As a kid, I envisioned a day when our technology, mainly movies and music, would be on devices that would not require any moving parts. Simply, you would only need a cartridge of sorts to plug into the base unit to see or hear what you wanted. No motors, no grease, no parts to worry about breaking or rusting. Of course, I thought it would take a long time, but actually, we’re pretty much there already … at least halfway there.

The last two years or so have been a revolutionary time for the digital medium. Ones and Zeros are dominating the planet. High Definition Television, Satellite TV service, DVDs, Digital Cellular Phones, MP3s, and Digital Surround Sound are just some of the things that have enjoyed a massive boom in business.

When a new video format was announced to debut in 1997, skeptics had a field day doubting the viability of a new player on the field. Comparisons to Laserdisc were everywhere. DVD? Digital Versatile Disc? (Now mainly known as Digital Video Disc.) Why would this CD-looking object cause a ripple in the video industry? Because it’s better, that’s why. DVD had such great support after people got to know it that it has become nearly impossible for this new format to die. This isn’t Laserdisc or Beta. DVD will be here for a long time. In 1998, the final few big studios that had held out decided to accept DVD as an acceptable medium and put their full support behind it. Generally, all movies released on video are simultaneously released on DVD — it’s called Day and Date release. The catalog selection is in the thousands and growing constantly as studios find they can make another small fortune releasing popular, older titles with excellent features and extra options.

DVD sales for the discs and players have been so successful that they’ve thrown off most every prediction. (Players are currently hovering at the $300 mark, but may be near $199 by Christmas, with recordable machines coming out in the next year or two.) Already, about 4 million DVD players are out there, with millions of discs as well. Most computer manufacturers will be getting rid of traditional CD-ROM drives in favor of DVD-ROM drives, greatly increasing the DVD per household ratio.

As we move into the 21st Century with HDTV, DVD will pair up beautifully with the new digital TVs. While the quality on normal TVs has greatly improved over VHS, it will be even better once we can afford a nice, big digital TV.

So what is DVD? Simply put, it is MPEG-2 technology. Don’t worry, I don’t get it all myself. I just know I love it. MPEG technology is a compression technique that squeezes down the information into small bits of data that can hold so much more information than conventional methods. With a movie, for instance, the film is transferred from the master print into a digital format that is compressed into MPEG-2 technology. This lets one side of one DVD hold up to four hours of superb sound and video. (Two hours on a single-layer disc, four hours on a Duel-layer disc.)

A movie on a DVD might contain up to 30 subtitles or karaoke tracks, and up to eight audio channels, including different camera angles. That’s just part of what movies can offer on DVD. There can also be commentary tracks by the filmmakers, documentaries, outtakes, deleted scenes, music videos, trailers, notes, biographies, computer interaction such as screensavers or links to special websites, and more. For a film fan, a DVD player is an absolute must-have. You will never want to go back to VHS.

If you are only interested in seeing the movie, not owning it, and are not worrying too much about the quality or special features, perhaps you should stick to VHS. But if you want every drop out of your movie, think of diving into DVD.

Here’s another prediction of mine. Within the next two years, there will be MP3 car stereos designed so that all you’ll need to do to play music is download what you want to listen to from your computer onto a memory card and stick that into your stereo. You’ll have crystal clear CD-like sound to enjoy on the road. The fact that portable MP3 players hit the market in no time leads me to believe that I’m not far off on this car gadget idea.

In the same vein of DVD technology, MP3 technology is the new format for music. MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (or MP3 for short) is the term for this compression format. Like DVD, music is converted into compressed bits, which then use MP3 players to uncompress them. If you want to download an MP3 song from the Internet, it will take you a matter of three or four minutes, compared to the usual 40 plus minutes. And this is without sacrificing quality. Getting a player for your computer is as easy (and free) as going to a website, such as www.mp3.com, and downloading the player. The quality is great and with portable players (like the most popular player, Diamond’s RIO) the ability to have a moving, parts-free device (that you cannot shake, rattle, or roll into skipping) with excellent sound is a great new breakthrough.

MP3 is destined to survive the ranks of the failed or failing formats like DAT (Digital Audio Tapes) and MiniDisc. The massive growth of MP3 material that can be found on-line is staggering, and will simply feed the appetite to have more and more out there for MP3 technology to utilize. As controversial as MP3 is — you can download pirated songs by famous artists for free all over the Internet — it has basically been approved by the music companies as a viable new medium through which they can distribute their goods.