Scott Wilkinson

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently took delivery of 30 Panasonic AK-HC900 high-definition video cameras to monitor the launch of <I>Discovery</I> this May as the space shuttle program finally returns to flight after the <I>Columbia</I> disaster just over two years ago. A number of the cameras will be positioned at two launch pads in shielded enclosures close to the orbiter to provide NASA with real-time, high-definition images of the launch for scientific-image analysis as well as vehicle-safety and status assessment.

Many people now access the Internet at speeds as high as 1 to 3Mbps over their phone lines using DSL or their cable-TV service using a cable modem. But DSL speeds drop dramatically if the home is more than a certain distance from the nearest phone company switching station, and cable-modem bandwidth can be reduced if there are lots of subscribers in the same neighborhood.

On February 7, 2005, Sony hosted a party to celebrate the grand opening of their new Design Center in Los Angeles, which joins several other such centers located around the world. With around 14,000 square feet of floor space, the Design Center is divided into several sections, including a large open work space with desks and movable dividers as well as several simulated living areas to see how new product designs fit into normal rooms.

With all the hoopla surrounding digital rights management (DRM), which strives to protect A/V content from being illegally copied in the digital domain, there's been little attention paid to copies made from analog outputs. That could soon change if the recent agreements between Macrovision and Microsoft are any indication.