Similarities Between Modems & Codecs
Modems and codecs have different applications. Modems allow you to send and receive information over the Internet, while codecs allow you to play and record digital media content such as video and audio files. Another difference is that modems are hardware devices, while codecs are generally software. However, the two technologies are similar in that they both represent systems for converting data from one form into another.
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Output
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When you send information over the Internet, your modem converts digital signals from your computer into analog signals. It must do this in order for the information to transfer over a phone, fiberoptic or cable line. Codecs also execute a form of data conversion, except instead of converting information to be sent over the Internet, they encode video or audio from a computer or recording device into a data storage format and save it as a file.
Input
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When you receive information over the Internet, your modem changes the analog information transmitted over the phone line into digital information your computer can use. Similarly, codecs decode the data in a stored file, transferring it into content you can see or hear. The quality of this content depends on whether the codec is lossy or lossless. Lossy codecs eliminate data in order to keep the file size low, while lossless codecs retain all of the original information.
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Terminology
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Both the terms "modem" and "codec" represent a type of abbreviation common in computer terminology. Modems modulate digital signals into analog signals and demodulate analog into digital. Thus their name comes from combining the "mo" in modulate with the "dem" in demodulate. Codecs encode content into a storage format and decode it for playback. In the process, they also compress and decompress the content. Thus the term comes from combining the "co" in encode or compress with the "dec" in decode or decompress.
Hardware Codecs
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Some manufacturers implement codecs via hardware rather than software, giving them another similarity with modems. Some hardware codecs have advantages over software codecs in that they consume less power and perform their conversions faster than their software counterparts. This is advantageous when converting large databases of video information for storage while still making them available for easy playback.
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References
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