Output devices transform digital data into visuals and sound, enhancing your experience in gaming, homework, and entertainment.
Glossary
Speakers | Devices that produce sound for you to hear. They can be used for music, movies, and games. |
Headphones | Wearable devices that allow you to listen to audio privately. Often used for studying or gaming. |
Sound Card | A component inside a computer that processes audio and sends it to speakers or headphones. |
Monitor | A screen that displays images and videos from your computer. Used for tasks like homework, gaming, and watching movies. |
Touchscreen | A screen that responds to touch, allowing you to interact directly with what is displayed, like on a smartphone or tablet. |
Projector | A device that projects images or videos onto a larger surface, like a wall or screen. |
Printer | A device that produces physical copies of documents or images from your computer. |
Resolution | The number of pixels on a screen or in an image. Higher resolution means clearer, more detailed visuals. |
Bit Depth | Also referred to as colour depth, which is the number of colors a screen or image can display. Higher bit depth means more color accuracy. |
Compression | The process of reducing the file size of images, videos, or audio. Compressed files are smaller but may lose some quality. |
Sound Sampling Rate | How often sound is captured and processed in a digital file. Higher sampling rates mean better sound quality. |
FPS | The number of images shown on a screen per second in a video. Higher FPS makes motion look smoother. |
Revisiting The Everday Desktop
In the last post, we focused on input devices. Now, we will shift our focus to output devices. Remember, an output device is a peripheral device that converts the computer’s data into something you can see, hear, or feel. Examples include Visual Display Units, monitors, and speakers as depicted hereunder.
Visual Output Devices
When we use a computer with a Graphical User Interface (GUI), seeing what we’re doing is crucial, especially when interacting with input devices. For example, when we use a mouse to point, we need to see the pointer on the screen. Similarly, when we type on a keyboard, we expect to see the words appear instantly. Here are some common visual output devices:
Monitors and screens like Liquid Crystal Displays are our windows into the digital world. We use these displays constantly, and they come in a wide range of sizes. Whether it’s watching a movie on a big-screen TV or projector, doing homework on a laptop, browsing social media on a smartphone, or playing a family game on a tablet, screens are an essential part of our daily digital experience.
Printers are devices that bring digital ideas into the physical world. They allow us to print on various materials like paper, nylon, and carbon, transforming digital designs into tangible objects. Examples include manufacturing car parts, preparing colorful school projects, or placing logos on shopping bags. Printers help make our digital creations a reality.
Audio Output Devices
Audio output devices are peripherals that produce sound, allowing us to listen to music, notice important alerts, and watch videos. Here are some common audio output devices:
Speakers convert the digital sound signals from your computer into the analog sound waves we hear. They work with a sound card, which helps translate digital data into audible sound. High-end speakers, especially those with surround sound, are becoming increasingly popular because they enhance the experience of watching a football game or an action movie by adding rich, immersive audio to your visual experience. This makes sharing these moments with family and friends even more enjoyable.
When enjoying multimedia on your own, you might want to keep the sound to yourself. This is where headphones come in handy. Noise-cancelling headphones are particularly popular because they allow you to focus on what you’re doing without being distracted by surrounding noise. Whether you’re studying, gaming, or just relaxing with your favorite music, headphones help you stay in your own world.
Some Things Are Better Together
In a previous chapter, we explored various input devices, and we have now shifted our focus to output devices. However, since some input tasks go hand-in-hand with output functions, certain devices are designed to serve as both input and output. These dual-purpose devices streamline our interaction with technology, making it more intuitive and efficient.
Quality Matters
There are so many peripherals to choose from at different price points, but how do you pick the right one for you? It depends on what you’re using the device for, of course! Today, most peripheral devices are of high quality, so we often don’t worry too much about technical specifications. However, each device has specific quality characteristics that can make a big difference depending on how it’s used. Let’s look at some of the most common ones.
Visual Quality
When choosing monitors or screens, you might want to consider the resolution and bit depth:
Resolution is measured in pixels. A pixel is the smallest unit of visual information, and all it does is store a color. The complex images you see on a screen are made up of countless pixels. Your average screen has a 1080p resolution, which is good for most tasks. Smaller screens might have less, while larger ones often have more, like 2160p. This higher resolution is more expensive but offers better display quality. Illustrators and graphic designers prefer higher resolutions because they work with large images daily and need the extra detail.
Bit Depth indicates how many colors can be displayed on the screen. The higher the bit depth, the more colors can be shown. Each pixel’s color is represented in binary. For example, if a pixel has 8 bits, the bit depth is 2^8, which works well for most uses. Today’s displays often have true color depth, where each pixel is represented using 24 bits. Filmmakers need the right color depth to ensure smooth color transitions in their work.
Audio Quality
When it comes to speakers or headphones, you might want to consider the sound sampling rate:
Sound Sampling Rate measures how many times per second the sound is sampled and is measured in Hertz (Hz). For high-quality sound, you typically want a sampling rate between 44.1kHz and 48kHz. Humans can’t detect changes much beyond these rates, so higher isn’t necessarily better. If the sampling rate is too low, you’ll notice distortion, which can be unpleasant.
Multimedia Quality
Even with high-quality devices, the overall experience can still be affected by the quality of the multimedia content itself:
Compressed File Formats
Multimedia files like images, audio, and video can be compressed to reduce their size and thus save up on memory. However, excessive compression can lead to a loss of quality. For instance, a highly compressed JPEG image with a low resolution may appear pixelated, or an MP3 file with a low bitrate may sound muffled on high-end devices.
Uncompressed File Formats Certain file formats offer better quality, for example, RAW images and WAV audio files are typically uncompressed, fully preserving all the detail of the content so they would appear crisp and sound great on high-end devices, but tend to take up a lot of disk space.
Frames Per Second The frames per second of video files can affect the way we perceive quality. A higher fps generally means smoother animations, but again requires more storage space and bandwidth. Moreover, its resolution should at least match the resolution of the display device to avoid appearing blurry.
Comments