@thomasfuchs Every time I watched those CSI shows I wanted to rip out hair when they started just magically enhancing grainy crappy low grade tapes from cheap garage cameras or etc and could somehow pull a tag number from that. Meanwhile, even this many years later than when those shows first started presenting this magic, actual companies putting actual money into this struggle to deal with the necessary detail to get anything like that.
I think maybe I missed that particular Columbo. A local station was airing them a while back, but I guess I haven't seen it because I don't remember that.