Developing technologies

Consumer products

Consumer products are products that allow everyday people (consumers) to make their own content. Consumer products can range from cameras to microphones, to different kinds of software as well. There are pros and cons for this though, It's great for so many people to have access to so much equipment to easily make content, and because of things like YouTube it has been made very easy for people to get their own content out into the world, the downside is that because everyone can release content it is massively over saturated.

Satellite/Cable TV

Satellite and Cable are the two different types of TV in the UK. Satellite (Sky) for example have a satellite TV channel this means that the signal is coming from a satellite, these are much less common than cable channels, things like the BBC and ITV are cable channels, this means they are connected to peoples houses through a cable underground, this is a way more common type of TV. There are pros and cons on TV, satellite tends to be more expensive but with a much wider range of content, both satellite and cable are becoming a bit outdated with new streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon video, they are more restrictive because of the TV schedules.

Analogue/Digital

Analogue TVs are very out of date and not used for every day business anymore this is because they were too thick, they couldn't display a high quality image at all, they're not compatible with most modern output methods, they didn't have many pros, digital TVs on the other hand are way more modern because they have all the modern connection types they they can output a high quality image, and a lot of the newer digital TVs can be connected to the internet so streaming services are enabled on them which is very good.

Internet

The internet is a great way to consume media, things like YouTube have an almost endless amount of content on and things like Netflix and Amazon video are very easy and legal ways to consuming media on the internet, although there is a big market of people who pirate films, which means to download them illegally, this has been massive for the film industry because all the people getting movies for free are taking away profits from the people who made the movie, which directly negatively impacts the industry.

Interactive

Interactive media is still quite new relative to other things like high definition or the internet, there are a few good example, like Black mirror: Bandersnatch, a choose your own adventure style show hosted on Netflix. Other examples could be live game shows that allow people to call in or something similar. There are many pros ans cons for interactive media, for example a pro is they can be very intriguing for consumers, making them feel like they can choose their own path, but it takes a lot more effort to produce interactive media.

High definition

There has been a lot of progression in terms of definition with TV and movie, 1080p is now a standard, even going up to 8k in some places, this means most viewing experiences will be much better now because of the higher resolution. This has all happened in a very short amount of time as well which means HD TVs can get very expensive, especially if you want a 4k or 8k TV. Even 10 years ago HD was coming into main stream popularity, this is how fast it's progressed.

3D

Although TVs becoming 3D seemed like it was going to be a really big things a few years ago it never really took off as much as people thought it would. Being able to watch fully 3D content in your own home was a massive thing for a lot of people, they tended to work as well as cinema 3D. Despite how well it work the excitement just fizzled out. A pro is because the excitement died you can get a 3D TV for relatively cheap.

Pay per view

Pay per view is a relatively new thing mostly used within sporting events. The concept is that you pay a fee to watch an event in real time, this can be very good because it allows people to not miss out of large sporting events around the world, they can access them them very easily on usually any device they want. The downside is that pay pee views a re usually quite expensive to purchase which could hold a lot of people back.

On-demand viewing

On-demand viewings have really changed the way TV works as a whole, because of things like the BBC iplayer and ITV Hub, viewers can watch any content they like whenever they like, this is great of the viewers because they don;'t need to worry about missing a show that they like they can just watch it on demand at any time. A con would be there's usually less ad space on on-demand products, which is great for the viewer but not so great for the company selling the ad space.

Streaming content

Streaming services have become very popular recently, they allow the consumer to watch anything thing from, their library at any time, this is very beneficial because even on on-demand programs are usually only on there for a certain amount of time. Things like Netflix have gotten really big in the past few years, there are a couple downsides though, the subscription fee tends to be quite expensive for these services  

Recording 

Recording programs has been taken over by on demand viewing and streaming services, although it was very useful when neither of those things were available, it's a bit redundant now, because you can just watch whatever show you missed on demand, rendering it pretty much pointless. Most things are online now any everything to do with actual TV seems to be becoming be obsolete.