Nash Entertainment is currently producing 8 half-hours for a FOX primetime series. The program will include a variety of clips from a wide range of sources and programming and will feature hilarious and outrageous moments.

As a producer/videographer, you may have the type of material we are looking for. We would be interested in learning more about your footage and whether excerpts would be available for license. We pay very fair rates. We are looking for a wide range of clips. A small sampling of what we are seeking includes:

TV/Film Outtakes
Funny Home Videos
Wedding Mishaps
Clumsy Children
News Bloopers
Outrageous Gameshow
Hidden Camera Gags
Crazy Promotions
Dumb Criminals
Bad Drivers
Jackass-style Stunts
Unusual Auditions/Wannabes
Outrageous Competitions
Animals Out of Control
Sports Bloopers
Stunts Gone Awry
Vacation Disasters
Outrageous Performers

We hope that you will be able to provide footage that would work on our show. Please keep in mind that, above all, we are looking for visually funny material. We are not looking for footage that has been staged or in any way shot with the intention of misleading viewers into thinking that it was anything but genuinely caught on tape unless it is a format that is, by nature staged, i.e. hidden camera, practical jokes etc.

We look forward to hearing from you and learning more about your work and I appreciate any attention you can afford this request. Please include a copy of this request. Thank You.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey SV Willerth
Associate Producer
Nash Entertainment
323-468-4717
jwillerth@nashentertainment.com

Yay, another season of bad TV shows is on the way!

The 500 Series from iRiver is coming out soon. Already here by Japanese import. Flash recorder with mic in (plug-n-power), digital out, half the size and weight of minidisc, backlit face, voice activated recording.

Does anybody think these things will ever make good?

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_DVD_ALTERNATIVE?SITE=NYBUE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Not till Hollywood studios adpot it.

I have it. The iriver IHP-120 has optical/analog in/out and records stereo MP3 at up to 320kb. Includes a small clip on mic and a remote with lcd. I got it not only for music but hopefully to use as a secondary field recording device.

Has built in FM tuner that you can record from.

Plays mp3, wma and OggVorbis. Currently will not play lossless wma (400 to 500kbs). Will play OggVorbis at up to 500kbs. Can be updated with software from iriver for future features.

go to iriveramerica.com for more info.

Have you had any problems with it such as glitches, loss of data,
et cetera? Are you pretty happy with it? I didn't see any mention of the clip-on mic at iriver. Can you tell more about it? How does it connect to the unit?

http://www.boxxtech.com/asp/ulapp/get.asp?FID=2265

(Note: This links to a PDF of the product's announcement.)

So far no problems. The mic attaches to the unit just like you would with a PC I wouldn't use it for professional recording, but might be okay for voice notes
You can also attach optical in, just not sure how to do that since it's not the same as on an AV receiver. Same for Optical out. You could use an adaptor to hook up an external recording mic if needed, but no XLR hookups. It also has a built in mic. Has a 1/8 male to male connector for hooking up analog in or out. I need to read the manual some more before answering any more questions.(grin).

Joe,

Love to hear about any experiences using it as a "secondary field recording device"!

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/netcell_comdex2003.html

Yummy!! This is the type of thing we want... i cant figure out why manufacturers dont intergrate drivers so its more transparent, like these guys have. Well done. :)

nVidia has cost-effective RAID implementation in their nForce3 motherboard chipsets. Check out the RAID technical brief.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20030918753381.html

Umm, am I missing something here? If it's truly 64bit, I would think it would be running at 66mhz too, something the article fails to mention. That means you're going to need a 64bit/66mhz compatible PCI slot, which "desktop" motherboards don't have. The only ones I'm aware that have these slots are "workstation" and "server" class motherboards, which are considerably more money than desktop boards. Also they don't say if this is a 64bit/66mhz controller. It would seem pointless if it wasn't. 64bit alone does nothing, it needs to run on a faster bus. Regular 32bit pci bus is limited to 33mhz, which has a bandwidth of 133mb/s. In theory, 64bit/33mhz operation should give a slight increase over 32bit/33mhz, but in reality it doesn't. So from the article this controller does nothing more than omit the need to load 3rd party drivers, which isn't going to get me to spend that much when there are plenty of good cards already out there for a quarter of that cost.

