The Pecman

Empty Grave looks excellent. If the rest of it is as good as the first two chapters, I think it's worth voting into the Best of Nifty.

Yeah, WBMS, I'd agree with that. Flashbacks or Dream Sequences have special rules unto themselves. Many times, I've seen authors suddenly change tenses for a flashback, where they tell the story in present tense. Techniques like this are useful, and I understand why someone would want to bracket a special moment (or moments) in the story this way. I've used dream sequences in my first two novels (somewhat heavy-handedly, I admit), and I concede they need to stand alone. In fact, I ended Groovy with a dream sequence, just to tie the past to the present, and I think it worked well. But you gotta admit: starting off a novel with four or five separate 1st person points of view -- in the first chapter, yet -- is wacky. Have you read the story I've been complaining about? If you haven't, go read the first chapter, and tell me if you think I'm being out-of-line here.

My writing buddy Nick Archer (of http://www.archerland.com) asked me to add this comment to my post: Stamp Out Narrator Switching In the United States, there’s really no law that says you have to place the stamp in the upper right hand corner of the envelope. It’s just the convention. All the Postal Service machines are set to cancel the stamp in the upper right corner. Pre-paid bulk mail envelopes are printed with the stamp in the upper right corner. It’s a convention. It’s the standard. If a 5-year-old kid slaps the stamp in the middle of the envelope, it will probably still get to Grandma, but I’m betting that cute little birthday card rendered in crayon would require special handling. It’s the same with switching narrators. As readers, we expect the author to follow certain conventions. Authors writing in Standard English start a new paragraph each time a new character speaks. That’s a convention. Authors use quotation marks at the beginning and end of the spoken words. That’s the standard. And good writers don’t switch narrators. There. I said it up front. And I’m not going to take it back. Switching narrators goes against conventions. It’s confusing for your readers. Put bluntly, it sucks. Recently I read a story where the author switched narrators not at the beginning of every chapter or even every paragraph but every LINE! He started the line with the character’s name, then an ellipsis (a series of three dots) and then the character’s dialog or thoughts. Tim…I said, “You are a liar.” Mark…I knew I had lied, but I said, “I love you.” I just gave up. Even though the story was pretty good, the constant changing of narrators confused and eventually angered me. Professional writers all advise against it. My friend John Francis in his article Gay Writing Tips points out that not a single bestseller uses the gimmick of switching narrators. I’ve also written against it in my article Jump The Shark. John and I are in total agreement: It is never a good thing to switch narrators and it can’t be done well. Yet, amateur writers still do it. Why? Why? Do you purposely want to confuse or alienate your readers? Do you think it’s cute or creative? Are you that unimaginative that you can’t think of alternatives? You do want to write to the best of your ability, right? (I can see you nodding your head ‘Yes.’) Even if you never intend on selling your writing or making a living with words, you want a large audience for your writing. You want lots of people reading (and hopefully responding) to your story. Find one point of view and stick to it. My theory is that we as amateurs want to avoid conflict. We want everything to be hunky-dory with our characters. Maybe this reflects