CineGrid: Super high definition media over optical networks

High definition media is used throughout our lives. Digital cinematography is becoming more widespread for capturing motion pictures. Scientific disciplines have also discovered the power of very high-resolution interactive visualization systems using technologies such as tiled displays. The production, processing, storage, and delivery of high quality digital media is increasingly a geographically distributed endeavor. Traditionally, the only practical way to move high quality digital media around has been physically, on tapes or disc packs. However, emerging photonic networks offer the capacity to support distributed handling of even the highest quality digital media if the cyber infrastructure is well engineered. This special issue offers an overview of the efforts done in this area by the CineGrid community.