text:
The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back!)

The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back!) is a live album by American rock band Blink-182. It was released on November 7, 2000, by MCA Records. Blink-182 had risen to fame at the turn of the millennium on the strength of its third album, Enema of the State, which went multiplatinum. Capturing the band's stage show—known for its irreverent humor—with a live release was designed to satisfy fans between new studio albums. The album was recorded over two nights at performances in their native California, on the group's inaugural arena tour.

The album contains energetic, high-speed renditions of the band's catalogue up to that point in their career. The set list includes singles such as "All the Small Things", "What's My Age Again?", and "Dammit". Guitarist Tom DeLonge and bassist Mark Hoppus trade juvenile jokes in-between songs, while drummer Travis Barker performs with virtuosity. The album's sleeve was designed by artist Glen Hanson, who received an award for his work on it. Jerry Finn, the band's frequent collaborator, produced and mixed the album.

Marketed as a limited edition release, The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show was initially available for only two months at retail. During that time, the album sold over 500,000 copies in the US, earning a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. "Man Overboard"—a bonus studio single recorded to promote its release—reached number two on Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The album proved influential for future pop punk acts, including Man Overboard and All Time Low. In recent years, the album has seen sporadic availability on digital platforms.

Background
Blink-182 broke into the mainstream with its 1999 album Enema of the State—a fast, glossy pop-punk record with multiple hit singles. The LP proved enormously successful, shifting over five million units domestically, and three times that number worldwide. It became a time of transition for the group, who performed worldwide in larger venues than before, including amphitheaters, arenas, and stadiums. At the beginning of the album's promotional cycle, the trio were driving from show to show in a van with a trailer attached for merchandise and equipment; by its end, they were traveling by double-decker bus and flying on private jets. Bassist Mark Hoppus recalled that "we had gone from playing small clubs and sleeping on people's floors to headlining amphitheaters and staying in five-star hotels." Guitarist Tom DeLonge, in a band biography, recalled that touring arenas "was amazing, because it was the first time we'd ever done anything that big. I felt like a success story." Drummer Travis Barker, in his memoir Can I Say, recalled his newfound stardom: "[The] album took us all over the world, for months at a time. We were playing awards shows with [pop stars] Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera when we were used to hanging with bands like the Vandals, Unwritten Law, and 7 Seconds." Capturing the band's stage show with a live album was designed to satisfy fans between new studio albums. The content of The Mark, Tom and Travis Show was recorded at two concerts in California. These shows—a part of the band's first arena outing, the Loserkids Tour—took place on November 4, 1999, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California, and November 5, 1999, at Universal Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. The album was titled after the band's 2000 worldwide tour, while the subtitle alludes to both Enema of the State and the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back. The recordings were captured by Le Mobile, a California-based mobile recording unit. Le Mobile has also recorded live albums for artists such as the Offspring, Van Morrison, Kenny G, and Robin Thicke.

Hoppus described the experience as daunting, especially the Los Angeles show: "Playing shows in LA is already nerve-wracking enough because you have friends and family and agents and lawyers and label people and radio stations," he told Rock Sound in 2020. The album was produced and mixed by Jerry Finn, a veteran punk rock producer that the band previously collaborated with on Enema of the State. Additional editing of the recordings took place at Signature Sound in the band's hometown, San Diego; Finn mixed the album at Cello Studios in Hollywood, where it was also finalized at Bernie Grundman Mastering. The album's artwork was illustrated by artist Glen Hanson, best known for later designing the Mattel fashion doll franchise Monster High. The drawing depicts the band performing for a colorful audience of characters, including a wizard, nude men, an alien, and Enema of the State cover model Janine Lindemulder. Hanson was awarded a certificate of excellence from the American Institute of Graphic Arts for his work on the sleeve. The design of the CD sleeve was headed by Tim Stedman, then vice president of the art department for MCA Records.

Music

The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show features live renditions of songs from the band's first three albums: Cheshire Cat, Dude Ranch, and Enema of the State. It leans heavily on the contents of the latter, as the band were touring in support of it at the time. Most of the songs are performed at a significantly faster tempo than the album versions. "We played the songs at lightning speed, and the dick jokes were at an all-time high. It was a perfect representation of what we sounded like and who we were at that time," Barker has recalled. The band's songs commonly focus on autobiographical lyrical subjects such as relationships, and adolescent themes like high school and teen angst. Greg Kot at the Chicago Tribune perceived an "undercurrent of seriousness and an attention to songcraft that might not be instantly apparent beneath the prankster veneer."

Guitarist Tom DeLonge's guitar riffs are down-stroked and power-chord heavy, with large amounts of palm muting, while Hoppus acts as a combination between a rhythm guitarist and bassist. Writer Greg Heller of Alternative Press, on the topic of Barker's role, observed that "In the great tradition of Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan, the [album] showcases the drummer's quiet fury—which is to say that when not drumming furiously, he's quiet [...] But when playing he's the loudmouth, squeezing fills into rolls with unthinkable technicality and brutal abandon." Heller felt that Barker's percussive work on the album offers "something slightly more eclectic" than the typical "repetitive blitzkrieg" of double-time punk drumming. At this point in his career, Barker listed veteran percussionists Steve Gadd, Dennis Chambers, and Stewart Copeland as influences. DeLonge and Hoppus, meanwhile, jokingly prioritize carelessness, remarking on the album that they "professionally suck."

At the conclusion of the live set, the album crossfades into "Man Overboard", a new studio track. The song was originally demoed during the sessions that produced Enema of the State, but was left off the final album. It lyrically references former drummer Scott Raynor, likening his expulsion from the group to an exclamation made when a passenger falls from a ship. The band wanted to include a new studio cover song as a bonus track, potentially from an artist like the Police, Phil Collins, or Paul Simon, but it was difficult to find time between their busy schedule.

Humor
The album contains a handful of juvenile joke songs, including "Family Reunion", a musical retelling of comedian George Carlin's seven dirty words routine, and "Blow Job", a celebration of oral sex. Throughout the performance, DeLonge and Hoppus alternate vocally portraying Satan through a voice changer, and parody their own lyrics. Nearly every song concludes with long, improvised repartee between the two musicians, often starting with DeLonge shouting "Hey Mark!" and punctuated by belching. "I always hated bands that just sit there and play," DeLonge said to disc jockey Michael Halloran. "I think us interacting with the audience is different, and original, and it's fun to do." The LP concludes with nearly eleven minutes of this collected banter, in which DeLonge references the duo's off-color tendency: "Hey, how come every time we say a joke, it has to be about fucking, sex, masturbation, incest, or anything gross like that? [...] There's nothing else to talk about!" These tracks, collectively known as "Words of Wisdom", are culled from DAT recordings of thirty shows across the Mark, Tom and Travis Show Tour, and were compiled by a member of band's entourage. Hoppus called it "the worst, most obscene, foul-language. On that tour me and Tom were really trying to see who could outdo the other and say the most ridiculous thing on stage." DeLonge expressed surprise at audience members' potential offense to their humor, noting that the scene the group came up in included acts like Guttermouth, whose frontman Mark Adkins was known to stick a drum stick up his rear on-stage—so their dialogue certainly felt tame in comparison.

Barker, who voted against including the 26-track collection of crosstalk, takes no part in the silliness, and communicates solely in rimshots. "Probably 60 percent of the time, what they're saying between songs is genuinely funny," he told Heller. "But the other times... that's when I'm kicking or doing something behind the drum set to say, 'Let's go. Let's play the next song.' They tried before [to get me involved]: 'Get a mic. Tell a joke.' But that's just not my style. I'd just rather play a song." This type of between-song dialogue has been compared to Paul Stanley's stage banter on the Kiss live album Alive!, as well as the Slayer bootleg album Do You Dig Older Women?. Allmusic reviewer MacKenzie Wilson dismissed this humor as "immature, [but] harmless." In contrast to their crude humor, the duo were fairly straight-laced behind-the-scenes, compared to many rockstars. A 2000 Rolling Stone profile by writer Gavin Edwards details the band: "They say they don't use drugs. Their tour rider mandates a supply of beer, which they routinely donate to the road crew. [...] Hoppus' and DeLonge's antics mask a mature streak that, given their fondness for fart jokes and references to one another's penises, in itself seems shocking." Nevertheless, the band's tendency to celebrate audience members flashing their breasts drew criticism. Hoppus responded to these critiques in the Rolling Stone story; "I just get super bummed-out when 13-year-old girls show their boobs. [...] Now, we're the first show for a lot of kids, so I just want them to have fun and get out safe."

Commercial performance
The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show was first alluded to in an August 2000 article on MTV News, which reported the band were back in the studio to record a studio track accompanying the album, "Man Overboard". The song debuted online, streaming exclusively on MTV.com, KROQ.com and the band's official website on September 2, 2000. The song was later serviced to radio on September 18, where it quickly rose up Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song peaked at number two on November 18, 2000, its eighth week on the chart, representing another hit single for the band. The live version of "Dumpweed" was also issued as a promotional single to support the album.

The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show was released on compact disc and cassette worldwide on November 7, 2000, with a suggested list price of $12.98 in the US. It was marketed as a limited edition release, and was only available for two months in stores. The album premiered with sales of between 110,000 and 128,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, debuting at number eight on the Billboard 200 chart in the issue dated November 25, 2000. It charted highest in Canada, where it peaked at number four, and in Australia, where it debuted on the ARIA Charts at number six. It was quickly certified gold in several regions; in Canada, the album was certified platinum by Music Canada for sales of over 100,000 copies; overseas, in the United Kingdom, it similarly attained 100,000 sales, resulting in a gold certification from the British Phonographic Industry.

It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on January 17, 2001, denoting shipments of over 500,000 copies.

