

Dubbed the Twitter Yellow Pages, Twellow works as a twitter directory. Launched in 2007, the free service has been modified and upgraded along the way with the most recent 2.0 version boasting new features including Twellohood. This allows users to sift through tweets by location, making it easier to connect and find out information being tweeted from or about your local area. And with Twellow’s 31 million profiles and 3000 categories, that’s a considerable amount of potential information.

Topsy

Sifting through the Twitter chatter can be time-consuming and labour intensive, so make life easier and use Topsy. There’s a free option which allows users to search for a specific word or topic across a multitude of outlets such as photos, videos and tweets. Course, if you've cash to splash then you can cast your net wider but the free tool still makes for useful analyse of topics.

Social Mention

If you’re looking to keep track of specific mentions, then streamline and simplify this by using social mention. It collects content across a plethora of different platforms including Facebook and Twitter and puts it into a single stream. There are no hidden charges and it’s so easy to use that it’ll make you wonder what you did before using this tool.

Dedicated Servers vs Virtual Servers

Choosing between dedicated and virtual servers for your business can be a big decision. But you don’t need to be an expert in CPU cores, RAID disk space and disk transactions to be able to make the right choice.

The key is to known the main requirements for your business, look at the advantages and disadvantages for each solution, and work with the best internal and external specialists to achieve the right results.

The main difference between dedicated and virtual servers is simple. With the former, you pay to control a dedicated box, whereas the virtual option gives you space on a server that may host several other virtual environments, and is optimised to allow the best allocation of that resource.

Virtual Servers:

There are some big advantages to using Virtual Servers. One of the primary ones is cost – as low as £9.95 a month for a Virtual Server package from some providers. That compares to the entry point for a dedicated server starting at £89 per month.

That’s a big amount over the course of a year for small or medium-sized businesses, especially if you’re not sure you’re going to use everything a dedicated resource will give you. And even larger companies can use a virtual server to launch small or experimental projects at far less expense.

Although there are some concerns around the use of virtualisation software, this has developed and evolved to make little difference to server performance, and means that your share of resources will be optimised at all times. For example a company I've worked with uses Xen, which operates at around 2% of total performance, and provides a high level of isolation between virtual instances.

Other benefits include the fact that a shared resource is easily scalable. You can get an upgrade in the event of a huge surge in traffic, without committing to a big new piece of hardware. If that business sticks around, you’ll be happy to pay a little more. If it doesn't then at least you don’t have a dedicated server sitting around doing nothing except costing you money.

You also get the benefits of fast and easy migration. The connectivity and software controls mean that it’s possible to not only shift servers without problems, but also to restore a backup hosted on a different virtual machine, for example.

Virtual servers are largely isolated and are closely managed to meet stated performance guarantees, but the one downside is if peak times and larger surges occur – particularly if they happen to a number of services at the same time.

Dedicated Servers:

Purchasing a dedicated server means that somewhere there’s a box with your name on it. For larger businesses, it can be necessary to have completely dedicated resources, especially if you’re dealing with huge traffic numbers or specialise in streaming large quantities of video and audio. In terms of hosting websites, you’d often need to hosting thousands to require a high specification dedicated server.

It’s still a more cost effective option than creating your own server room, which incurs costs not only for potentially valuable real estate, but also for the necessary cooling requirements. Plus there are health and safety rules to follow, including fire safety.

Your server is completely isolated, with no shared hardware, and you have full control over the hardware components as well as software.

But there are disadvantages. Firstly, the entry cost is much higher, and requires a significant upfront investment. If you’re not sure of traffic or success, it can be a lot to pay for redundant power until you actually need it. Often, hosting companies will allow you to easily scale up on a virtual server and migrate across when dedicated power is needed.

It’s also less flexible than a virtual equivalent. The resource you have is essentially static and requires downtime to upgrade – when your server is offline, so are you.  In terms of emergencies and hardware failures, RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) should keep you going until support staff can make a fix.

Choosing between Virtual and Dedicated Servers:

Essentially the choice is simplified to what purpose you have for the server, and what the realistic potential traffic will be. In most cases, a virtual server will be more than enough to get started, and run your business for some time. If you need to switch, then it’s always an option when the business needs require it.

