Everybody has heard the word multimedia, but what is it?
Some have read about it, others have talked about it and everyone wants it.

When looking at adverts about computers in the news papers or on television, most of these mediums indicate that a multimedia system is a computer that has a soundcard and CD-ROM installed. This often misleads people of the definition of multimedia.

Multimedia involves any combination of two or more of the following: image, content, sound and video. This can be broken into more parts for example under sound: sound effects, music and voice over. All these elements are controlled via a main frame in the computer software. Thus multimedia can be used to express and transmits a message, presentation or any interactive media preferred by the user.

If you look at most mediums which convey a message to the user, a combination of sounds and speech are mostly used for radio commercials, magazines take usage of images and text and television combines all of these mediums. Although television has become a crucial part in our lives, it still doesn’t feature what multimedia has to offer.

Users are now allowed to be involved with their presentations by interacting with it via computers. With this in mind, users can now continue the multimedia presentation on their own pace and has total control over the flow of the data.

Up to date multimedia is used for DVD, advertising, entertainment, databases, interactive CD-ROMS, kiosks, company profiles, presentations and exhibitions. Even most games can be seen as multimedia, as it contains screens where it requires the user to interact.

Interactive multimedia is constantly growing, and is also starting to become a major role in our lives. As we are going towards a digital world, billions of people communicate with one another via some interaction of a multimedia interface.

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