Critical reception
The Mark, Tom and Travis Show received mixed reviews from critics at the time of its release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 56, based on eight reviews, indicating a "mixed or average" response. Wilson of Allmusic dubbed the album "a real rock show [and] high-speed energy at it's [sic] finest [...] in the midst of teen pop mediocrity and post-grunge rollickers, it's good to see a band such as blink-182 enjoying its time on top of the world." Alex Pappademas of Spin was appreciative of Hoppus and DeLonge's "smirky, self-deprecating one-liners [that] can't conceal the music's winning wistfulness." Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone opined that "DeLonge is one terrific little guitar player, the comic chitchat interludes are a sweet bonus for fans, and Blink-182 steal enough moronic hooks to make The Enema Strikes Back! a hoot."

Mike Pace of PopMatters wrote that "the recording sounds bright and full, and while the suits at MCA surely had something to do with that production-wise, one can't fault Tom Delonge for coming into his own as a guitar player, and probably getting more mileage out of the C, G, A, F and G, C, D chord progressions than any band thus far." A reviewer for Melody Maker observed that the album "obeys the First Three Laws of Rock: have a good time; maintain the generation gap; keep it simple." The more negative reviews came from NME, with writer Siobhan Grogan deriding the album as "the tragic sound of three men so desperately trying to avoid growing up." Tom Sinclair, reviewing for Entertainment Weekly, found the collection to be "wholly unwarranted," criticizing the "laughably obvious" marketing strategy of "quickly flood[ing] the market with blink-182 product before their fans outgrow 'em." Retrospective reviews have since become more positive. Consequence of Sound contributor Alex Young retrospectively reviewed the album in 2008, praising the band's energy and considering it a part of that "timeless teenage tradition of offending parents and pushing the boundaries."

Legacy and availability
The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back!) proved influential to a generation of pop punk musicians. The New Jersey band Man Overboard named themselves after the album's lead single, while the members of Baltimore-based pop punk outfit All Time Low first bonded over listening to the album. Still, re-releases and availability of The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show have proven scarce. The original CD was only in stores for two months; it was pulled in January 2001. In the US, Universal Music Group first issued the album on vinyl in 2011 through mall chain Hot Topic, while Canadian independent label SRC reissued it on high-fidelity audiophile vinyl and cassette in 2015 and 2016. It has been infrequently available for digital download or on streaming services; in 2017, upon its latest removal, it prompted Man Overboard guitarist Zac Eisenstein to publicly bemoan its absence. It became re-available on Spotify and Apple Music in 2019, but only in certain regions.

Track listing

 * Track 7 and 8 listed as "Rich Lips" and "Blew Job" on outside of case, respectively

Personnel

 * Blink-182
 * Mark Hoppus – vocals, bass guitar
 * Tom DeLonge – vocals, guitar
 * Travis Barker – drums

 * Additional musicians
 * Jerry Finn – rhythm guitar
 * Mark Trombino – keys
 * Production
 * Sean O'Dwyer – engineer
 * Tom Lord-Alge – mixing
 * Brian Gardner – mastering
 * Jerry Finn – Producer
 * Charlie Bouis, Joe Marlett – assistant engineers

 * Management
 * Rick DeVoe – Management
 * Darryl Eaton & Brian Greenbaum – US booking agent
 * Mike Dwedney – International booking agent
 * Gary Ashley – A&R
 * Jeanne Venton & Alexa Sita – A&R administration

 * Artwork
 * Tim Stedman – art direction, design
 * TJ River – assisted design
 * Glen Hanson – illustration
 * Justin Stephens – photography
 * Skye Hoppus (née Everly), Thomas Noto, Tim Stedman – additional photography


text:
Universal Plug and Play

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols on the Internet Protocol (IP) that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices, to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the network and establish functional network services. UPnP is intended primarily for residential networks without enterprise-class devices.

UPnP assumes the network runs IP, and then uses HTTP on top of IP to provide device/service description, actions, data transfer and event notification. Device search requests and advertisements are supported by running HTTP on top of UDP (port 1900) using multicast (known as HTTPMU). Responses to search requests are also sent over UDP, but are instead sent using unicast (known as HTTPU).

Conceptually, UPnP extends plug and play—a technology for dynamically attaching devices directly to a computer—to zero-configuration networking for residential and SOHO wireless networks. UPnP devices are plug-and-play in that, when connected to a network, they automatically establish working configurations with other devices, removing the need for users to manually configure and add devices through IP addresses.

UPnP is generally regarded as unsuitable for deployment in business settings for reasons of economy, complexity, and consistency: the multicast foundation makes it chatty, consuming too many network resources on networks with a large population of devices; the simplified access controls do not map well to complex environments; and it does not provide a uniform configuration syntax such as the CLI environments of Cisco IOS or JUNOS.

Overview
The UPnP architecture allows device-to-device networking of consumer electronics, mobile devices, personal computers, and networked home appliances. It is a distributed, open architecture protocol based on established standards such as the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP), HTTP, XML, and SOAP. UPnP control points (CPs) are devices which use UPnP protocols to control UPnP controlled devices (CDs).

The UPnP architecture supports zero-configuration networking. A UPnP-compatible device from any vendor can dynamically join a network, obtain an IP address, announce its name, advertise or convey its capabilities upon request, and learn about the presence and capabilities of other devices. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain Name System (DNS) servers are optional and are only used if they are available on the network. Devices can disconnect from the network automatically without leaving state information.

UPnP was published as a 73-part international standard ISO/IEC 29341 in December 2008.

Other UPnP features include:
 * Media and device independence: UPnP technology can run on many media that support IP, including Ethernet, FireWire, IR (IrDA), home wiring (G.hn) and RF (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi). No special device driver support is necessary; common network protocols are used instead.
 * User interface (UI) control: Optionally, the UPnP architecture enables devices to present a user interface through a web browser (see Presentation below).
 * Operating system and programming language independence: Any operating system and any programming language can be used to build UPnP products. UPnP stacks are available for most platforms and operating systems in both closed- and open-source forms.
 * Programmatic control: UPnP architecture also enables conventional application programmatic control.
 * Extensibility: Each UPnP product can have device-specific services layered on top of the basic architecture. In addition to combining services defined by UPnP Forum in various ways, vendors can define their own device and service types, and can extend standard devices and services with vendor-defined actions, state variables, data structure elements, and variable values.

Protocol
UPnP uses common Internet technologies. It assumes the network must run Internet Protocol (IP) and then uses HTTP, SOAP and XML on top of IP, in order to provide device/service description, actions, data transfer and eventing. Device search requests and advertisements are supported by running HTTP on top of UDP using multicast (known as HTTPMU). Responses to search requests are also sent over UDP, but are instead sent using unicast (known as HTTPU). UPnP uses UDP due to its lower overhead in not requiring confirmation of received data and retransmission of corrupt packets. HTTPU and HTTPMU were initially submitted as an Internet Draft, but it expired in 2001; these specifications have since been integrated into the actual UPnP specifications.

UPnP uses UDP port 1900, and all used TCP ports are derived from the SSDP alive and response messages.

Addressing
The foundation for UPnP networking is IP addressing. Each device must implement a DHCP client and search for a DHCP server when the device is first connected to the network. If no DHCP server is available, the device must assign itself an address. The process by which a UPnP device assigns itself an address is known within the UPnP Device Architecture as AutoIP. In UPnP Device Architecture Version 1.0, AutoIP is defined within the specification itself; in UPnP Device Architecture Version 1.1, AutoIP references IETF. If during the DHCP transaction, the device obtains a domain name, for example, through a DNS server or via DNS forwarding, the device should use that name in subsequent network operations; otherwise, the device should use its IP address.

Discovery
Once a device has established an IP address, the next step in UPnP networking is discovery. The UPnP discovery protocol is known as the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP). When a device is added to the network, SSDP allows that device to advertise its services to control points on the network. This is achieved by sending SSDP alive messages. When a control point is added to the network, SSDP allows that control point to actively search for devices of interest on the network or listen passively to the SSDP alive messages of devices. The fundamental exchange is a discovery message containing a few essential specifics about the device or one of its services, for example, its type, identifier, and a pointer (network location) to more detailed information.

Description
After a control point has discovered a device, the control point still knows very little about the device. For the control point to learn more about the device and its capabilities, or to interact with the device, the control point must retrieve the device's description from the location (URL) provided by the device in the discovery message. The UPnP Device Description is expressed in XML and includes vendor-specific manufacturer information like the model name and number, serial number, manufacturer name, (presentation) URLs to vendor-specific web sites, etc. The description also includes a list of any embedded services. For each service, the Device Description document lists the URLs for control, eventing and service description. Each service description includes a list of the commands, or actions, to which the service responds, and parameters, or arguments, for each action; the description for a service also includes a list of variables; these variables model the state of the service at run time and are described in terms of their data type, range, and event characteristics.

Control
Having retrieved a description of the device, the control point can send actions to a device's service. To do this, a control point sends a suitable control message to the control URL for the service (provided in the device description). Control messages are also expressed in XML using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Much like function calls, the service returns any action-specific values in response to the control message. The effects of the action, if any, are modeled by changes in the variables that describe the run-time state of the service.

Event notification
Another capability of UPnP networking is event notification, or eventing. The event notification protocol defined in the UPnP Device Architecture is known as General Event Notification Architecture (GENA). A UPnP description for a service includes a list of actions the service responds to and a list of variables that model the state of the service at run time. The service publishes updates when these variables change, and a control point may subscribe to receive this information. The service publishes updates by sending event messages. Event messages contain the names of one or more state variables and the current value of those variables. These messages are also expressed in XML. A special initial event message is sent when a control point first subscribes; this event message contains the names and values for all evented variables and allows the subscriber to initialize its model of the state of the service. To support scenarios with multiple control points, eventing is designed to keep all control points equally informed about the effects of any action. Therefore, all subscribers are sent all event messages, subscribers receive event messages for all "evented" variables that have changed, and event messages are sent no matter why the state variable changed (either in response to a requested action or because the state the service is modeling changed).

