Welcome to the Jungle

LEVA recently announced that the New York State Police will be hosting their Photographic/Video Comparison course in Albany, NY April 4th through the 8th.

Photographic/Video Comparisons focuses on the science of comparing known objects, vehicles, clothing and humans with CCTV images of questioned objects, vehicles, clothing and humans. The process of cataloguing class characteristics and unique characteristics found in questioned evidence is examined in detail. Using Adobe Photoshop and other generally accepted scientific tools for imaging comparison work,analysts/examiners develop a scientific workflow involving the hands-on analysis of video evidence, criminal-case report writing and courtroom presentation.

Complete details and application forms are available via the LEVA website.

The HP Elite HPE570t comes standard with 8GB DDR3 memory, a 1.5-terabyte hard drive, a 1GB ATI Radeon hard drive--and Intel's latest and greatest CPU. We recently tested the Intel Core i7-2600 quad-core processor, previously code-named Sandy Bridge; read "Lab Tested: Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs Deliver Blazing Speed and Energy Savings" for our verdict.

Full Story

Here's one that flew in under my radar.  I do recall some discussion about the related working group's creation a few years ago, but somehow completely missed the July, 2010 release of their document.

Learn more about this Homeland Security project by visiting their website:
http://www.safecomprogram.gov/SAFECOM/currentprojects/videoquality/videoquality.htm

Check out version 1.0 of the guide itself here:
http://www.safecomprogram.gov/NR/rdonlyres/5BCA1CBF-1500-4B29-9370-81B823575DE8/0/3aVideoUserRequirementGuidedoc.pdf

P.S. - Thanks to Mike Baker for bringing this one back into my radar.

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.

Full story:
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