our real lives. I know I avoid conflict as much as possible. But in some of my stories my characters fight and argue quite a bit. I’ve even had readers email me telling my characters were going to break up if they didn’t stop fighting! I write mostly in third person. I find third person easier. You can describe all the thought processes of every character if you like. But, it seems amateur writers mostly use first person because their stories have some basis in real life and include some actual experiences. That’s fine, but stick to ONE narrator. OK, you say, but I want to include different points of view and thoughts and conversations that the narrator wouldn’t hear or experience. Well, you’re a creative person. The fact that you have taken time to put fingers to keyboard (or pencil to paper if you’re really old school) proves that you can think of alternatives. Let’s brainstorm some creative ways you can do present another person’s thought processes without switching narrators. Listen Up! Your character can overhear or eavesdrop on a conversation. They can overhear someone on the phone, in another room, at a party, or walking by their bedroom window. “Honestly, Frank, I don’t know what I was thinking when I moved in with Chad. It’s really been a mistake.” Spinning Headlines: Remember how classic movies use spinning newspaper headlines to show what’s going on? No? OK, in newer movies they use a series of magazine covers. The intent is the same: to show the audience what’s going on what’s going on from a different point of view, they use media as a mirror. Could your main character read about it online, in a newspaper or hear it on the radio? Gossip, Gossip, We Want Gossip! Your main character is the recipient of a piece of juicy gossip from some well-meaning ‘friend.’ “Well, you know I never gossip, but I heard that Frank was thinking about moving to Atlanta. Without you.” Check It Out and Report Back To Me: Similar to Gossip, Gossip, but character reports on himself or herself. “Well, I was upset about the Geico Caveman commercials but my therapist asked why it upset me. Then my cell phone rang and it was my mother.” Snoop Patrol: Which one of us hasn’t gotten all up in someone else’s grill? Your main character finds a diary or blog. “’I never knew Charlie had such a big dick.’ Hmmm, I wondered. Just how did he discover Charlie was hung?” Or you find a 12” black dildo in a dresser drawer. Show Me The Money: In any relationship, gay or straight, money is almost always an issue. (Many amateur authors try to make it a non-issue by making the main characters impossibly rich – but that’s another rant.) Chad finds an item on the monthly statement saying he used his debit card at the local sex toy emporium. Or Frank sees a suspicious charge on the Mastercard bill. And why is the joint checking account down to $8.68? Where did that money go? Cyberpolice: With electronic gadgets there are endless possibilities for discovering the thoughts and feelings of characters other than the narrator. Wonder what this strange number on this cell phone is? (“Hello?” “Hello?” “Who is this?” “Who is this?” “I asked you first.”) I found Jerry’s blog, and I had no idea he felt that way about Chad! Where are these emails coming from? Why is hoseme.com in the browser’s history? I Googled his name and he had a police record! What about dreams? Or flashbacks? Hell, in one chapter, I had one character having a conversation with a cat! There are probably a lot more ways to discover the thoughts and feelings of other characters that I haven’t listed here. C’mon! Think about it! You can do it! Be creative. And in the meantime, don’t switch narrators. Excuse me, please; I have to go buy some stamps.