Presentation
The final step in UPnP networking is presentation. If a device has a URL for presentation, then the control point can retrieve a page from this URL, load the page into a web browser, and depending on the capabilities of the page, allow a user to control the device and/or view device status. The degree to which each of these can be accomplished depends on the specific capabilities of the presentation page and device.

AV standards
UPnP AV architecture is an audio and video extension of the UPnP, supporting a variety of devices such as TVs, VCRs, CD/DVD players/jukeboxes, settop boxes, stereos systems, MP3 players, still image cameras, camcorders, electronic picture frames (EPFs), and personal computers. The UPnP AV architecture allows devices to support different types of formats for the entertainment content, including MPEG2, MPEG4, JPEG, MP3, Windows Media Audio (WMA), bitmaps (BMP), and NTSC, PAL or ATSC formats. Multiple types of transfer protocols are supported, including IEEE 1394, HTTP, RTP and TCP/IP.

On 12 July 2006, the UPnP Forum announced the release of version 2 of the UPnP Audio and Video specifications, with new MediaServer (MS) version 2.0 and MediaRenderer (MR) version 2.0 classes. These enhancements are created by adding capabilities to the MediaServer and MediaRenderer device classes, allowing a higher level of interoperability between products made by different manufacturers. Some of the early devices complying with these standards were marketed by Philips under the Streamium brand name.

Since 2006, versions 3 and 4 of the UPnP audio and video device control protocols have been published. In March 2013, an updated uPnP AV architecture specification was published, incorporating the updated device control protocols. UPnP Device Architecture 2.0 was released in April 2020.

The UPnP AV standards have been referenced in specifications published by other organizations including Digital Living Network Alliance Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines, International Electrotechnical Commission IEC 62481-1, and Cable Television Laboratories OpenCable Home Networking Protocol.

AV components
Generally a UPnP audio/video (AV) architecture consists of:

 * Control Point: a device that discovers Media Servers and Media Renderers, then connects them
 * Media Server: the server that stores content on the network to be accessed by Media Renderers
 * Media Renderer: a device that renders ('plays') content received from a Media Server.

Media server
A  is the UPnP-server ("master" device) that provides media library information and streams media-data (like audio/video/picture/files) to UPnP clients on the network. It is a computer system or a similar digital appliance that stores digital media, such as photographs, movies, or music and shares these with other devices.

UPnP AV media servers provide a service to UPnP AV client devices, so-called control points, for browsing the media content of the server and request the media server to deliver a file to the control point for playback.

UPnP media servers are available for most operating systems and many hardware platforms. UPnP AV media servers can either be categorized as software-based or hardware-based. Software-based UPnP AV media servers can be run on a PC. Hardware-based UPnP AV media servers may run on any NAS devices or any specific hardware for delivering media, such as a DVR. As of May 2008, there were more software-based UPnP AV media servers than there were hardware-based servers.

Other components

 * UPnP MediaServer ControlPoint - which is the UPnP-client (a 'slave' device) that can auto-detect UPnP-servers on the network to browse and stream media/data-files from them.
 * UPnP MediaRenderer DCP - which is a 'slave' device that can render (play) content.
 * UPnP RenderingControl DCP - control MediaRenderer settings; volume, brightness, RGB, sharpness, and more.
 * UPnP Remote User Interface (RUI) client/server - which sends/receives control-commands between the UPnP-client and UPnP-server over network, (like record, schedule, play, pause, stop, etc.).
 * Web4CE (CEA 2014) for UPnP Remote UI  - CEA-2014 standard designed by Consumer Electronics Association's R7 Home Network Committee. Web-based Protocol and Framework for Remote User Interface on UPnP Networks and the Internet (Web4CE). This standard allows a UPnP-capable home network device to provide its interface (display and control options) as a web page to display on any other device connected to the home network. That means that one can control a home networking device through any web-browser-based communications method for CE devices on a UPnP home network using ethernet and a special version of HTML called CE-HTML.
 * QoS (quality of service) - is an important (but not mandatory) service function for use with UPnP AV (Audio and Video). QoS (quality of service) refers to control mechanisms that can provide different priority to different users or data flows, or guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow in accordance with requests from the application program. Since UPnP AV is mostly to deliver streaming media that is often near real-time or real-time audio/video data which it is critical to be delivered within a specific time or the stream is interrupted. QoS guarantees are especially important if the network capacity is limited, for example public networks, like the internet.
 * QoS for UPnP consist of Sink Device (client-side/front-end) and Source Device (server-side/back-end) service functions. With classes such as; Traffic Class that indicates the kind of traffic in the traffic stream, (for example, audio or video). Traffic Identifier (TID) which identifies data packets as belonging to a unique traffic stream. Traffic Specification (TSPEC) which contains a set of parameters that define the characteristics of the traffic stream, (for example operating requirement and scheduling). Traffic Stream (TS) which is a unidirectional flow of data that originates at a source device and terminates at one or more sink device(s).
 * Remote Access - defines methods for connecting UPnP device sets that are not in the same multicast domain.

NAT traversal
One solution for NAT traversal, called the Internet Gateway Device Control Protocol (UPnP IGD Protocol), is implemented via UPnP. Many routers and firewalls expose themselves as Internet Gateway Devices, allowing any local UPnP control point to perform a variety of actions, including retrieving the external IP address of the device, enumerating existing port mappings, and adding or removing port mappings. By adding a port mapping, a UPnP controller behind the IGD can enable traversal of the IGD from an external address to an internal client.

There are numerous compatibility issues due the different interpretations of the very large actually backward compatible IGDv1 and IGDv2 specifications. One of them is the UPnP IGD client integrated with current Microsoft Windows and Xbox systems with certified IGDv2 routers. The compatibility issue still exist since the introduced of the IGDv1 client in Windows XP in 2001, and a IGDv2 router without a workaround that makes router port mapping impossible.

If UPnP is only used to control router port mappings and pinholes, there are alternative, newer much simpler and lightweight protocols such as the PCP and the NAT-PMP, both of which have been standardized as RFCs by the IETF. These alternatives are not yet known to have compatibility issues between different clients and servers, but adoption is still low. For consumer routers, only AVM and the open-source router software projects OpenWrt, OPNsense, and pfSense are currently known to support PCP as an alternative to UPnP. AVM's Fritz!Box UPnP IGDv2 and PCP implementation has been very buggy since its introduction. In many cases it does not work.

Authentication
The UPnP protocol, by default, does not implement any authentication, so UPnP device implementations must implement the additional Device Protection service, or implement the Device Security Service. There also exists a non-standard solution called UPnP-UP (Universal Plug and Play - User Profile) which proposes an extension to allow user authentication and authorization mechanisms for UPnP devices and applications. Many UPnP device implementations lack authentication mechanisms, and by default assume local systems and their users are completely trustworthy.

When the authentication mechanisms are not implemented, routers and firewalls running the UPnP IGD protocol are vulnerable to attack. For example, Adobe Flash programs running outside the sandbox of the browser (e.g. this requires specific version of Adobe Flash with acknowledged security issues) are capable of generating a specific type of HTTP request which allows a router implementing the UPnP IGD protocol to be controlled by a malicious web site when someone with a UPnP-enabled router simply visits that web site. This only applies to the "firewall-hole-punching"-feature of UPnP; it does not apply when the router/firewall does not support UPnP IGD or has been disabled on the router. Also, not all routers can have such things as DNS server settings altered by UPnP because much of the specification (including LAN Host Configuration) is optional for UPnP enabled routers. As a result, some UPnP devices ship with UPnP turned off by default as a security measure.

Access from the Internet
In 2011, researcher Daniel Garcia developed a tool designed to exploit a flaw in some UPnP IGD device stacks that allow UPnP requests from the Internet. The tool was made public at DEFCON 19 and allows portmapping requests to external IP addresses from the device and internal IP addresses behind the NAT. The problem is widely propagated around the world, with scans showing millions of vulnerable devices at a time.

In January 2013, the security company Rapid7 in Boston reported on a six-month research programme. A team scanned for signals from UPnP-enabled devices announcing their availability for internet connection. Some 6900 network-aware products from 1500 companies at 81 million IP-addresses responded to their requests. 80% of the devices are home routers; others include printers, webcams and surveillance cameras. Using the UPnP-protocol, many of those devices can be accessed and/or manipulated.

In February 2013, the UPnP forum responded in a press release by recommending more recent versions of the used UPnP stacks, and by improving the certification program to include checks to avoid further such issues.

IGMP snooping and reliability
UPnP is often the only significant multicast application in use in digital home networks; therefore, multicast network misconfiguration or other deficiencies can appear as UPnP issues rather than underlying network issues.

If IGMP snooping is enabled on a switch, or more commonly a wireless router/switch, it will interfere with UPnP/DLNA device discovery (SSDP) if incorrectly or incompletely configured (e.g. without an active querier or IGMP proxy), making UPnP appear unreliable.

Typical scenarios observed include a server or client (e.g. smart TV) appearing after power on, and then disappearing after a few minutes (often 30 by default configuration) due to IGMP group membership expiring.

Callback vulnerability
On 8 June 2020, yet another protocol design flaw was announced. Dubbed "CallStranger" by its discoverer, it allows an attacker to subvert the event subscription mechanism and execute a variety of attacks: amplification of requests for use in DDoS; enumeration; and data exfiltration.

