PPro/FCP: More NAB.
Apple introduced the free update FCP HD. If you've got the new Panasonic DVCPRO HD machine you can edit DVCPRO HD (1080i/720p) over FireWire. Even on a Powerbook. Let's hope the codec is OK. The new update also introduced the coolest thing yet - something everyone on Avid has been spoiled with since the early days of NLE's - Digital Cinema Desktop. Preview DV, SD and HD content full screen on your monitor. No need for additional software. That's the way it should be done. Apple also introduced Motion - a motion graphics app - a bit like LiveType on steroids. And no - it's not an After Effects killer. I'm only guessing but it seems to me like Motion could as well be integrated into FCP. Let's wait and see what happens.

On the PPro side there is a new cool product called Prospect HD from Cineform. It uses an AJA Kona HD card and regular IDE drives and Cineform's own wavelet algorithm to capture and play out HD in a visually lossless fomat. It can do nine streams of RT. The downside to this product is that it seems to be extremely over priced. Disk drives are not that expensive these days that we can't live without the Prospect HD wavelet algorithm.

RT = Don't believe the hype. IMHO most RT effects are highly overrated and totally unusable.