Sadly, it's not happening. I'd say the book market for people under 30 is diminishing quickly. There are major exceptions -- Harry Potter is a big one -- but for the most part, people are not reading books as much as they used to. They are reading on the Net, but I don't think this is necessarily giving them appreciation of literature.

Yes, I agree -- Maugham was a fine writer. I recall writing an essay on a biography of the author in the 1970s, when I was going to college, and was surprised at the time to learn that Maugham suffered most of his life from being short, gay, and afflicted with a stutter. The lead character in Of Human Bondage is somewhat autobiographical, though Maugham replaced his own stutter with the character's club foot. Note that Maugham never used multiple 1st person POV, either.

In another section, there was recently a debate on another writer's story, one that had a good idea, good characters, and (arguably) a good plot. But after I tried gamely to get through the first chapter, I was put off by the author's use of no less than five (5!) different points of view, which I felt was confusing, obvious, and gimmicky. For the uninitiated: 1st person means you're essentially hearing the story as told to you by an observer. "I walked down the street and saw Jimmy crossing at the intersection. His eyes met mine, but he looked away and began to run in the opposite direction. I was perplexed, because we had been friends for years..." And so on. You're experiencing life through one person's eyes. 3rd person implies an "omniscient" point of view, using an unseen narrator (usually the author's own voice) describing several different people and events. For example, the above scene could be like this: "Ralph walked down the street and saw Jimmy crossing at the intersection. Their eyes met, but Jimmy looked away and began to run in the opposite direction. Ralph was perplexed, because they had been friends for years..." And so on. One advantage of 3rd person is that you can instantly leap from inside one character's head to another, revealing thoughts and details that are known to only one person: "Ralph walked down the street and saw Jimmy crossing at the intersection. Their eyes met. Oh, no, thought Jimmy. I can't talk to Ralph now. I've got to get to the hospital, before anybody finds out about what happened. Jimmy began to run in the opposite direction. "Wait!" cried Ralph. "Hold up!" He was perplexed, because they had been friends for years..." OK, maybe that's lame, plus I elaborated a little bit, but believe me, almost anything that you can do in 1st person can be duplicated in 3rd. And yet there are sometimes advantages to writing in 1st person: 1) a memoir, like an autobiography, where someone is looking back on his or her life and telling their own story. 2) when you need to deliberately omit or obscure key plot details -- secrets, crimes, motives, unseen characters, or what-have-you -- so that the reader only knows what's going on from the lead character's viewpoint. For this reason, most detective fiction is told in 1st person, like Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. 3) a "fish out of water" story, where a character is suddenly plunged into a dramatically new place and struggles with adapting to their new environment. and 4) a personal story, where the writer wants the reader to feel the emotions of just a single character, and identify solely with that character. There may be others, but those are a few reasonable ones. I just picked up Nancy Kress' new book Characters, Emotions & Viewpoint, and here's what she has to say about multiple 1st person POV: "How many points of view are you allowed? A general rule of thumb is to have as few points of view as you can get away with and still tell the story you want to tell. "The reason for this is... we're used to experiencing reality from one POV. Each time you switch from one fictional viewpoint to another, the reader must make a mental adjustment. If there are too many of these, the story feels increasingly fragmented and unreal." This is exactly the point I was trying to make. Later on in the book, Kress admits that a few major authors (such as Ursula LeGuin in The Left Hand of Darkness) have experimented with two or more points of view, but that it's best done with characters from radically different cultures, "giving us more intimate looks into these two mindsets than if either character had been the sole narrator." I could see where this might work if one was, say, a human male, and the other was an asexual alien. I call that radically different. Kress goes on to say: "Jumping from inside one head to another, especially repeatedly, may fragment reader identification so much that the story may be ruined. It seems to work best where there is a great contrast between the characters and the author wishes to emphasize that wide gulf." I can see that, maybe, with two characters of different races, different cultures, and so on, particularly in a science-fiction or horror situation. But not in a romance or relationship novel, which covers 90% of the stories on this site. The story that started this discussion had no less than five points of view in the very first chapter, and I was so annoyed, I had to grit my teeth just to make it through those few pages. I'm too frightened to go back and see if fewer points of view were done in later chapters, for fear that there might be even more. I think 1st person is a terrific way for beginning writers to start writing short stories and novels, because it's the easiest way to tell the story. "I woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head." Got it. That's a pretty straightforward, direct method, as if you're telling a tale to friends gathered around a fire. 3rd person works better when you need to show scenes more objectively, reveal details that the lead character(s) don't know about, and show when a character is lying (and only this character and the audience know it's a lie). 3rd person also allows the author to make observations about the setting (the building, the town, the climate, etc.), the characters, and so on. The narrator can also know much more than the characters, foreshadowing tragedy that lies ahead, and have free rein in establishing the mood and time for each scene. I say all this because I believe multiple 1st person point of view is a very difficult, messy technique in which to tell a story. It calls a lot of attention to itself, snapping the reader out of the story; I made a case that I get "literary whiplash" whenever the author jumps back and forth and says, "JOE'S POINT OF VIEW," or "JOE," followed by more dialog. It's clunky, ugly, and interferes with the smooth flow of the story. It constantly reminds the reader that he or she is reading a story, rather than just letting the story seamlessly happen. I think if you're William Faulkner or Ursula LeGuin, that's one thing; each has written at least one novel with two or more points of view. But I have yet to read an author on the net who writes at that level. My opinion is that it takes only a little more effort to write the story in 3rd person. Otherwise, you're just putting yet another obstacle in the path of the reader, making it harder for them to appreciate the story and identify with your characters. If anybody can give me a passionate argument as to how a multiple 1st person story would be superior to the same story told in 3rd person, I'm all ears. And I'm still willing to take 1000 words from anybody and rewrite it, to prove my point.