Reuters story via Yahoo! News (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&ncid=738&e=1&u=/nm/20031201/tc_nm/tech_dvd_dc).

That's an interesting bit of news. Thanks for posting the link. On another note, I'm a Reuters follower as a great news source.

From Wired Magazine:

Establishing a DVD Standard (http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,61415,00.html)

MainConcept has released their new DVCPro codec that supports
8bit 4:2:2 50mb encoding/decoding. It ain't cheap either,though they have a free demo for download.

http://www.mainconcept.com

for more info.

HD DVD:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/031128/dvd_format_2.html

Jake

Julian Hirsch, a long-time icon in the world of stereo equipment reviews, recently passed away in New York. His name may not be familiar to young people but to those of us who followed "hi fi" to "stereo" in the old Stereo Review Magazine from the 1960's and on, Julian Hirsch was one of the most read and respected names in the business.

You can read more at the Sound & Vision Magazine site (http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=7&article_id=522&page_number=1).

Julian Hirsch more or less invented the concept of "laboratory testing" of products being reviewed for consumer magazines. He did this for Stereo Review, of course. That magazine was owned by Ziff-Davis, which later also owned PC Magazine. ZD eventually created an in-house lab, consolidated for all its computer magazines but I think now used almost exclusively for PC Magazine. (I was an editor for ZD, the reason I know these things.)

Hirsch's notion of applying consistent tests that could be repeated and thus used to establish baseline results is something that is sorely lacking in the magazines in the DV industry.

R.I.P.

Will

There is a strong rumor that Griffen will be releasing a line-in capable voice recorder for the third generation iPods. Belkin already makes a voice recorder add-on but is lacks line-in capability.

From Sony's web site:

http://www.sonytrucktour.com/dloc.asp?pg=us&sort=2

This seems to be a professional product demo tour scheduled for various cities throughout the US. It's been going on for some time now. Hope they come back north when the weather gets warm.

This is the first time I ever heard of xdcam. Too chicken to ask what it costs.

XDCAM pro camera starts around 15K add another 15K if you want a deck too.

Doesn't seem like it to me, but this article is hinting that it just might be.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/12/24/digital.movietheater.reut/index.html

The AP has a report out somewhere today saying it will be two generations before digital will displace film.

Yes, I too read that Reuters story on Yahoo! news. I suspect that the ongoing popular press chatter on the subject will, to a great degree, become a self-fulfilling prophecy by channeling the public's expectations. Here in Chicago the transformation is already beginning to take place at a few of the larger downtown theaters. People who have seen features on one of our digital screens have begun to rumor about how much better the image is (at least to their eyes) and thus the tsunami begins.

It will not be next year, but it certainly also not be "generations". And film projection houses will remain for the foreseeable future, even after Hollywood stops producing for that medium.

I think, and this is purely my view, is that digital will surpass film a lot faster than everyone expexts. Film has had over 100 years to mature, and in that sense digital is still a baby, but its growing up very fast indeed, think about it, look at how much computers have developed (only around for around 20 years!) i still remember playing with C64 and Amstrad 128K just as if it was yesterday and now look we have 128BIT consoles and AMD 64 BIT computers. In fact the technology is here already but its more political and ecomonics at the moment that is slowing the momentum of the digital wave. Not long now give it another 5~10 years then people will be saying "F..ILM...huh? what was that all about?"

I mean think about when was the last time you used a film based still camera after owning a digital still camera? :-)

Anyway just my View..

I didn;t know The Last Samurai was digital! HOLY SMOKES!

Digitally projected, not digitally shot. When a digital camera can produce images as good as "Last Samurai", then perhaps there will be some true weight to the "Film is Dead" battle call.

Personally i think film will always have a place, theres something about thats different...

I have a digital rebel and i still use my film camera as well, depends on what im doing, theres just something about it that keeps calling me back

I mentioned in another post earlier that I attended a conference here in Japan this year where some speakers introduced upcoming releases in theatrical-quality digital projectors. They have a 10-year timeline mapped out before achieving the "ideal" situation, but as early as next year they'll have much cheaper and better models being released, and within 5 years they'll have models at such low prices, and with such high performance that I can't imagine any theater not converting.

It would be interesting to see how this timeline coincides with the HD cam and HD post-processing development timelines.

When HD cams are able to capture 60,000,000 pixels, film will be history and mini DV cams will be passe. :-))