5.2 Basic Hardware of a Multimedia Computer System

Computers are versatile and powerful machines that process thousands of calculations every second.

Computers now make it possible to combine sound, images and motion together.

This is achieved through a combination of software, hardware and the actual user (human).

In this section, we will concentrate on the hardware element of a multimedia computer system.

The term hardware describes the physical components of the computer.

These components work together to carry out the process or task; tasks such as viewing an image or

watching a video for example.

Examples of these hardware components are shown in Table 5.2 and are discussed in more detail in the

following sections;