To add further mystery to this situation, I noted that even web.archive.org (which generally has copies of every website that ever existed, for the past 10-12 years), does not have anything on DrakeTales.org. They advise that the site used a "robot exclusion" request so that their website would not be archived. So it would seem that Mr. Drake no longer wants anybody to have copies of his work, from now on. I have yet to receive an answer to my email from a few days ago, but I'll give it a little while longer before giving up.

Simmer down. My opinions aren't as absolute as yours. I see a lot of gray area here. I think a novel case could be made that could turn this over as a decision. In other words, the written law may say one thing, but a good argument could be made that the law doesn't apply to a copyrighted work that is essentially "abandoned." That's the key in this case. If somebody walks away from a copyrighted work, I think you can make a good argument that it's effectively in the public domain, particularly when it was never distributed commercially. Note that I never stated for a fact that it was public domain -- only that this is not a black and white issue, and that the possibility is there. But let's go back to the original question: would the author mind if his stories continued to circulate on the Net? I checked my correspondence and saw that I had last attempted to contact the author four months ago, in December, with no luck. I'll try again and see if he's willing to reply.

Pardon me, counselor, but let me offer a dissenting opinion. I think when you have stories that are posted for free, read by a wide audience on the web, and then an author chooses to withdraw them, I'm not convinced it's a copyright infringement to repost them elsewhere on the web. I think one could argue it was a fair use, provided the story was never published commercially, that the words remain intact, with the author's copyright, and that no momentary gain occurs. At best, it'd be a civil copyright infringement, not a criminal one, so all the author could do would be to sue. But that'd take a lot of time and money to do. And he'd still have to prove a financial loss, which would be difficult, given that the story was never commercially published. [i freely concede that I'm far from an attorney, though my longtime partner has a law degree, and I've had to testify a half-dozen times in some major copyright cases. At least one of them was significant, and went all the way to the Supreme Court. I'll omit those details for the moment, except to say I was a minor footnote in a pivotal copyright decision.] I think I still have Drake's address, and I did correspond with him briefly when I first read Different Eyes a year or two ago. I suspect he would have no problem if the story was reprinted elsewhere, but I agree that morally, it'd be better to get his permission first.

Yeah, I praised Through Different Eyes some months back and tried to get it added to the "Best of Nifty" site, without success. It's a terrific novella, though I have a logistical problem with some minor story elements (chiefly, the kid's lack of awareness of his sexuality). But it was very well-written. I told the author in an email it was good enough that it could've easily been a Twilight Zone episode, assuming one could air a TV show about a young gay teenager. Really well-done.

My problem is, just as I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I discover there's another tunnel! I'm hanging in here for the moment. My workload should lighten up in another week or two, and we'll see if then I can get back to Destiny. I'm still making notes and updating the chapters (old and new), so progress is being made, albeit slowly.

Believe me, I genuinely consider myself damned. I'm feeling fairly crushed by work and ongoing depression, to the extent that it's hard for me to function. Having problems with the story right now is only the tip of the iceberg. Let's see if there's any light at the tunnel in another month or two. (My fear is, the new light will just turn out to be another tunnel...)

I've run into some personal and story-related problems with the novel. Because I can't devote the time necessary to solve either, I've decided that Chapter 3 will be the final posted chapter for the immediate future. (This situation hasn't been helped by an impossible work schedule on my day job, which has had me toiling more than 90 hours a week for the past month or so.) The story's not quite "abandoned" at the moment, but it's fair to say it's on the back burner for now. If and when I have the time to get back to it in a few months, I will. My apologies to those of you who've been following it, and my thanks go to those of you who've commented on it over the past few weeks. I'll post an announcement here if and when the story will be continued.

