The DTV revolution has begun

Well, today marks the day when television stations around the U.S. begin shutting down their analog broadcasts. Originally, all stations were to terminate their analog signals today but congress passed a bill delaying that transition date to June 12 to allow more time for consumers to prepare for digital television. Because the delay created extra expenses for TV stations since they would have to run dual systems for months longer than they originally budgeted for, a clause in the bill approved some stations to begin termination today. A list of stations terminating their analog terrestrial broadcasts can be found on the FCC's Website. An overview of the HDTV formats can be found in the January DMS Newsletter.

Welcome to the Digital Media Services Blog...

I've had several requests from the Digital Media Services newsletter readership to begin posting blog entries. Unfortunately, I've not been given an abundance of ideas on what readers would like to read about. I guess the whole point of a blog is to keep it evolving into what's relevant at the time. So, we'll give it a shot.

As a basic set of starting parameters, I guess I'll try to stick to what I've been able to convince people I know something about. That includes media technology, marketing techniques, customer service, professionalism, home theater, movies, music, basketball and Star Wars. Well, maybe some of those last few won't be very interesting but, we'll see. Certainly let me know if something's on your mind and I'll try to address it. One thing's for sure, though - I won't try to pretend I know something about everything. If I don't feel confident in my knowledge in a certain subject area, I'll let you know. There's way too much bad information out there already; I don't want to add to the pile.

Also, I have a great group of associates working with me that can be fabulous resources. They can add to my knowledge in areas like photography, producing, graphic design, digital retouching, audio production and Web technology. Wow, reading that back makes me realize what a bunch of geeks we are. I guess that's OK.

So, I'll try to get this blog going by posting my thoughts at least a few times per week - hopefully I can do it more frequently than that - and we'll see where it takes us.

Talk to you soon!