OCF had published a fix to the protocol specification in April 2020, but since many devices running UPnP are not easily upgradable, CallStranger is likely to remain a threat for a long time to come. CallStranger has fueled calls for end-users to abandon UPnP because of repeated failures in security of its design and implementation.

History
The UPnP protocols were promoted by the UPnP Forum (formed in October 1999), a computer industry initiative to enable simple and robust connectivity to standalone devices and personal computers from many different vendors. The Forum consisted of more than 800 vendors involved in everything from consumer electronics to network computing. Since 2016, all UPnP efforts have been managed by the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF).

In the fall of 2008, the UPnP Forum ratified the successor to UPnP 1.0 Device Architecture, UPnP 1.1. The Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) standard was a candidate successor to UPnP, but UPnP 1.1 was selected by the UPnP Forum. Version 2 of IGD is standardized.

The UPnP Internet Gateway Device (IGD) standard has a WANIPConnection service, which provides similar functionality to IETF-standard Port Control Protocol. The NAT-PMP specification contains a list of the problems with IGDP that prompted the creation of NAT-PMP and its successor PCP.

A number of further standards have been defined for the UPnP Device Architecture:
 * The Wi-Fi Alliance defines a set of "WFA device" (urn:schemas-wifialliance-org:device:WFADevice) services related to the wireless access point.
 * The WFAWLANConfig service is a required part and defines ways to query the capabilities of a wireless access point and set up wireless connections. This service is used in the AP-ER and UPnP-C types of Wi-Fi Protected Setup.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Universal Plug and Play


text:
Dude Ranch (album)

Dude Ranch is the second studio album by American rock band Blink-182, released on June 17, 1997, by Cargo Music and MCA Records, making it their major record label debut. MCA signed the band in 1996 following moderate sales of their 1995 debut Cheshire Cat and their growing popularity in Australia. Dude Ranch was the band's final recording released on Cargo and the last to feature their full original lineup as drummer Scott Raynor was dismissed from the band in 1998.

The band recorded the album from December 1996 to January 1997 at Big Fish Studios in Encinitas, California with producer Mark Trombino. With lyrical material written on their nonstop tours over the previous years, as well as completed songs, the band recorded with Trombino in sessions that lasted for five weeks. During production, the members of Blink-182 were plagued with difficulties only made worse by the rushed schedule: bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge, co-vocalists for the band, were having vocal problems and Raynor had to record his drum tracks with injuries to both feet.

The album was released in the summer of 1997 and was a success, reaching number 67 on the Billboard 200 and number one on the Top Heatseekers chart. The second single, "Dammit", became a rock radio hit single and helped the band gain mainstream credibility as they toured worldwide on the Vans Warped Tour. The band toured exhaustively behind the album, creating tensions which led to the firing of Raynor in mid-1998. Three more singles were released, with "Josie" gathering MTV play and charting highly in Australia. Dude Ranch eventually grew in sales and was certified platinum in the US by the end of the decade.

Background
The San Diego-based trio Blink-182 released their debut album, Cheshire Cat, in 1995. Released on local record label Cargo Music, the album sold well for an independent release; it had moved over 70,000 units by late 1996. Throughout 1995 and 1996, the trio vigorously toured nonstop and grew in popularity, most notably in Australia, where audiences embraced the band's irreverent sense of humor and stage shows. The trio grew frustrated when fans lamented the inability to purchase Cheshire Cat at their respective local record stores, and began searching for larger record labels with better distribution. Likewise, problems had become apparent between the trio and employees at Cargo, who largely considered the band a joke. In contrast, the group had accumulated a genuine buzz among major labels, and a bidding war for the band began in March 1996. Several labels courted the group, sending A&R reps to shows and inviting the band to their offices for lunch meetings. With several labels interested, Blink-182 seriously considered Interscope, Epitaph, and MCA. The band contemplated their options: the three had no qualms signing to a major label, and were wary of purists attempting to define "punk". They felt a great affinity for Epitaph, as many of their favorite acts (Pennywise, Bad Religion, NOFX) were signed to the label. Overall, Blink felt they were nothing but honest regarding their ambitions: "I try and tell kids, 'The Clash, Sex Pistols and the Ramones did it, so how come we can't?" guitarist Tom DeLonge reasoned. "If people are bummed, we don't care. It's normally critics. Older critics."

MCA at the time was riding out a dead spell, and was derisively referred to in the music industry as MCA — Musicians' Cemetery of America. Despite this, their executives' persistence and sincerity won the band over, as well as their promise of complete artistic freedom. The trio signed a joint venture deal with MCA to distribute their sophomore album with Cargo. Drummer Scott Raynor was happy for the band's signing, but was uneasy with signing to a major label—he much preferred Epitaph, and when the band passed over the label, he began to feel only half-invested in the band. Raynor was not, however, difficult about the band's mainstream growth: "I didn't measure success in terms of oppositional credibility. I loved being on the radio and MTV. We were certified products of pop culture, born and bred in suburbia." Thanks to their established fan base and merchandising, MCA did not intervene much in the band's activities. Although the label had granted the band artistic freedom in their contract, MCA did step in and warn the band when they planned to feature a spoof of the "Macarena" on Dude Ranch, humorously titled "Hey Wipe Your Anus".

To celebrate their signing, the group held a party at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. At the event, Raynor became inebriated and jumped off a balcony. He broke both his heels and was forced to record Dude Ranch while in a wheelchair. Soon, the band booked time at DML Studios in Escondido, California, where they worked out arrangements for the songs on Dude Ranch. Most of the lyrics for the album had been written over 1995 and 1996, while touring. "I remember writing most of those songs in my living room, sitting on a curb, whatever," recalled DeLonge in 2001. "Back then, each song was pretty much written with a specific girl or event in mind." Demos for the album were recorded with Warren Fitzgerald of the Vandals; early versions of "Enthused" and "Lemmings" were released on the "Wasting Time" single and the Lemmings / Going Nowhere split EP, respectively.

Recording and production
The band were afforded more time to record than previous endeavors, and were listening to music such as Jawbreaker, Bad Religion and Lagwagon, which influenced the album. For production duties, the band worked with Mark Trombino, who provided additional piano and keyboards on Dude Ranch. The band were initially slated to record with another producer, but picked Trombino because of his familiarity with the studio itself, his major-label knowhow, and the work he had done on Jimmy Eat World's Static Prevails (1996). The band first met Trombino through their friendship with San Diego punk band Fluf. The group spent time trying to amuse Trombino, to no avail. Hoppus' sister, Anne Hoppus, described Trombino as very quiet during the sessions. Trombino, in a retrospective piece about the album, mentioned that he was "excited, but also nervous and intimidated. I felt weird that there were these guys who had sold way more records than I had ever sold and I'm sitting in the producer's chair telling them what to do." Dude Ranch was recorded at Big Fish Studios in Rancho Santa Fe, California in December 1996. Big Fish was a converted guesthouse which had just survived a wildfire months before. However, the gloomy atmosphere did not faze Blink-182 at all, and what was a tragedy to local individuals became fodder for jokes for the group. Bassist Mark Hoppus had just bought a new video camera and he filmed stunts with guitarist Tom DeLonge on the burnt landscape in spare time. Despite this, Trombino was impressed by their work ethic: "They were the most business-centric band I'd ever seen at that point. They had their shit together."

Despite the creative boom while writing lyrics for the album, all three members of Blink-182 faced setbacks while recording Dude Ranch. DeLonge was having vocal problems and spent much time recording and re-recording vocal tracks, and Hoppus realized he too was having difficulty singing after losing his voice during a one-off Christmas concert. Hoppus realized the magnitude of the situation and cancelled the final week of recording in December 1996. He quit smoking in order to take care of his voice, which was stressed due to lack of vocal warm-ups, full days of vocal tracks, and the strain of singing for "Dammit", which was accidentally written just outside his vocal range. Meanwhile, Raynor had to record his drum tracks while still in his wheelchair, the result of injuries sustained at the signing party. He would wheelchair up to the drum set and scoot onto the drum throne and play," remembered Trombino in a later interview. "I got the sense that [the band] were bummed." Aside from the recording, the band spent time playing Crash Bandicoot and "reading the articles from the shelves and shelves of Playboys that the studio had thoughtfully provided." The group ate lunch nearly each day at Sombrero, a local Mexican restaurant namedropped in "Josie", and Chinese for dinner from Encinitas' Pick Up Stix.

It would be January 1997 by the time the band was able to wrap up sessions for Dude Ranch, eventually amounting to five weeks of recording. For the final touches, Unwritten Law frontman Scott Russo donated a few vocal tracks to "Josie", and Trombino let Blink-182 record a couple of jokes between songs using a sound-effects machine he owned. The group contacted Fletcher Dragge of Pennywise to find someone to remix a few tracks from the album, and he suggested Donnell Cameron of Track Recording Studios. The band went in to Track and re-recorded Raynor's drum tracks for several songs. Representatives from MCA dropped by on occasion and seemed excited by the material they heard. "When we were in there mixing, the A&R person would come by," remembered Cameron. "I don't think the band really knew what they had but certainly the label knew they had so many good songs on the record." DeLonge remembered it differently: "[Label executives] fucking hated pop-punk. They wanted nothing to do with it. They were into Pavement or whatever." A funny story happened upon the executives' first listen to the album, according to Hoppus: When [we] went into the label to present Dude Ranch, a handful of people came, and they sat down, and we started playing the record, and people were like on their Blackberries, and then people were like, 'Oh, I gotta take this call, or I got a meeting,' and they'd stand up and walk away. And by the time we were four or five songs in, it was literally just [Tom], me, and Scott sitting there by ourselves, looking around and nobody even listened to it. So we just took the cassette, got back in the car, drove back to San Diego. After production completed, the album was mastered by Brian Gardner at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood. In 2001, Hoppus recalled, "I remember when we finished Dude Ranch I was so proud. That was the first time we could take the time and whatever to make a good record." In addition to the record, Trombino produced "I Won't Be Home for Christmas", a Christmas song recorded during the Dude Ranch sessions.

