Customer Reviews

Video Demystified: A Handbook for the Digital Engineer, 5th Edition

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a fairly complete handbook about video signals: here you will find quite everything about analog and digital video, cables and connection standards.

From the first chapter, however, the written text disappoints the reader: it is a list of technical data, without any further explanation or with a poor one. This book is a sort of "data sheet compilation", and it is a very good one. But it is not a book about digital and analog video.

From this book you will not learn how and why PAL and NTSC have been designed and you will not be introduced into color theory in an effective way. You will learn how many pixels PAL and NTSC are made of at every possible resolution, and when you will read the same sentence for the 30th time, you will ask yourself why the book was not simply condensed in a list of tables and graphics. That way it could have been a must have.

In brief: an interesting and complete but pointlessy verbose reference.

I have the second edition in print and the third in PDF as well as the fifth in print. Some of the other reviews of this book bash the fact that it isn't for hobbiests or those less technical but take a look at the full title, it IS intended for digital design engineers. The 2nd book is about 700 pages with about 100 more of appendix, the 3rd is about the same but the appendix have been encorporated into chapters. Both include the same CD of test images. The 5th edition is actually thinner bye 1/4" and perhaps heavier with about 900 pages. It lacks the CD of images even though the same images are used throughout the book. If you really want the images you can probably find them somewhere. Additional subjects include MPEG4, digital TV standards and more coding formats. It saves you the time of finding and paying for the individual standards. It doesn't cover DVD or BlueRay standards and still includes NTSC / PAL / SECAM. It doesn't cover DisplayPort but that is still an unproven in the market standard. Does it cover absolutely everything, no, it can't it would be too big. It is my number one goto reference for video information though since everything I need is in there and then some (which is nice to have on hand anyway).

Great book for the starting Engineer or the experienced Engineer who needs to look something up. Easy to understand and contains the most important aspects of video today.

I quickly scanned the text. The difference between the fifth edition and the fourth edition is that the 5th is missing the CD with the electronic version of the book.

This order was undelivered. A seemingly phantom USPS tracking number was provided and correctly available for tracking at amazon and usps. The refund was promptly processed upon request.