PlayStation 4

The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 during a press conference on February 20, 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013 in North America, and November 29, 2013 in Europe, South America and Australia. It competes with Nintendo's Wii U and Microsoft's Xbox One, as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles.

Moving away from the more complex Cell microarchitecture of its predecessor, the console features an AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) built around the x86-64 architecture; with a theoretical peak performance of 1.84 teraflops, AMD stated that the processor was the "most powerful" APU they had developed to date. The PlayStation 4 places an increased emphasis on social interaction and integration with other devices and services, including the ability to play games off the console on PlayStation Vita and supported Sony Xperia mobile devices ("Remote Play"), the ability to stream gameplay online, or to friends with the ability for them to control gameplay remotely ("Share Play"). The console's controller was also refined over that of the PlayStation 3, with improved buttons, analog sticks and an integrated touchpad among other changes.

PlayStation

PlayStation (Japanese: プレイステーション, Hepburn: Pureisutēshon, officially abbreviated PS) is a series of video game consoles created and developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The brand was first introduced on December 3, 1994 in Japan with the launch of the original PlayStation console. It now consists of four home consoles, as well as a media center, an online service, a line of controllers, two handhelds and a phone, as well as multiple magazines.

The original console in the series, the PlayStation, was the first video game console to ship 100 million units, 9 years and 6 months after its initial launch. Its successor, the PlayStation 2, was released in 2000. The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling home console to date, having reached over 155 million units sold as of December 28, 2012. Sony's next console, the PlayStation 3, was released in 2006 and has sold over 80 million consoles worldwide as of November 2013. Sony's latest console, the PlayStation 4, was released in 2013, selling 1 million consoles in its first 24 hours on sale, becoming the fastest selling console in history.

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster that began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public body established in 1990, coming into operation in 1993. With the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital on 31 March 2010, Channel 4 became a UK-wide TV channel for the first time.

The channel was established to provide a fourth television service to the United Kingdom in addition to the television licence-funded BBC's two services and the single commercial broadcasting network, ITV.

History

Conception

Before Channel 4 and S4C, Britain had three terrestrial television services: BBC1, BBC2, and ITV. The Broadcasting Act 1980 began the process of adding a fourth, and Channel 4, along with its Welsh counterpart, was formally created by an Act of Parliament in 1982. After some months of test broadcasts, it began scheduled transmissions on 2 November 1982.