Last week, <A HREF="http://www.technicolor.com/">Technicolor</A> announced that it has acquired a significant interest in Real Image Digital, a developer of digital-cinema technology. As part of the transaction, Technicolor is acquiring 49% of Real Image, with the option of picking up another 11.5% in the future on pre-negotiated terms. Real Image is partnered with the Sarnoff Corporation, which is currently developing technology to compress and encrypt film-quality images for theaters&mdash;a process that Sarnoff claims is many times more complex than video compression for the home-entertainment market.

The new DV-09 is Pioneer's first DVD player in its Elite line. More than simply an upscale version of a standard Pioneer DVD player, the DV-09 was built from the ground up to be a flagship product. It's also the first DVD player I've seen to have been certified under THX's DVD-player certification program (see sidebar, "THX DVD Players").

Last week, the <A HREF="http://www.homepna.org">Home Phoneline Networking Alliance</A> (HomePNA) announced that new technology proposed earlier in March by <A HREF="http://www.lucent.com">Lucent</A> and Epigram (now a subsidiary of <A HREF="http://www.broadcom.com">Broadcom</A>) is now the basis for the 2.0 standard for 10 Megabit/second home networking technology.

Last week, the 26th mission of the Space Shuttle <I>Columbia</I> touched down with a payload of high-definition footage, taken with an HD camcorder. The mission, which lasted five days and concluded last week, was the 95th so far. <A HREF="http://www.nasa.gov">NASA</A> and <A HREF="http://www.sony.com/professional">Sony</A> will research these high-resolution images of Shuttle mission STS-93, including footage of the deployment of the Chandra X-ray Observatory.