Music and packaging
According to music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Dude Ranch is an album of "juvenile, adrenaline-fueled punk-pop." Billboard magazine's Doug Reece described it as "a collection of machine-gun-quick, energetic punk songs—sometimes with a puerile slant—about such topics as girlfriends, broken hearts, and fights with one's parents." At Alternative Press, it was characterized as a "killer skate-punk record". Greg Simpsons at Punknews.org too labeled it skate punk, stating that the album "set [the] blueprint for their style of poppy, goofy skate punk that they would later bring to the masses." DeLonge considered the album a step up in terms of songwriting, with "Dammit" proving the breakthrough to him. The album's guitar tone has been interpreted as scratchy and displaying a "blown-out quality that's in constant combat with the vastly more refined vocal hooks." DeLonge at the time was playing a "sticker-heavy" Stratocaster with a Seymour Duncan Invader pickup.

"Pathetic" has been considered a tale of "abject self-pity in the face of collapsed relationship." "Pathetic" is also reportedly about DeLonge's mother being disappointed about how DeLonge was doing in high school and college. The distinctive riff of "Dammit" was created when Hoppus was forced to skip over the missing two strings on an acoustic guitar. The song's theme is maturity, exemplified by the refrain, "Well, I guess this is growing up." "Dick Lips" was named after an insult the trio bandied around at Big Fish during recording. It was written about DeLonge's experience when he was kicked out of Poway High School for showing up to a basketball game while intoxicated. "Waggy" was a word Hoppus created while belching, prompting him to name the song with it. "Untitled" has been considered a tribute to the emerging ska punk scene, and "Emo" by its namesake, which is partly a tribute to DeLonge's favorite band at that time, Jimmy Eat World.

"Apple Shampoo" was inspired by Elyse Rogers of Dance Hall Crashers, whom Hoppus dated; the title is culled from a particular brand of shampoo she often used. "Josie" makes further reference to Dance Hall Crashers and the band Unwritten Law ("My girlfriend likes UL and DHC"). "A New Hope" takes the standard rock subject matter of a hopeless crush and rewrites it with details of the Star Wars series. The original Star Wars trilogy were popular during Hoppus' childhood into the late 1970s and early 1980s, and a theatrical re-release in the late 1990s reinvigorated interest in the series. "Degenerate" is a re-recording of a track that first appeared on the band's demo cassette Demo No.2. "Lemmings" is another re-recorded track, which had previously only been available on a 7-inch. The band felt the song was strong enough that it should not be limited to those owning record players.

The cover design, a collage by artist Lou Beach, features a bull with the band's name branded on its rear end, while the packaging is decorated by images of the band as cowboys on a "dude ranch". The gatefold packaging features a painting stating "Greetings from the Blink-182 Dude Ranch," which was intended to be a pastiche of both "cheesy postcards" and a parody of Bruce Springsteen's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.. Art direction for the album was headed by MCA in-house graphic artist Tim Stedman, with Stedman and designer Ashley Pigford crafting the visual package. The CD art, a revolver chamber, was designed by artist Victor Gastelum, while the band photography was done by Steven Shea. DeLonge recalled in 2012 that the only "bad" aspect of Dude Ranch in retrospect were the jokes found within the inside artwork: "I remember sitting at the Sombrero taco shop going, 'Fuck, we’ve got to finish off our album cover, let's just write some jokes to these cowboy pictures.' Why did we do that? We should have had better jokes for those pictures."

Release
Dude Ranch was released on June 17, 1997, jointly through Cargo Music and MCA Records. It was initially set to be released in a dual deal between Cargo and MCA subsidiary Way Cool Music. The record, at first, largely passed without notice from audiences outside their established fan base. With fan support and the trio touring nonstop, the album's sales began to improve. The momentum from touring helped Dude Ranch sell 3,000–4,000 units a week, and the record sold 40,000 copies by August 1997. Dude Ranch was promoted by the label through board-sport magazines and tie-ins between surf shops and record stores. At retail, MCA and Cargo organized midnight sales promotions on the West Coast. The popularity of the trio in Australia has been cited as the sign that alerted major record companies of Dude Ranch commercial potential; at the time, the album had spent five months on the charts and the band became famous for their stage show while on the 1997 Warped Tour. Thanks to increased recognition, the band dropped Cargo and fully signed with MCA in 1998 to handle increased distribution. Punk rock purists asserted the band were betraying their indie roots by even considering major label proposals and began to address the band as "sell-outs".

Sales improved dramatically when the record's lead single, "Dammit", began making rounds at rock radio. MCA's marketing strategy involved waiting until after the band's Warped Tour performances wrapped in order to have a retail story to back up radio promotion efforts. The label first serviced "Dammit" in August 1997 and several SoCal stations were quick to pick up the single, finding it to be a good match alongside Green Day and The Offspring radio hits. The song was released in September, and was added to the playlist of Los Angeles-based radio station KROQ, after which the song began to be played across the country. Mainstream rock received "Dammit" in November, and MTV picked up the "Dammit" video, bumping it into "stress rotation" in December. This led to feature stories in magazines such as Billboard and Rolling Stone. Radio-wise, "Dammit" achieved great commercial success, peaking at number 11 on the US rock charts in 1998. The year-end Billboard Airplay Monitor Report (BDS) stats indicated that "Dammit" earned top spins at many key radio stations. In addition, its success knocked Dude Ranch onto the all-genre Billboard 200 album chart for the first time, where it peaked at number 67 in February 1998. On January 24, 1998, Billboard reported that Dude Ranch sold more than 268,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Dude Ranch spent a total of 48 weeks in the top 200 in the United States.

Dude Ranch, which was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on February 9, 1998, yielded three more singles, which did not attract the same commercial success as "Dammit". "Apple Shampoo" was the second single release from Dude Ranch, released in October 1997. "Although it didn't have the impact of "Dammit", it hardly mattered as the former was still receiving heavy play on radio and TV stations across the nation", wrote journalist Joe Shooman. "Dick Lips" was released in February 1998 but failed to register on charts. "Josie" became the record's fourth and final single in November 1998. Its music video also received MTV airplay and the single charted at number 31 in Australia. For the single release of both "Dammit" and "Josie", the songs were remixed and remastered by Tom Lord-Alge. The unreleased Dude Ranch cut "I Won't Be Home for Christmas" was released as an international single in 2001, only successful in Canada, but charting for six non-consecutive weeks at number one. Dude Ranch was certified platinum by the RIAA on November 8, 1999. As of June 30, 2001, Dude Ranch sold 1,100,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Critical reception
Dude Ranch was released when the band was only achieving moderate success, and very few critical reviews of the record were published in 1997. A CMJ write-up commented, "Dude Ranch has the hooks and sonic wallop to rocket Blink-182 into stadiums throughout the nation." British rock magazine Kerrang! published a negative early review: the reviewer laments the disc's "little depth, passion, soul and even vaguely memorable hooks." Later reviews were subsequently more positive. Rolling Stone regarded Dude Ranch as the moment "the trio focused and refined their pop-punk sound," summarizing the record's themes: "bassist Mark Hoppus plays the straight man, singing sturdily and deadpan, while the squeakier-voiced guitarist Tom DeLonge bleats urgently about romance gone wrong." The website AbsolutePunk placed the album on their "Absolute Classics" list in February 2009, calling it a "classic mix" that was successful due to timing. In 2011, a writer for Total Guitar referred to the record as "a genuine modern punk classic," while Scott Heisel of Alternative Press called it a "quantum leap in sonic quality and songwriting." Guitar.com writer Huw Baines writes that the band on Dude Ranch "[settle] into a songwriting mode that was more focused, lean and representative of what they were trying to achieve." In 2000, Gavin Edwards at Rolling Stone called the record a "vast improvement" on its predecessor; in 2017, Maria Sherman for the same magazine praised "the album's disarming combo of humor and raw pop smarts" and opined that "the record's juvenile overtones often conceal real poignancy."

Accolades
Dude Ranch was awarded Best Punk Album at the 1998 California Music Awards. * denotes an unordered list

Touring
Beginning in the summer of 1997, Blink-182 would enter an extended period of touring. The group had played a handful of dates on the Vans Warped Tour 1996, a lifestyle tour promoting skateboarding and punk rock music. However, upon Dude Ranch release and popularity, Blink-182 would play every date of the 1997 tour worldwide with influences Pennywise, NOFX, and Social Distortion. "The Warped Tour is really more of a traveling-band barbecue," commented DeLonge. "You hang out with the other bands all day, you play your set, and then hang out again." In late 1997 and early 1998, the band would be on the road for nine months straight, only coming home to San Diego for days at a time before striking out on the next tour. "When we did our longest tour stretch, it was right when I started dating my fiancée," recalled DeLonge. "We were all new and in love, and I had to leave. It was just, 'Hey, I'll see you in nine months.' It was really hard." In addition to the hefty touring schedule, the trio grew tired of other commitments, including interviews and TV appearances due to the success of "Dammit".

