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Howdie.
If I understand correctly, THX11138 posted the frame grabs. I have a question for you or anyone else that might have an answer. What software did you use to capture the FULL RES frames? I use AnyDVD to get to the frames off of the blu-ray, and then I USED to use VLC player to do the capture but VLC presently can't handle the m2ts format. So I tried WinDVD, but it will not allow frame grabbing or screen captures. Then I tried FLVplayer which allows screen caps but not full res frame grabs. So the best I can grab is 1600x1200 (limits of my video card), which is significantly lower than than the 1920x1080 data, AND is "dirtied" by having to go through the video card to get to the screen. The saga continues...

Thanks for the reply THX.
Yah, I wasted a good couple of days tinkering with WinDVD and PowerDVD, too. My vidcard will not support PowerDVD, so PowerDVD went bye-bye.
I just found another approach too, that can capture the full frames irrespective of the video card. Basically, it's AnyDVD to get access, Matroska Splitter to DirectShow decode, and the JakeLudington Mod of VirtualDubMod to grab the frame at 1920x1080. VirtualDubMod is nice, too, since you can fwd/rev frame advance which so many others fail to include in their software for some bizarre reason. You can also tell it to frame grab from a given start frame and end on a stop frame. I haven't tried working directly from the blu-ray disk, though with a script you can. So I used Super Player & Converter to break the .m2ts file into smaller m2ts chunks and transferred them to my HD. Unfortunately, it drops out significant chunks wherever it decides to split the original file. Not sure yet why this is happening. So your suggestion to use Nero HD might be a good alternate to the convoluted approach I read about, if it is NOT video card limited for resolution.

Changing the topic (which I suppose should go in a different forum), I found that even at the full frame res, that the pushbutton text was JUUUSSST beyond the readability threshold. I'm somewhat skeptical of all the pod pushbuttons being readable in the pod without having access to production closeup shots not readily available to the majority of us or having (like Dennis Gilliam) access to 70mm frames and even those would be difficult with digital enhancement. For instance, I had access to a 70mm frame at one point of the recharge instructions on the space suit chest pack. The body text is still way too small to be readable, AND it's lit from a good angle. That text is greater in size in proportion to the frame as all of the pushbutton text in the pod in those frames and not choked off by light inside a pushbutton bending around the text. I have tried using RegiStax4 to stack multiple blu-ray frames to sharpen things up, but there is too much camera blur to overcome and the fact that we're essentially viewing DIGITIZED 35mm quality, even as sharp as the frames are. The only text I was able to garner from the pushbuttons was one that possibly reads as "Remote Connect Computer", and I only realized that one when it appeared to be identical to the same smaller profile button in a similar placement on the mockup panel in the "Making of" docu. THAT panel in the docu is the same panel in the Discovery observation room and appears to contain text which relates to computer programming, which seems a bit out of place down there in the observation room. I think they pulled a lot of technical looking stuff without always having regard for the application it is supposed to represent in the film, which I can understand from a production standpoint. That having been said, I get the impression that although the labels that indicate GROUPS of buttons probably were meant to say something real (because everytime I can actually read one of those labels they DO mean something real), the pushbutton text is possibly what just came on the zillion pushbuttons they got from Honeywell, and a good sum of Honeywells's work related to computer programming so I am not surprised that a lot of those pushbuttons would contain programming references. But there are also a lot of video references; there appear to be video left/right, up/down navigation arrow pushbuttons below the four side displays in the pod, and zoom controls in the Orion below those displays, yet they are randomly lit or not lit without seeming to have any correlation to the character of the displays which just act as repeaters for general computer info for the most part. But if it is a close-up shot where they WANT you to read something (like the comm toggle switches in the pod, that's a different story). Incidentally, some people have wondered what the toggles are doing in there anyway when virtually everything else is pushbutton. I believe the answer can be gleaned by the "flip bar" below the switches, which is a standard aerospace trick to actuate a bunch of toggles all at once. So when you jump in the pod and start things up, you just flip the bar rather than flipping all 8 switches individually. To shut them off, you have to do them individually.
In like fashion, I believe that the exposive bolt arming trio of buttons is covered by that elaborate cover because the cover is in-fact a plunger that when you hit it, it actuates all three switches underneath in an emergency and fires the explosive bolts immediately without hesitation. You can see the three "cylinders" in the plunger that go over each button, and I'll bet those plungers are spring loaded.

At any rate, I really hope that now, since the Kuricks have donated Stanley's archive to a university, and with Larson's book out there on the horizon, that much more information will become available at an accelerated pace. One can only hope.

SAL9000.
Thanks for the reply. I like your idea. I have been trying to figure out where it came from too, and now we all have the potential to invetigate this. I would love to get my hands on one of these. I know some aerospace engineers who might have a clue as well. If the plunger idea still holds water, it may contain stiff springs so that simply bumping into it would not set it off. On the other hand, it seems like a rather complicated cover if in fact it serves no other purpose. But you know, I HAVE seen images of air force crewmen holding some sort of remote attached by cable to the wall, although I never bothered to take a look at just what it was attached to, if one could make it out. That would definitely explain the connector. It appears to have six pins so that seems like plenty to handle any cargo door activity.