I think you're being too hard on Vista, James. All operating systems are temporary, in the grand scheme of things. In this case, I think Vista is a step forward: it looks better, it's very stable, and it resists viruses and other flaws a lot better than any previous version of Windows. I think there are some bad things about Vista, like the awful Digital Rights Management issues, plus the "Genuine Advantage" b.s. But in general, it's a pretty solid OS. Let's see how it compares to Mac OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) in a few months. I intend to use both, myself, though I would argue that OSX works better for what I do with computers.

Actually, I was just in West Hollywood a few days ago, and was surprised to note how the area is being taken over by Russian immigrants. No kidding, the city is in a transition where there may be soon more Russian-speaking people than gays. My old apartment building there (where I first hooked up with my current partner) had quite a few Russians living there, back in the early 1980s. Strange, how cultures change and melt and merge together over time. Now, don't ask me how many Russian gays are in the area...

As far as I'm concerned, gay people reclaimed the word Queer some years back. TV shows like Queer as Folk made it publicly acceptable, but I think it's similar to the N-word in that I don't mind it coming from another gay person, but I might slug somebody if they used it in a derogatory way -- as in, "there's too many F'in queers in West Hollywood."

The mid-1960s singer Keith (aka 17 year-old James Barry Keefer), well-known for his 1967 classic "98.6" (#7 on the U.S. charts in late 1966), had a minor #79 single, "Daylight Savin? Time," on Mercury Records in June of 1967. ' As to saving daylight: I dunno about saving anything, but jeez, I sure waste a lot of night-time nattering away here...

My point was that some gay people erroneously think Howard Stern is hostile towards them. He's not. Granted, he makes fun of retards, fat people, black people, white supremesists, middle-Easteners, the handicapped, and many others, but the worst you can say is that he does obnoxious satire. Stern has actually campaigned vigorously for gay rights for ten years, arguing that (paraphrasing) "gay people absolutely should have the right to marry. Why shouldn't they be allowed to be as miserable as straight married couples?" I'm still outraged at Coulter's remarks. The fact that she had the nerve to come back and say, "oh, 'faggot' isn't an incendiary word by itself. It's commonly used as an insult on schoolyards. It's only offensive if I was using the term with a gay man." That's like saying, "it's OK if I call George W. Busy a ni@@er, because we all know he's a white man." To me, there are some words that are patently offensive, and 'Faggot' is one of them. Somebody should remind Coulter that the meaning of the word derived from pieces of burning wood. There are those who believe, historically, that after some gay people were burned at the stake, the word was later applied to them as well, and that's where the term took hold -- though this is in dispute. There's a good history of the word 'Faggot' here on Wikipedia. Quite enlightening. But it's still not a word I like. "Queer" I can live with, and "Gay" is fine.

Howard Stern was screaming mad about this today on his Sirius Radio show. You can call Stern obnoxious (and a hundred other things), but he's right on in slamming this bitch about the use of this word. And he's the furthest thing from being homophobic, though he does poke fun at gay people (and many others) on his show, including occasional cast member George Takei, who also weighed in during the anti-Coulter bashing. At least she didn't call him "mah niggah," or words to that effect.

