Multimedia applications

Reflecting the generic, or buzzword, nature of the term multimedia is the range of
applications that claim to be multimedia. Existing and planned applications list such diverse
target areas as electronic magazines, video--on-demand, patient monitoring systems in
hospitals, remote robotic agents, distance learning, and interactive (WAN-)distributed virtual
reality games. Using some rough categorizations we can sort multimedia applications into
the following categories (this list is not exhaustive):
Information systems: All systems whose main purpose is to provide information to a user
(or a group of users). Example application areas are :
electronic publishing: Electronic newspapers (e.g., the Age or The Australian and
magazines (e.g., HotWiRED or Time Magazine online)
hospital information systems: Patient monitoring systems, multimedia patient
databases, mixed reality surgery(e.g., virtual reality goggles)
navigation and information systems: shopping center /airport and other public
spaces offer touch screen multimedia orientation systems
museums:Online catalogs using high definition rendering of paintings, interactive online
museum tours (the Virtual Museum in Victoria or the Paris Louvre WebMuseum offer virtual
reality museum trips ).
(Remote) representation: Systems which represent a user at a remote location. The
representation can be either passive or active---that is, the user can either just receive
information about the remote location and the actions taking place there (passive
representation), or she can take part in the action and even influence the process at the
remote location (active representation). Notable example applications include:
conferencing applications: The user takes part in a conference; he/she can see and
hear the other participants; usually some kind of tool for showing text and graphics to the
other participants is available.
distance learning: Distance learning is essentially the same as conferencing; instead
of transmitting a conference session or a group meeting, a seminar, a lecture, or a class is
transmitted to students somewhere on the network.
remote auctions: a growing area which is and extension of online shopping
remote robotic agents: The remote location might be situated inside a hazardous
environment (e.g., the core of a nuclear reactor, or a deep-sea exploration) which is too
dangerous for the user as that she could be there in person, yet, the task which the user
wants to carry out requires human intervention.
remote task agents: Taking the concept of remote robotic agents one step further we
can employ a piece of software, an agent, to act on behalf of us: For example, the agent
would travel across the Internet, visit a pre-determined set of machines, carry out the
instruction that we programmed it to do, bundle up the results (which, of course, would be
multimedia documents), and return to our workstation.
virtual reality:Whereas the conferencing and remote robotic agent applications
represent the user at another, existing, location, to which she could travel to instead, virtual
reality applications represent users inside a physically-nonexisting environment; for
example, rather than accessing the records of a database through an arcane retrieval
language, the database user might enter a virtual reality representation of the database,
which would present individual records as old-fashioned folders.
Entertainment: This area attracts most of the attention of the general public as a lot of
telecommunication and media companies expect that the entertainment market will be the
one with the largest audience and, also, the market which is best suited for the employment

of multimedia techniques. The following list presents just a short excerpt of the projects
planned and worked on:
digital television: Originally, digital television started out as a technology to deliver
television broadcasts that were to be of substantially higher quality and size than current,
analog technology based broadcasting services (the term high-definition television (HDTV )
was coined to describe these new broadcasting services). However, the service providers
that are implementing those services are already looking at other uses of the digital
television technology: Data transmission, paging systems, wireless telephony, and multiple
television programs within one channel are just a few of the uses in consideration, thereby
pushing the original HDTV goal aside
video--on-demand: Cable companies want to distribute a customized program to each
viewer---that is, the user instead of the cable company shall have the authority to decide
what kind of program the cable company delivers; additionally, all the features which the
user has come to know from her video-cassette--recorder shall also be available with
video--on-demand
widely distributed interactive games: Companies like Sega or Nintendo are working
on creating networks of game-boy machines, that will interconnect using the existing
telephone network or future networks.
interactive television: This kind of application is especially attractive for television
companies and multimedia "evangelists". The interactive part refers to the user's ability to
partake in televised voting or game shows. The attractive aspect of interactive television
stems from the fact, that the necessary technological infrastructure is already installed:
Cable television and telephony services are available almost everywhere. Hence, startupcosts are low; set-top boxes link the television set, the telephone, and the user .