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The chicken littles have been worried about this since long before the first Blu-ray (or even HD DVD) title was ever released, and the first step towards the analog sunset has officially come. Any new Blu-ray player announced after January 1st 2011 will only output HD via HDMI -- players that started shipping last year can still be sold until the end of this year though.

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http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/10/analog-sunset-begins-all-the-new-blu-ray-players-will-only-outp/&category=hd&icid=hd_eng_latest_art

A few months ago, my wife got up on a Sunday morning at 3:30am and stood in line at Toys-R-Us to pick up a Nintendo Wii for our son.  Neither her or I have every done anything like that before and trust me when I tell you she's not a morning person, so I was absolutely amazed that she not only got up that early, but even more so that she stood in line in the freezing cold for hours just to get the darn thing. 😮

This afternoon my son and I were playing Guitar Hero III on the Xbox 360 and out of the blue decided to finally configure the Wii for Internet connectivity.  As you probably know, Wii has a Wi-Fi adapter built in, but I just never took the time to configure our router and the settings on the Wii.  Well, within a few minutes of our decision we were online surfing the Web on our Toshiba 46" HD TV.

Bugs are a way of life in software--fortunately, so are bug fixes. Earlier this week, Adobe released Photoshop 12.0.1, which brings a number of stability enhancements to the professional image-editing software, including several specifically related to 64-bit operation on Mac OS X.
Though Adobe says that CS5 is more stable than its predecessor, CS4, there's always room for improvement. The 12.0.1 update addresses a number of issues that could cause slow performance, as well as several common crashing bugs, user interface and workspace issues, font-related crashes, and several painting-related issues, including problems with video layers.

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Understanding video standards is fundamental to aspect ratio correction. Back in the predominantly analog days we had three main standards referenced or used for most video recordings; NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. Then in the early ‘90’s came the first digital multimedia frameworks to reach the average consumer; QuickTime and, shortly thereafter, Video for Windows (VfW).

Today we have dozens of multimedia frameworks, digital video and digital display standards, all of which lead to a great deal of confusion regarding the plethora of acronyms and what they truly mean. AVC or H.264? HEVC or H.265? CIF or SIF? Don’t even get me started on the profiles and parameters available for each standard, as the combinations are truly mindboggling. When it comes to proper Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) though, it really boils down to “Are the originally recorded pixels square or non-square?”

http://media-geek.com/images/myblog/frontpage/ft-worth.jpg LEVA's 20th Anniversary Training Conference will be held in Ft. Worth, Texas November 18th- 20th.  As usual, LEVA is organizing some great pre-conference training as well as a vendor exhibit hall.  For more information or their official registration form click here.

Upcoming CS6 versions of Adobe's flagship video software change significantly, with a streamlined interface for Premiere Pro and performance improvements for After Effects.

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What's the best way to deter a thief? Ruin the spoils, of course. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint have agreed to a broad outline that will culminate in the creation of a central database for stolen cellphones. The goal? To block lifted units from functioning on US shores. Over the next six months, each firm will build out its own stolen device database for integration into a larger, central database, said a Wall Street Journal source, with regional carriers joining the effort over the following two years.

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The DoJ sent a letter to the attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department.

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Apple boasts that its just-released OS X 10.7 operating system (codenamed Lion) includes over 250 new features. While the marquee features make Mac desktops and notebooks a little more like the iPad, there's far more than that. Some of the improvements make QuickTime more usable.

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Apple has just elevated the graphics chip to superstar status. Why focus on the graphics?

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This year the Consumer Electronics Show, in early January, is shaping up to be the year of the tablet. Yet the most (some would say “only”) successful tablet to date is the one that won’t be at CES. Apple sold 7.5 million iPads in the first six months and no doubt millions more this holiday season. Its shadow will hangs over the show, forcing a wide range of companies–chipmakers, computer hardware and consumer electronics companies, software developers and wireless carriers–to announce plans for tablets. Here’s what I’m expecting to see.

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In an effort to make it easier for YouTube users to make changes to their videos after uploading them, YouTube is rolling out a brand new video editor.

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It's pretty amazing to me that in just under a year we've reached over 475 active members, and that number is steadily growing.

Now you can proudly display your official member badge to show your affiliation with our professional community, and we've developed a more efficient way for members to invite their peers and colleagues to participate as well.