The digital age of consumer electronics

This is an electronic age. It would be more appropriate to call it a digital electronic age. In this age, the electronic items have become an important part and parcel of everyone’s life. Today, every household has one or the other consumer electronics item, digital or analogue. From washing machines, mobiles, refrigerators, microwave ovens, cameras (including the SLR camera) to the audio-visual systems and everything electronic in nature, the people are surrounded by the innovations of this digital electronic age.

These products are the culmination of convergence of different technologies with ‘digital’ being the common thread running through them. The ushering in of the digital technology has been one of the most important factors in this convergence. This convergence has led to the emergence of newer products with integrated and vastly improved functions. That is the reason you can now have your HD TV to connected to the internet as well as to the music systems, speakers ad a dozen other gadgets. The high definition (HD) functionality of the display and sound systems has greatly improved the quality aspects of the audio-visual consumer electronics systems. The modern day high definition TVs make use of the LED lighting, also called the Light Emitting Diode lighting. The only major difference between the LCD and the LED lighting systems is that the latter makes use of the many small diodes for back lighting purpose of the screen whereas the former uses a liquid colour display.

The LCD/LED systems are more practical to use since these are thin and slim, have a flat panel display, good resolution of the images and these can also be packed and carried easily. Though these still have some limitations as compared to the traditional cathode ray TVs, the sales are picking up and their demand is quite high. These are a crucial part of the modern day home theatre systems and many big companies in the consumer electronics industry, like LG, Sony, Samsung and others compete with each other to gain maximum market share.

Another area of consumer electronics whose products are very commonly used by the households is that of the digital cameras. The SLR camera, called the single lens reflex camera, is the one which has same lens for taking the snap and also for finding the view. This is a tremendous improvement over the old cameras which required two different lenses and the photographer had to match the angle of view of these two lenses. For the more common use of the digital cameras by the amateurs, the simple cameras come inbuilt in the mobile phones. These mobile digital cameras now have good resolution power to take very clear pictures and also record the videos.

But, the digital SLR camera is still the most preferred one by the professional photographers for doing serious photography. You can do away with the manual adjustments of focal length. The modern cameras allow you to auto-focus on the object. Also, you can shoot a number of focal lengths using these cameras.