Desperate for a break, the overworked band began to argue and tensions formed. Raynor, who was at the center of this drama, had been commenting of his desire to attend college for years, and had been taking homework out with him on tour to try and complete his high school diploma. The tension came to a head in February 1998 as the band embarked on SnoCore 98, described as "a winter version of the Warped Tour." Sharing the stage with Primus, the band was enjoying more success than ever before, but the drama between the musicians had grown substantially. The band reached a low point when the band engaged in a fight on a Nebraska date after SnoCore's conclusion. Shortly after the conclusion of SnoCore was a short minitour along the western coast, most notably Southern California, the band's favorite place to play. The tour ended with the band headlining a sold-out show at the Palladium in Hollywood, California, where the band had dreamed of performing at for years.

Raynor suffered a "tragic loss" during the West Coast minitour and flew home, forcing the band to find a fill-in drummer: Travis Barker of the ska punk support band The Aquabats. Barker learned the drum tracks for the band's set in only 45 minutes prior to his first show. Raynor returned for the band's Hollywood Palladium performance, and the band became increasingly uneasy and arguments grew worse. To offset personal issues, Raynor began to drink heavily and it began to affect the band's performances. Following a largely successful Australian tour in the spring, Hoppus and DeLonge presented an ultimatum: quit drinking or go to an in-patient rehab. Raynor agreed to both and informed the band of his decision after taking the weekend to mull options. According to Raynor, he was fired through a phone call despite his agreement to rehab. Despite this, he felt no malice toward his former bandmates and conceded they were "right" to fire him.

The band would minimize the impact of the situation in future interviews and remained vague regarding his departure. The "Josie" CD single, released in the US in November 1998, was the first Blink-182 release to feature Barker in any capacity (he is pictured on the back cover alongside Hoppus and DeLonge). Barker would join Blink-182 full-time in the summer of 1998 and toured with the band for the remainder of the year, playing sold-out shows across America on the PooPoo PeePee Tour.

Legacy
Dude Ranch was the band's first leap into the mainstream and proved to be a pivotal moment for the trio. While subsequent albums sold more copies, Dude Ranch has proved influential in other ways. Lindsay Zoladz provides context for its place in the band's canon in a 2019 piece for The Ringer: "For a lot of pop-punk fans who felt the whiplash of Blink's sudden late-'90s transformation from Warped Tour upstarts to genuine TRL heartthrobs, Dude Ranch came to develop a mythic, almost Edenic glow. It was their final punk record, the one they made before they went pop." Trevor Kelley from Alternative Press credited it with "reigniting" the pop punk movement while calling it a "huge source of inspiration for a new generation of bands," such as Midtown and New Found Glory. The members of FIDLAR credited the album's impact, while original Panic! at the Disco guitarist Ryan Ross has cited the album as his first influence: "I wanted to learn how to play like Tom DeLonge [on Dude Ranch]." The musician Day Wave has said the album made the band his grade-school heroes; likewise, the Wonder Years frontman Dan Campbell wore out his copy of the album: "I played Dude Ranch to death," he laughed in a 2022 interview. Some writers, like Chris Payne at Billboard, have suggested hints of the album's impact in groups like Cloud Nothings. In a 20th anniversary piece celebrating the album, Maria Sherman, writing for MTV News, commented that on Dude Ranch the trio "found a subversive way to embrace lameness as something to be commended—a language all outsiders could understand." Vice columnist Emma Garland writes: "Dude Ranch remains a formative and timeless classic [...] the perfect segue from [Cheshire Cat to their 1999 effort Enema of the State], capturing Blink-182 right on the precipice of self-discovery."

At least three full-length album covers of Dude Ranch have been released. In 2019, American musician Colleen Green issued a cassette-only cover of Dude Ranch in her signature lo-fi style. Green's cover was widely celebrated: "There's a sepia quality to Green's covers, as if they've been filtered through translucent gobs of memory," wrote Randall Colburn for The A.V. Club. It's Never Over Til It's Done, a charity album supporting Black transgender communities, was released in 2020 and contained covers by bands like Joyce Manor, Adult Mom, and Rozwell Kid. Another "concept cover album" by American musician Cameron Hurley (under the name new.wav) saw release in 2023, this time in the high-energy and sonic style of the band's later work with Barker and producer Jerry Finn. The album's title is also the namesake for one Blink-182 cover band.

Personnel

 * Blink-182
 * Mark Hoppus – bass, vocals
 * Tom DeLonge – guitars, vocals
 * Scott Raynor – drums

 * Additional musicians
 * Scott Russo – backing vocals
 * Mark Trombino – piano, keyboards

 * Production
 * Mark Trombino – production, recording, mixing
 * Donnell Cameron – mixing ("Pathetic", "Boring", "Enthused", "Josie", "A New Hope" and "I'm Sorry")
 * Brian Gardner – mastering

 * Artwork
 * Tim Stedman – art direction, design
 * Lou Beach – cover illustration
 * Ashley Pigford – design
 * Steve Shea – band photos
 * Victor Gastelum – disc art
 * Carl Otto – skateboard art, design

title: Dude Ranch (album)


text:
Scrambling

Scrambling is a mountaineering term for ascending steep terrain using one's hands to assist in holds and balance. "A scramble" is a related term, denoting terrain that could be ascended in this way. It can be described as being between hiking and rock climbing.

Sure-footedness and a head for heights are essential. Canyoning and stream climbing both involve scrambling.

Overview

Scrambling is ascending or traversing a grade without technical apparatus. Unroped ascent in exposed situations is potentially one of the most dangerous of mountaineering activities. As soon as an ascent involves a rope, going up or down, it is no longer a scramble.

Alpine scrambling
Alpine scrambling is scrambling in high mountains and may not follow a defined or waymarked path. The Seattle Mountaineers climbing organization defines alpine scrambling as follows: Alpine Scrambles are off-trail trips, often on snow or rock, with a 'non-technical' summit as a destination. A non-technical summit is one that is reached without the need for certain types of climbing equipment (body harness, rope, protection hardware, etc), and not involving travel on extremely steep slopes or on glaciers. However, this can mean negotiating lower angle rock, traveling through crossing streams, fighting one's way through dense brush, and walking on snow-covered slopes.

Hazards and safety
Many easy scrambles become serious climbs in bad weather. Black ice or verglas is a particular problem in cold weather, and mist or fog can disorient scramblers very quickly.

Hypothermia is a danger to all hikers, particularly the inexperienced. Any combination of cool temperatures, wind, moisture, and an absence of sunlight can create the condition.

Proper gear, clothing, supplies, and first aid materials are essential, as is in most cases a map

Classification systems
By climbing grade, the U.S. generally defines scrambling as Class 2 or 3 in the Yosemite Decimal System of climbing difficulties. In the British climbing system, it is Easy with some of the harder scrambles incorporating moves of Moderate or even Difficult standard.

In Britain, scrambles are usually rated using Ashton's system of either Grade 1, 2, 3 or 3S (S for serious), with the grade being based around technical difficulty and exposure. The North Ridge of Tryfan in Snowdonia, or Striding Edge on Helvellyn in the Lake District, are classic Grade 1 scrambles. At the other end of the scale, Broad Stand on Scafell is usually considered Grade 3 or 3S. Some of the older Scottish guidebooks used a system of grades 1 to 5, leading to considerable confusion and variation over grades 1, 2 and 3 in Scotland, however most well-known scrambles now have a standardised rating.

Canada
A guide to 175 scrambling routes in the Canadian Rockies can be found in Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies by Alan Kane. Backpacker magazine has twice featured the book as an expedition guide. The Canadian Alpine Journal referred to it as a "scree gospel".

Italy
Via ferrata is "a mountain route equipped with fixed ladders, cables, and bridges in order to be accessible to climbers and walkers" common in the Dolomites of Italy. This form of scrambling has climbing aids built in on the route that help make it safe. The essence of a modern via ferrata is a steel cable which runs along the route and is periodically (every 3 to 10 m) fixed to the rock. Using a via ferrata kit, climbers can secure themselves to the cable, limiting any fall. The cable can also be used as an aid to climbing, and additional climbing aids, such as iron rungs (stemples), pegs, carved steps and even ladders and bridges are often provided. Thus, via ferratas allow otherwise dangerous routes to be undertaken without the risks associated with unprotected scrambling and climbing or the need for climbing equipment such as ropes. Such routes allow the relatively inexperienced a means of enjoying dramatic positions and accessing difficult peaks, normally the preserve of the serious mountaineer; although, as there is a need for some equipment, a good head for heights and basic technique, the via ferrata can be seen as a distinct step up from ordinary mountain walking.

United Kingdom
Scrambling has become an increasingly popular form of mountaineering in Britain; the English Lake District, the Scottish Highlands, and the north of Snowdonia in Wales being the chief regions of interest. Popular Scrambling guidebooks exist for these areas, outlining a wide spectrum of routes in terms of both difficulty and style. UK scrambles come in many forms: the ascents, descents and traverses of ridges, gully and ghyll scrambles, rakes (lines of weakness that penetrate large, and often sheer, rock faces), and the ascents of buttresses and faces. UK scrambles vary enormously in length; from as little height gain as 30 metres, as with many crag rock climbs, up to the 700+ metres of vertical height gain encountered on Tower Ridge, a famous 3S grade scramble that ascends Ben Nevis via its north face (Tower Ridge is also graded as a 'difficult' rock climb - arguably Britain's longest.). Scrambles in Snowdonia typically feature between 60 (e.g. Milestone Gully, Tryfan.) and 500 metres (e.g. Bryant's Gully, Glyder Fawr) of height gain.

