Multimedia and Communications Technology

For many people the definition of multimedia is one of a PC playing games or an encyclopedia on CD-ROM. However these applications for multimedia are only half the picture. in this book Steve Heath explains how multimedia technology is bringing together several existing products such as the PC, telephone and television and combining them in such a way that he borders and definitions that make television recogniseable as such will rapidly disappear.



Organised as a set of tutorials, the book explains in a simple manner the fundamental techniques of: * digital audio and video * JPEG and MPEG * delivery systems for multimedia: CD's, LANs and the new ATM and ASDL technologies * how these key technologies are brought together Also covered are: * new interfaces for the multimedia PC - how TAPI and TSPI are bringing PCs and telephone together * techniques of delivering MPEG compressed digital television through satellite, cable and television networks * video on demand and interactive television * video conferencing and the techniques behind the latest H.320 based video phones and conference systems

Steve Heath has many years experience in computer design with Motorola and is involved in defining software architecture for a joint Motorola/BT communications and video conferencing development to run under the Windows environment. He has presented several papers at international conferences on multimedia and has written seven other books for Butterworth-Heinemann: VMEbus: a practical companion; Newnes UNIX Pocket Book; Microprocessor architectures: RISC, CISC and DSP; Effective PC Networking; Power PC: a practical companion; The PowerPC Programming Pocket Book; The PC and M