Video Equipment

Good ideas don't have to cost a million dollars, especially with home video. Here are some no-cost tips: How's about making a camcorder double as a video recorder? After popping for the bucks to buy a camcorder, a video buff needn't also immediately lay out the dollars to buy a VCR. The camcorder can be connected directly to any television (if the set has video inputs and outputs) and used to record or play. Water and video equipment don't mix.

The residents of Lancaster probably didn't notice it, but a small Cessna aircraft on Friday flew high above the desert city, capturing hours of video and ushering in a new era in law enforcement surveillance. The plane, equipped with sophisticated video equipment, is set fly a loop above the city for up to 10 hours a day, beaming a live video feed of what's going on below to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department dispatch center. The camera will inevitably pick up scenes of mundane day-to-day life.

U.S. troops in the Middle East will soon be able to give their families back home a vivid picture of life at the front. More than $2 million worth of video equipment is being donated and shipped overseas so military men and women will be able to tape and send personal messages.

When Chris and Rebecca Rider sit down to watch a romantic movie together, they don't pop in a DVD or turn on the DVR. They fire up their video game console. Once kept in rec rooms for a family's gamers, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Co.'s Wii are increasingly being used by people who have no interest in helping Mario save the princess or the "Call of Duty" soldiers win the war. The 31-year-old Chris Rider began playing video games on his family's Atari in the early 1980s.

The remote hills of California's gold country are far from the sprawling urban jungle of Silicon Valley--and that's just the way employees of the Grass Valley Group like it. A high-tech company where almost everyone, including top executives, wears jeans and sneakers, the Grass Valley Group has been designing and manufacturing state-of-the art video production equipment for almost 25 years.

As they await autopsy results on a handcuffed prisoner who died in an altercation with deputies, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials announced plans Monday to install video and audio monitors in cell blocks at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

It was the wires dangling from a wall clock that first caught the eye of the nurse, who was taking a breather after a stint in the labor and delivery unit of Good Samaritan Hospital. A closer inspection revealed a tiny, pea-sized camera lens above the numeral "9." Within minutes, nurses at the hospital just west of downtown Los Angeles hit the phones, alerting colleagues about the device in the break room and asking them to check other clocks for hidden cameras.

Like a grieving widow who finally parts with her late husband's golf clubs, Sony Corp. has given up on Betamax. The Japanese electronics giant announced Tuesday that it would stop making the last two models of the Betamax videocassette recorder by year's end. The company made fewer than 3,000 of the VCRs last year and sold them only in Japan.

An expert parachutist fell to his death when he jumped from a plane, apparently without realizing that he wasn't wearing a parachute, officials said today. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the death Saturday of Ivan Lester McGuire to see if pilot Mark Luman had checked to see if McGuire was wearing a parachute.

After talking to journalism students at Stony Brook University recently, John Houseman of New York's WPIX-TV left behind 18 new video cameras. Houseman, assistant news director at WPIX, had enlisted students at the Long Island campus as contributors to his news operation with an investment of $119 per camera. He wants the budding journalists -- as well as students at Fordham, Rutgers and New York universities -- to send in material if they see something they believe to be a story.

Sen. Barack Obama's advertising team is getting some friendly competition from film pros with some Oscar clout like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. The liberal group MoveOn.org, reprising a 2004 ad contest against President Bush, has enlisted the actors to help select an ad supporting Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. MoveOn plans to air the winning commercial on national television before Pennsylvania's April 22 primary, but organizers hope the real benefit could come simply from media attention, Internet buzz and the star power behind it. Participants in the "Obama in 30 Seconds" contest will have until April 1 to submit their entries.

When New York Giants center Shaun O'Hara and New England Patriots noseguard Vince Wilfork launch their combined 628 pounds at each other in Sunday's Super Bowl, more than 90 million viewers will be able to almost feel the collision. And for that they can thank Jim Rodnunsky, a filmmaker from Granada Hills who while working to make his skiing simulator more realistic stumbled upon what experts say is the most significant innovation in sports television of the last 20 years: the Cablecam.

Infiniti is taking a new angle on rear-view cameras. Nissan Motor Co.'s luxury nameplate is offering a new software-assisted camera system that provides drivers with a 360-degree overhead perspective of their car -- sort of a bird's-eye view for parallel parking. The "around view monitor" will be an option on the 2008 Infiniti EX35, a new small sport utility vehicle. "It's a high-tech parking aid that goes well beyond reverse-camera technology," said Robert Yakushi, Nissan North America Inc.'

I am interested in purchasing a piece of exercise equipment or a workout video from television, but I have heard that these products never work and that the claims they make are false. Amy Santa Monica Some of these products and video programs do work, but many of them are full of impossible-to-deliver claims. Here are a few tips that will help you distinguish between the ones that are worth trying and the ones that aren't.

Britain is attaching cameras to the caps and helmets of police officers, tightening a web of video surveillance that is the most extensive in the world. The country has a network of about 4 million closed-circuit cameras, and privacy advocates complain that the average Briton is recorded as many as 300 times a day. The Home Office said it was allocating $6 million for the plan, enough to buy more than 2,000 cameras for the country's 42 police departments.

The Garvey Elementary School District has received a $70,600 grant from the state to purchase computer and video equipment, a spokesman said. The money will be used to buy 40 Apple computers, along with software, printers and videotape recorders, cameras and monitors. The equipment will be used to help improve reading, speaking, writing and math skills, the spokesman said.

After a 10-year intermission, drive-in movies are returning to Orange County, courtesy of an inflatable silver screen. Tonight in Costa Mesa, a 300-car theater -- and unofficial backseat romance research center -- will flicker to life in a parking lot at the Orange County Fairgrounds. Bankrolled by four baby-boomers, the Star-Vu Drive-In plans to operate year-round, except during fair season. The last such venue, Westminster's Hi-way 39 theater, closed in 1997 to make room for a Wal-Mart.

The Police Commission on Tuesday selected IBM Corp. to install 300 digital video cameras in patrol cars in the first phase of a program that could put cameras in all 1,600 police vehicles. "It is a high priority for this commission and for the department," said Commission President John Mack. The $5-million contract needs City Council approval.