Ridge routes that involve some scrambling are especially popular in Britain, including Crib Goch on Snowdon, Bristly Ridge on Glyder Fach, Striding Edge on Helvellyn, and Sharp Edge on Blencathra, both in the English Lake District, as well as numerous routes in Scotland, such as the Aonach Eagach ridge in Glencoe. Many of these routes include a "bad step", where the scrambling suddenly becomes much more serious. The bad step on Crib Goch for example, involves only 20 ft or so of climbing, but the position is exposed. The rock face here is well polished by countless boots, but there are many holds which offer firm support. By contrast, the traverse of the Cuillin Ridge on Skye demands use of a rope at one point at least. The ridge routes of Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross are easier to traverse but are extremely exposed. Descent from such ridges is very limited, so once committed, the scrambler must continue to the end. An Teallach to the north offers scrambling, as does Stac Pollaidh further north in Sutherland, which includes a bad step.

One resource for scramblers in Britain are the guides by W A Poucher (1891–1988), though these are now dated and more recent guide books exist.

A community project consisting of a comprehensive list of scrambles in the United Kingdom is available at UKscrambles.com.

Poland and Slovakia

Scrambling has grown ever so popular in recent years with more experienced mountain hikers in Tatras, the highest mountain range within the 1500 km-long chain of Carpathians, located on the border between Poland and Slovakia. A hiker who has scaled all possible marked tourist trails will in time typically start looking for more ambitious goals, namely those peaks that by law are only accessible via hiring a licensed mountain guide (for a fee). More adventurous individuals, however, or those on a tight budget (often college/university students) endeavour to climb those harder accessible summits without assistance, especially since very accurate descriptions of (typically "normal", i.e. the easiest) routes are readily available on the Internet. Apart from dedicated websites, guidebooks for rock climbers by Witold Henryk Paryski or Władysław Cywiński (Poland) and Arno Puškáš (Slovakia) are particularly popular. There is an informal peak bagging challenge called Wielka Korona Tatr / Velka Korona Tatier (or Great Crown of Tatras), involving climbing Tatras' all fourteen 8-thousanders (in feet), only 3 of which are accessible by marked hiking trails. Typically, they are graded at most I or II in Tatra climbing difficulty scale (equivalent to British Grade 3/3s).

title: Scrambling


text:
Home cinema

A home cinema, also called a home theater or theater room, is a home entertainment audio-visual system that seeks to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood using consumer electronics-grade video and audio equipment and is set up in a room or backyard of a private home. Some studies show that films are rated better and generate more intense emotions when watched in a movie theater, but convenience is a major appeal for home cinemas. In the 1980s, home cinemas typically consisted of a movie pre-recorded on a LaserDisc or VHS tape; a LaserDisc Player or VCR; and a heavy, bulky large-screen cathode ray tube TV set, although sometimes CRT projectors were used instead. In the 2000s, technological innovations in sound systems, video player equipment and TV screens and video projectors have changed the equipment used in home cinema set-ups and enabled home users to experience a higher-resolution screen image, improved sound quality and components that offer users more options (e.g., many of the more expensive Blu-ray players in the 2020s can also stream movies and TV shows over the Internet using subscription services such as Netflix). The development of Internet-based subscription services means that 2020s-era home theatre users do not have to commute to a video rental store as was common in the 1980s and 1990s (nevertheless, some movie enthusiasts buy DVD or Blu-ray discs of their favorite content).

In the 2020s, a home cinema system typically uses a large projected image from a video projector or a large flat-screen high-resolution HDTV system, a movie or other video content on a DVD or high-resolution Blu-ray disc, which is played on a DVD player or Blu-ray player, with the audio augmented with a multi-channel power amplifier and anywhere from two speakers and a stereo power amp (for stereo sound) to a 5.1 channel amplifier and five or more surround sound speaker cabinets (with a surround sound system). Whether home cinema enthusiasts have a stereo set-up or a 5.1 channel surround system, they typically use at least one low-frequency subwoofer speaker cabinet to amplify low-frequency effects from movie soundtracks and reproduce the deep pitches from the musical soundtrack.

Introduction
Introduced in 1912, the Edison Home Projecting Kinetoscope was one of the first successful home theater devices. Although it used a 22 mm film format, the image size was nearer to 6 mm, the smallest ever to be commercially released. The value was that an entire motion picture could be released on one reel without editing.

Home theater systems were made in the 1920s with 16 mm projectors. Technological improvements led to 8 mm and sound 16 mm in the 1930s. In the 1950s, playing home movies became popular in the United States with middle class and upper-class families as Kodak 8 mm film projector equipment became more affordable. The development of multi-channel audio systems and later LaserDisc in the 1980s created a new paradigm for home video, as it enabled movie enthusiasts to add better sound and images to their setup. In the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, a typical home cinema in the United States would have a LaserDisc or VHS player playing a movie, with the signal fed to a large rear-projection television set, with the audio output through a stereo system. Some people used expensive front projectors in a darkened viewing room. During the 1980s, watching movies on VHS at home became a popular leisure activity. Beginning in the late 1990s, and continuing throughout much of the 2000s, home-theater technology progressed with the development of the DVD-Video format (higher resolution than VHS), Dolby Digital 5.1-channel audio (surround sound) speaker systems, and high-definition television (HDTV), which initially included bulky, heavy Cathode Ray Tube HDTVs and flat-screen TVs. In the 2010s, affordable large HDTV flatscreen TVs, high resolution video projectors (e.g., DLP), 3D television technology and the high resolution Blu-ray Disc (1080p) have ushered in a new era of home theater.

Recent developments
In the 2010s, the term home cinema encompasses a range of systems meant for movie playback at home. The most basic and economical system could be a DVD player, a standard-definition (SD) large-screen television with at least a 27-inch (69 cm) diagonal screen size, and an inexpensive home theater in a box surround sound amplifier and speaker system with a subwoofer. A more expensive home cinema set-up might include a Blu-ray disc player, home theater PC (HTPC) computer or digital media receiver streaming devices with a 10-foot user interface, a high-definition video projector and projection screen with over 100 in diagonal screen size (or a large flatscreen HDTV), and a several-hundred-watt home theater receiver with five to eleven surround-sound speakers plus one or two powerful subwoofers. 3D-TV-enabled home theaters make use of 3D TV sets/projectors and Blu-ray 3D players in which the viewers wear 3D-glasses, enabling them to see 3D content.

Home cinema designs and layouts are a personal choice and the type of home cinema a user can set up depends on her/his budget and the space which is available within the home. The minimum set of requirements for a home theater are: a large television set or good quality video projector CRT (no new models sold in U.S.), LCD, Digital Light Processing (DLP), plasma display, organic light-emitting diode (OLED), Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD), Laser TV, rear-projection TV, video projector, Standard-definition television (SDTV), HDTV, or 3D-TV at least 27 inches (69 cm) measured diagonally, an AV receiver or pre-amplifier (surround processor) and amplifier combination capable of at least stereo sound but preferably 5.1 Channel Dolby Digital and DTS audio, and something that plays or broadcasts movies in at least stereo sound such as a VHS HI-FI VCR, LaserDisc player (no new stand-alone models of either are available; VHS VCRs are usually bundled in combo decks with DVD players), a DVD player, a Blu-ray disc player, cable or satellite receiver, video game console, etc. Finally, a set of speakers, at least two, are needed but more common are anywhere from six to eight with a subwoofer for bass or low-frequency effects.

The most expensive home cinema set-ups, which can cost over $100,000 US, and which are in the homes of executives, celebrities and high-earning professionals, have expensive, large, high-resolution digital projectors and projection screens, and maybe even custom-built screening rooms which include cinema-style chairs and audiophile-grade sound equipment designed to mimic (or sometimes even exceed) commercial cinema performance.

Design
In the 2010s, many home cinema enthusiasts aim to replicate, to the degree that is possible, the cinema experience. To do so, many home cinema buffs purchase higher quality components than used for everyday television viewing on a relatively small TV with only built-in speakers. A typical home cinema includes the following components:
 * 1) Movie or other viewing content: As the name implies, one of the key reasons for setting up a home cinema is to watch movies on a large screen, which does a more effective job at reproducing filmed images of vast landscapes or epic battle sequences. As of 2016, home cinema enthusiasts using smart Blu-ray players may also watch DVDs of TV shows, and recorded or live sports events or music concerts. As well, with a smart player, a user may be able to stream movies, TV shows and other content over the Internet. Many 2016-era DVD players and Blu-ray players also have inputs that allow users to view digital photos and other content on the big screen.
 * 2) Video and audio input devices: One or more video/audio sources. High-resolution movie media formats such as Blu-ray discs are normally preferred, though DVD or video game console systems are also used. Some home theaters include a HTPC (Home Theater PC) with a media center software application to act as the main library for video and music content using a 10-foot user interface and remote control. In 2016, some of the more expensive Blu-ray players can stream movies and TV shows over the Internet.
 * 3) Audio and video processing devices: Input signals are processed by either a standalone AV receiver or a preamplifier and Sound Processor for complex surround sound formats such as Dolby Pro-Logic/and or Pro-logic II, X, and Z, Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Digital EX, DTS-ES, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. The user selects the input (e.g., DVD, Blu-ray player, streaming video, etc.) at this point before it is forwarded to the output stage. Some AV receivers enable the viewer to use a remote control to select which input device or source to use.
 * 4) Audio output: Systems consist of preamplifiers, power amplifiers (both of which may be integrated into a single AV receiver) and two or more loudspeakers mounted in speaker enclosures. The audio system requires at least a stereo power amplifier and two speakers, for stereo sound; most systems have multi-channel surround sound power amplifier and six or more speakers (a 5.1 surround sound system has left and right front speakers, a centre speaker, left and right rear speakers and a low-frequency subwoofer speaker enclosure). Some users have 7.1 Surround Sound. It is possible to have up to 11 speakers with additional subwoofers.
 * 5) Video output: A large-screen display, typically an HDTV. Some users may have a 3D TV. As of 2015, flatscreen HDTVs are the norm. Options include Liquid crystal display television (LCD), plasma TV, and OLED. Home cinema users may also use a video projector and a movie screen. If a projector is used, a portable, temporary screen may be used,a screen may be permanently mounted or the image may be projected directly on a wall.
 * 6) Seating and atmosphere: Comfortable seating is often provided to improve the cinema feel. Some luxury home cinemas have movie theatre-style padded chairs for guests. Higher-end home theaters commonly also have sound insulation to prevent noise from escaping the room and specialized wall treatment to balance the sound within the room. Wall color can be optimized.

