Digital Video, The Way Of The Future?

Dazzle Multimedia, along with Kathleen Maher of Jon Peddie Associates, believes that digital video is the way of the future. There are obviously others, namely Apple with the focus on FireWire and iMovie. However, to help usher computer consumers into the digital video age, Dazzle has announced a new service allowing users to post video to Dazzleis site. According to Dazzle:

According to Maher, even the low-cost computers sold today have the computing power, storage capacity and software codecs (encoders/decoders) necessary for video applications. In addition to a large installed base of analog camcorders, Maher said that over six million digital cameras and two million video-capable digital still cameras were sold last year. "Peddie Associates estimates that more than 10 million digital video cameras with IEEE 1394 connectivity will be sold worldwide this year," she reported. "The line between digital video and still cameras is blurring, and consumers everywhere are rushing to buy this new breed of digital photo/video camera."

Easy-to-Use Professional Tools A specialist in tracking the converging digital media markets, Maher said that todayis new video production solutions provide consumers with many of the features and capabilities that Hollywood technicians have used. With these new capabilities, people are rejuvenating their VHS and 8mm home movies to todayis new MPEG formats, which can be stored on CD-R, DVD-R and DVD-RAM and even sent across the Internet.

"The best thing about using the new digital formats is that they are very bandwidth conservative, so people can share them across the Internet," she commented. "Video hosting is just emerging but it offers key benefits to people who want to make their family videos readily available to people with varying computer skills. In addition, businesses are finding video hosting service to be a valuable tool for video-on-demand education, training, corporate communications, product demonstrations and installation/customer support.

"But the real driving force for the digital video universe will be the living room where the features of DVD, digital cable, satellite, game/entertainment systems and Internet TV set-top boxes will blend together as video passes through them," she predicted.

Dazzle also announced the launch of its new Webcast Theater, a free service for its customers. Rather than sending huge video files to friends, family and business associates, Dazzle customers can post them on Dazzleis video service site at no cost and can send emails to the individuals asking them to view the video. Site visitors can simply watch the webcast from the Dazzle Webcast Theater without having to download the video.

You can find more information about Dazzleis digital video at its Web site.