Apologies to FresHDV regulars for the dearth of fresh content. I’ve been swamped with projects and unable to devote much time to updates and news. John Lennon once said “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”

A lot has happened lately, and I’m having to play catch up. First off, we’ve added another member to the FresHDV team, Kendal Miller of Chicago-based LMPStudios is now onboard and blogging. Welcome, Kendal!

In (semi) current news and updates, Sony decided against downsampling Blu-ray content for analog HDTV users (read: “punishing legacy users”), and other studios have followed suit.

TDK is shipping Blu-ray blanks, and you can supposedly buy Blu-ray burner-equipped desktops and notebooks from Fujitsu in June.
Or when hell freezes over, whichever comes first…

Due to a error at Best Buy, some guy in California managed to buy a HD-DVD player a little early. Considering the stiff $500 pricetag, I can’t decide who really got the last laugh in that situation…

16X9 has announced a remote “follow focus” type system for the HVX200. Hard to explain. Go. Read.

Red Giant’s Film Fix software is now cross-platform, with versions available for both Mac and Windows versions of After Effects.

HD For Indies/Mike Curtis has been posting on The Big Texas HD Test, coverage at DVinfo as well. Mike has tons more notes at HD For Indies, that link is just the announcement.

Apple shipped Final Cut Studio 5.1 (universal binary version), and it was quickly discovered that MacIntels are faster than PPC Mac hardware on some important photo and video-related tasks.

Popwire is shipping MacIntel-compatible WMV playback software.

DVGuru is looking for bloggers. No mention of how much the positions will pay, though I’ve read elsewhere unofficial rumors of the standard weblogsinc pay rate. YMMV…

Another review of the Canon XL H1, this one slightly less technical and more operational/logistics.

Apple released a BETA multiple-os-boot-loader, Boot Camp. Awesome! It is eating some hard drive partitions. Un-Awesome! Too bad it’s BETA software and unsupported…might think twice before installing on mission-critical machines.