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Acceptance of body-worn video and audio recorders is rapidly growing among police and emergency service departments while manufacturers are pointing to steady advances in their technology and ease of use.

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Seagate has unveiled new models of its Pulsar line of solid-state drives (SSD)--delivering performance, endurance, and reliability that business can trust. The new drives bring the benefits of SSD to organizations with demanding data storage needs.

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Adobe's primary tool for tweaking and organizing photos was always destined to be part of the Creative Cloud offering, but for whatever reason it didn't make it in time for launch. As of today though, Lightroom 4 is available to download on PC or 64-bit Mac (or both, since you're allowed multiple installations) as part of a CS6 monthly license.

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Check out these new docs on CS6 system requirements click here

I've used everything from freeware tools to high-end encoders to accomplish various audio & video trans-coding tasks over the last 15 years or so, and when time permits, I love testing out new tools.  Recently, when installing software on to a new PC, I decided to try another low-cost solution that's been around for quite some time, but I've never used; AVS Video Converter.

I gave up my dream of one day owning a single remote control that could replace my basket of "universal" remotes several years ago. As you can imagine I lived in extreme sadness for quite some time, constantly criticizing myself for being so naive to believe such a device existed. As time passed however, I forgave myself for setting such an unrealistic goal and eventually moved on. Then yesterday the delivery man arrived, unknowingly carrying the answer to this long-forgotten dream.

Okay, to be honest, I haven't actually gone out and bought any universal remotes until just the other day. With that said, each time I've replaced a component in my entertainment system I end up with another "universal" remote that just doesn't cut it. Either it won't even work with one or more components or, as is more often the case, you lose a ton of functionality and have to keep the original remote close by anyway. While advanced universal remotes are nothing new, in my opinion finding one within a reasonable price range (below $100) is. If you're willing to invest $80-$100 in a universal remote that will actually replace all of your other remotes, so far I am very pleased with my Logitech Harmony Advanced Universal Remote for Xbox 360.

You know what they say – the old has gone, and the new has come. Mozilla has just announced that they will be retiring their Firefox 4 browser – strange, isn’t it, considering Firefox 4 shipped a mere three months ago. Well, at least Firefox 5 is now the de facto browser from Mozilla. Tuesday’s Firefox 5 release also saw Mozilla spell out the list of vulnerabilities it patched in that edition alongside 2010′s Firefox 3.6, although there was no mention of any bugs fixed in Firefox 4.

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From The New York Times: Cabling Your Mac, By ERIC A. TAUB

A new cable from NewerTech simplifies the transfer of high-quality video from your Mac to an HDTV.

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Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Is it a standard or is it a guideline? It's both, and it's courtesy of the ISO/IEC JTC (joint technical committee). I've been told the new document was created from a SWGDE guideline, but since you have to purchase the "standard" I couldn't really even tell you what language it is in, because I'm not paying for any document created in a vacuum.

ISO/IEC 27037 News Release

On vacation, but thought I'd comment on this topic before getting on the Harley to go run some errands in the cold Pacific Northwest. As pointed out in someone else's recent blog post, MPEG-4 can leverage what is referred to as a Sample Aspect Ratio (SAR)...not to be confused with Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR) or Signal Aspect Ratio (SAR). It's important to note that in the case of MPEG-4, the Sample Aspect Ratio is the Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR); they are one and the same.

It's also important to note, again, that regarless of any of these numbers, the shape of the samples from an analog source ARE NOT DEFINED BY THE NUMBER OF LINES.

Oh, one more thing...most multimedia NLE and encoding applications provide precise control of all of these settings.  Just an FYI.  All the best my friends.

George Reis, President and owner of Imaging Forensics, Inc., has launched a new MeetUp group for those involved with technical and scientific imaging and photography.

For more information or to join the group please visit http://www.meetup.com/OC-Technical-Scientific-Photography-Imaging-Group/.

At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show today, Intel announced the release of its new series of processors, codenamed "Sandy Bridge." Loaded with features catering to games- and video-hungry users, the changes reflect that fact that consumers are responsible for 66 percent of Intel's revenue, a reversal from 2000, when enterprise consumers provided 71 percent of revenues.

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http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/26226/

If you plan on buying a Blu-ray player in 2011, don't be surprised if the back panel is lacking a component video output. A surprising number of mainstream 2011 Blu-ray players, (such as the Panasonic DMP-BDT210, Samsung BD-D5700, LG BD670, to name a few) are omitting the red, green, and blue video jacks, which means buyers will have to rely on HDMI for high-def Blu-ray video signals.
It's all about AACS

We can't blame manufacturers for omitting the component out of new players. For one, it's not a huge loss, as the vast majority of buyers will be using the HDMI output for video. But there's another issue: even the new Blu-ray players that are including component video connections will only output 480i signals, rather than high-def 1080i.

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