Dedicated servers are always an option, but it’s important to be realistic about whether you’ll need the extra performance and options unless you’re a very large media-streaming or high traffic website (Or group of websites). And unless you’re prepared to administer the server manually, you may also need to pay for a control panel to se your server.

IPv6 – The effect on web hosting and customers

One of the biggest changes in internet infrastructure really began this year with the World IPv6 Launch in June 2012. The move to IPv6 revises the primary protocol on which the entire Internet is built, but how exactly will it affect hosting companies, those wanting to run their own website, or even general internet uses?  Should you be looking at hosting companies which have already upgraded to support IPv6 and buying a new router?

What are IPv4 and IPv6? Why change?

The basics of Internet Protocols are actually fairly simple when you strip away the technical discussions. Just as with physical mail, sending packets of internet data requires somewhereto send from and a destination. So every device (computer, smartphone, router etc) connected to the internet requires an Internet Protocol (IP) address, along with every website.  This also applies to every website, and the current IPv4 system which was standardised at the start of the 1980s allows for a 32-bit number, which you’ll see as ‘xxx.xx.xxx.x’, regardless of whether your website can also be reached by MySite.com or your laptop is named as MyLaptop.

The problem is that this allowed for just under 4.3 billion IP addresses, which seemed plenty at the start of the 1980s. Even by the mid-1990s it was apparent that this wouldn’t be enough for future development, and then came the explosion in smartphones, tablets, games consoles and the ‘Internet of Things’ which covers everything from connected sensors in factories to internet-enabled fridges and cars.

Work on the new revision, IPv6 has gone on since the mid-90s, but given a global population of seven billion in 2011, and our multi-device lifestyle, the current range of addresses has been pretty much exhausted.
So the main reason for IPv6 is the switch to 128-bit addresses which gives an amount of possible address which is unlikely to ever run out.  It also brings other improvements to efficiency and security, but the switch to IPv6 has been a long process as it isn’t directly compatible to IPv4. In case you’re wondering, a typical IPv6 address would be ‘2001:db8:1f70:999:de8:7648:6e8’.

Hosting with IPv6:

Adoption of IPv6 should be part of your choice of hosting provider going forwards. Although IPv4 will continue to function for the foreseeable future, all new addresses will follow the IPv6 protocol. That means that you’ll need new IPv6 address assigned for your sites to function for everything that wants to visit them.
It also means some existing applications, such as FTP access to sites, will require changes to function for IPv6, so you want a host which has already worked on ensuring you still have the tools you need.
You’ll also want to ensure that in the short term, customers who do not have equipment and support for IPv6 sites can access your website via either ‘Dual-Stack’ implementation (which implements both protocols side-by-side), or Tunnelling (which puts IPv6 packets within IPv4). This latter is the option which allows the most widespread access, but does potentially introduce some latency.

IPv6 for general web users:

The gradual adoption by Internet Service Providers, hosting companies and websites has meant that IPv6 hasn’t become noted by most consumers – indeed, the hope would be that there’s minor disruption if any!
Indeed, even governments have been slow to transfer, such as the U.S. and Canada.
The important thing to remember is that IPv6 will only become adopted more widely, so when you are upgrading or replacing equipment in the future, you need to make sure it fully supports IPv6.
Most operating systems are already compatible (Windows, Linux, Mac OS, iOS etc), so really the main consideration will be when you are looking to purchase a new router. Although almost every major router manufacturer already produces IPV6 equipment it’s well worth checking before you make a purchase as not everything on the market has support built in, and the level of compatibility can vary. The good news is that IPv6 support is already reaching the £100 price bracket and will come to cheaper products very shortly.

Avoiding IP pain:

As with any change – you can minimise the potential problems with a bit of planning. Start talking to hosting providers which offer IPv6 now, and look at what solutions they have for on-going IPv4 traffic.
Make sure you don’t buy a new router without checking the IPv6 support, and you can check whether your current set-up is compatible via a handy tool from Google.
The change will continue to be gradual over the next 5 or 10 years, but the sooner you work with prepared companies and equipment, the less traumatic it will be!