Component systems vs. theater-in-a-box

Home cinemas can either be set up by purchasing individual components one by one (e.g., buying a multichannel amp from one manufacturer, a Blu-ray player from another manufacturer, speakers from another company, etc.) or a by purchasing a HTIB (Home Theater in a Box) package which includes all components from a single manufacturer, with the exception of a TV or projector. HTIB systems typically include a DVD or Blu-ray player, a surround sound amplifier, five surround speakers, a subwoofer cabinet, cables and a remote. The benefit of purchasing separate components one by one is that consumers can attain improved quality in video or audio and better matching between the components and the needs of a specific room, or the consumer's needs.

However, to buy individual components, a consumer must have knowledge of sound system and video system design and electronics and they must do research on the specifications of each component. For instance, some speakers perform better in smaller rooms while others perform better in larger rooms and seating location must be considered. One of the challenges with buying all the components separately is that the purchaser must understand speaker impedance, power handling, and HDMI compatibility and cabling. Given these challenges, HTIB systems are a simpler and more cost-effective solution for many families and consumers; they are also better suited to smaller living spaces in semi-detached homes or apartments/condos where noise could be an issue. Buying an HTIB package is often less expensive than buying separate components.

Dedicated rooms

Some home cinema enthusiasts build a dedicated room in their home for the theater. These more advanced installations often include sophisticated acoustic design elements, including room-in-a-room construction that isolates sound and provides an improved listening environment and a large screen, often using a high-definition projector. These installations are often designated as screening rooms to differentiate them from simpler, less-expensive installations. In some movie enthusiast's home cinemas, this idea can go as far as completely recreating an actual small-scale cinema, with a projector enclosed in its own projection booth, specialized furniture, curtains in front of the projection screen, movie posters, or a popcorn or vending machine with snack food and candy. More commonly, real dedicated home theaters pursue this to a lesser degree.

As of 2016, the days of the $100,000 and over home cinema system are being usurped by the rapid advances in digital audio and video technologies, which has spurred a rapid drop in prices, making a home cinema set-up more affordable than ever before. This in turn has brought the true digital home theater experience to the doorsteps of the do-it-yourselfers, often for much less than the price of a low-budget economy car. As of 2016, consumer-grade A/V equipment can meet some of the standards of a small modern commercial cinema (e.g., THX sound).

Seating
Home cinema seating consists of chairs or sofas specifically engineered and designed for viewing movies in a home cinema. Some home cinema seats have a cup holder built into the chairs' armrests and a shared armrest between each seat. Some seating has cinema-style chairs like those seen in a cinema, which feature a flip-up seat cushion. Other seating systems have plush leather reclining lounger types, with flip-out footrests. Available features include storage compartments, snack trays, tactile transducers for low-frequency effects that can be felt through a chair (without creating high volume levels which could disturb other family members), and electric motors to adjust the chair. Home cinema seating tends to be more comfortable than seats in a public cinema.

Backyard cinema
In homes that have an adequately sized backyard, it is possible for people to set up a home cinema in an outdoor area. Depending on the space available, it may simply be a temporary version with foldable screen, a video projector and a couple of speakers, or a permanent fixture with a huge screen and dedicated audio set-up mounted in a weather-proof cabinet. Outdoor home cinemas are popular with BBQ parties and pool parties. Some specialist outdoor home-cinema companies are now marketing packages with inflatable movie screens and purpose-built AV systems. Some people have expanded the idea and constructed mobile drive-in theaters that can play movies in public open spaces. Usually, these require a powerful projector, a laptop or DVD player, outdoor speakers or an FM transmitter to broadcast the audio to other car radios.

1920s–1940s
In the 1920s the first home cinemas were made using silent 16mm film projectors such as Kodascope and Filmo. Later, in the 1930s, 8mm and sound 16mm were introduced. These were rare luxuries.

1950s–1970s
In the 1950s, home movies became more popular in the United States and elsewhere as Kodak 8 mm film (Pathé 9.5 mm in France) and camera and projector equipment became affordable. Projected with a small, portable movie projector onto a portable screen, often without sound, this system became the first practical home theater. They were generally used to show home movies of family travels and celebrations, but they also doubled as a means of showing some commercial films, or private stag films. Dedicated home cinemas were called screening rooms at the time and were outfitted with 16 mm or even 35 mm projectors for showing commercial films. These were found almost exclusively in the homes of the very wealthy, especially those in the movie industry.

Portable home cinemas improved over time with colour film, Kodak Super 8 mm film cartridges, and monaural sound but remained awkward and somewhat expensive. The rise of home video in the late 1970s almost completely killed the consumer market for 8 mm film cameras and projectors, as VCRs connected to ordinary televisions provided a simpler and more flexible substitute.

1980s
The development of multi-channel audio systems and LaserDisc in the 1980s added new dimensions for home cinema. The first-known home cinema system was designed, built and installed by Steve J. LaFontaine as a sales tool at Kirshmans furniture store in Metairie, Louisiana in 1974. He built a special sound room that incorporated the earliest quadraphonic audio systems, and he modified Sony Trinitron televisions for projecting the image. Many systems were sold in the New Orleans area in the ensuing years before the first public demonstration of this integration occurred in 1982 at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Illinois. Peter Tribeman of NAD (U.S.) organized and presented a demonstration made possible by the collaborative effort of NAD, Proton, ADS, Lucasfilm and Dolby Labs, who contributed their technologies to demonstrate what a home cinema would look and sound like.

Over the course of three days, retailers, manufacturers, and members of the consumer electronics press were exposed to the first home-like experience of combining a high-quality video source with multi-channel surround sound. That one demonstration is credited with being the impetus for developing what is now a multibillion-dollar business.

1990s
In the early to mid-1990s, a typical home cinema would have a LaserDisc player or VHS VCR fed to a large screen: rear projection for the more-affordable setups, and LCD or CRT front-projection in the more-elaborate systems. In the late 1990s, a new wave of home-cinema interest was sparked by the development of DVD-Video, Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel audio, and high-quality front video projectors that provide a cinema experience at a price that rivals a big-screen HDTV.

2000s
In the 2000s, developments such as high-definition video, Blu-ray disc (as well as the now-obsolete HD DVD format, which lost the format war to Blu-ray) and newer high-definition 3D display technologies enabled people to enjoy a cinematic feeling in their own home at a more-affordable price. Newer lossless audio from Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD High-Resolution Audio and DTS-HD Master Audio and speaker systems with more audio channels (such as 6.1, 7.1, 9.1, 9.2, 10.2, and 22.2) were also introduced for a more cinematic feeling.

2010s
By the mid-2010s, the Blu-ray Disc medium had become a common home media standard, and online video streaming sources such as Netflix, Hulu and YouTube were offering a range of high-definition content, including some 4K content (although various compression technologies are applied to make this streamed content feasible). The first 4K Blu-ray discs were released in 2016. By this point, 4K TVs and computer monitors were rapidly declining in price and increasing in prevalence, despite a lack of native 4K content. While many DSP systems existed, DTS-HD Master Audio remained the studio standard for lossless surround sound encoding on Blu-ray, with five or seven native discrete channels. High-definition video projectors also continued to improve and decrease in price, relative to performance.

As a result of continuing price reductions, large (up to 80 '' ) TVs became a financially competitive alternative to video projectors in living room or even smaller dedicated room setups. Technologies such as local dimming and the like improved the black levels of LCD screens making them more suitable for use in a dark room. Consumer-grade OLED TVs measuring 55 '' and above began to emerge in the second half of the decade. These had even better black levels. However, as of 2020, video projectors remained the only viable option when screen sizes much over 80 '' are needed.

Entertainment equipment standards
Noise Criteria (NC) are noise-level guidelines applicable to cinema and home cinema. For this application, it is a measure of a room's ambient noise level at various frequencies. For example, in order for a theater to be THX certified, it must have an ambient sound level of NC-30 or less. This helps to retain the dynamic range of the system. Some NC levels are:

 * NC 40: Significant but not a dooming level of ambient noise; the highest acceptable ambient noise level. 40 decibels is the lower sound pressure level of normal talking; 60 being the highest.
 * NC 30: A good NC level; necessary for THX certification in cinemas.
 * NC 20: An excellent NC level; difficult to attain in large rooms and sought after for dedicated home cinema systems. For example, for a home cinema to be THX certified, it has to have a rating of NC 22.
 * NC 10: Virtually impossible noise criteria to attain; 10 decibels is associated with the sound level of calm breathing.

Projectors used for home cinemas have a set of recommended criteria:

 * Brightness, usually at least 1800 lumens.
 * Resolution (the number of pixels making up the image), usually at least 1920×1080, one of the HDTV standards.
 * Contrast (how well white, black and greyscales are displayed), usually a minimum of 5000:1.
 * HDMI connection sockets (although some people use older component video, connections with three-cord sockets for the different individual colours)
 * Good quality manufacturers, although this is a subjective element that depends upon user tastes and budget. For one user with a modest budget, good quality may mean a mainstream consumer electronics brand; for a well-to-do user, a Christie projector may be their interpretation of good quality (Christie units are widely used in professional, commercial theatres)

title: Home cinema