Entertainment and Leisure

Technology had drastically changed the way people spend their time, in the past 50 years, technology has completely reshaped the entertainment industry and changed it in many ways, firstly we'll start with cinema and television, television is probably the most popular past time for most families, it has been recorded that in north america 99% of people own at least one tv in their house, this just shows how massively popular television really is, around 50 years ago, televisions were only for the rich and didn't offer much in channels, now people are able to pick up some TVs from as cheap as £50, and they have hundreds of channels to choose from, cinema has also become a popular means of entertainment for going out, popular films are shown before their release in order to make more of a profit than just releasing the dvd, although cinema has been popular since 1930s onwards, technological advancements in recording technology and cinema have made it a generally better experience for people. Better quality video and the introduction of 3D have became very popular, and more recently, the introduction of films shot in 48fps for a more smooth looking video. CGI is used in many modern movies, films are able to create amazing looking environments using such technology that cannot be made using standard sets used in older films, movies such as Avatar focused on creating landscapes that engrossed the person watching and made the surreal environments look almost real.

The landscape used in the film Avatar, made using CGI effects.

 Another major industry and popular past time is video gaming, since the first consoles came out in 1970 video gaming has evolved rapidly, with new hardware advances, game designers are able to make realistic looking games that are fun and also nice to look at, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are the more recent consoles to have come out, and have proved to be extremely popular, the Xbox selling around 70 million units. video gaming has become a common household hobby for many people, it's even played professionally in E-Sports competitions, just shows how popular it has really become. And now that smart phones and tablets have hit the market, people are able to play games from them wherever they are, gaming is no longer a home activity, and with the advancing mobile phone technology, they have become popular methods to play games on because of the power of advanced phones, they are now able to match the graphical performance of some older consoles.