Last I checked, Industrial Light + Magic in San Francisco, the biggest visual effects company in the world, was pretty much all-Linux for most of what they did. They also have a pretty big Mac department, but not nearly as big as Linux. Only a fraction of their work is done under Windows. And everything is linked by a 10-gigE network, using about 300TB worth of storage (as of last year, anyway). (Skywalker Sound, roughly 30 miles away, is about 80% Mac.) I seem to recall the second-biggest visual effects company in the world, Sony Pictures Imageworks, is about 60/40 Linux and Windows. Not sure how much they use Macs, but I can find out. When I worked for the now-defunct Cinesite, we were about 80% Unix and/or Linux. Very little was Windows. About 25% of our staff moved down under to go to work for Peter Jackson at Weta Digital; I'll send an email to a friend down there and find out what they're using. My point is what I said above: a person who complains that he or she can't accomplish something on a given platform is like a carpenter blaming his tools for the poor quality of his work. A competent person should have no problem dealing with multiple platforms. Your manager's argument isn't a valid one, because they never really tried to learn how to use the Mac. Again: keep in mind my partner and I live in a house with six Macs and three Windows machines we use nearly every single day of the week. (I think that number is low, because there's some other machines not on the network at the moment.) The difference between OS's is not the vast philosophical gulf you make it out to be. Using both is not a big deal. Because I use both every single day of the week (and more Linux than I care to think about), I'm more qualified than most people to say that the Mac is head-and-shoulders better for what I do. Small side-story: my brother and I have more differences than similarities. He's 12 years younger, a little taller, bald, straight, married with kids, loves watching sports, and has a 9-5 job. I'm a little shorter, have most of my hair, gay, longterm relationship, watch movies, and work bizarre hours. Radically different lifestyles. We like different movies, different music, different poltiics, all kinds of stuff, but we get along. Yet my brother is 100% in the Mac camp, because he's a graphics designer, a total Photoshop/Quark wiz. I'm a technical guy working in audio and video, and a writer and consultant. Macs couldn't be more appropriate for people in our respective fields. Unless you spend lots of time working with both Macs and Windows, I don't think you can make a fair, objective decision on which works best. I agree it's a personal choice, but I think it's unfair to dismiss the Mac this flippantly, especially when so many arguments (cost, choice of software, etc.) no longer apply.

You ain't gonna get peace around here with that kind of obnoxious opinion. I've always said, "you can be very productive and happy in Windows, or you can do the same thing on a Mac." The end results lie more in what you want to do with the computer, what kind of training you have, and your limitations in terms of time and money. If your manager said that about the Mac, then I'd ask, "why is your company not giving this person the training they need?" Or maybe it's that the software she needs to do the job was never installed on the Mac. I concede that there are things that work best on one OS than the other. For example, all of my video editing and audio mixing work is done on Macs. I do all my color-correction in Linux, on a $600,000 dedicated hardware/software combo. But I also have to use DOS for some specialized functions relating to keeping track of pieces of movies as they're being shot (as does every company in LA, NY, London, and around the world). And I use Macs at home, like I an now, because it's relaxing and I don't feel like the OS gets between me and the work. It becomes invisible, like it should be. But there are still a handful of Windows programs unavailable for Mac that I reluctantly use. One is Tag & Rename from Pokisoft, the best MP3/Flac audio file renaming program (bar-none); another is dBPowerAmp, which is the nicest audio-conversion utility I've ever seen. I have no problem running those in Windows. It's a question of using the right tool for the right job. I'm about to buy a new Intel Mac (probably the quad-core 3GHz, which PC Magazine recently said was the "fastest computer in the world under $3000"). I look forward to running Mac OSX 90% of the time, and then Windows 10% for the few applications that need it. To me, running Windows is bearable if I can do it on the Mac. (BTW, I do like Vista, and think it's a terrific step in the right direction.?Though I'm not a fan of the whole "Genuine Disadvantage" thing.)

I agree with everything you said above except this, bub. I have most of the editions of Apple's Human User Interface books, as well as the same books published by Microsoft for Windows. There are numerous cases where both Apple and Microsoft completely disregarded their own corporate recommendations for interface guidelines. As one teeny example: you can't use control-S to save most database files. Typically, that's used for Sort instead. Also, Microsoft has an enormous HUI department. I used to have a friend who worked their as a technical writer (circa 1995), and I believe he said there were more than 1000 people employed in that department, writing manuals and testing software and operating systems to try to make it easier for people to use. Obviously, they need to work a lot harder at this.

Des' suggestion above is perfect. That's a good ad. BTW, you might want to look at the existing ads for "The Geek Squad" (a national fixit chain that's part of the Best Buy stores), just to get an idea of how they sell their services. Do a Google search and you'll see a coupla dozen firms that do the same thing. Amusingly, I once referred a close friend to the Geek Squad when he had a PC that was infested with viruses by his teenage girls. The Geeks came over, sat down for two hours, then finally said, "this computer is so hosed, you have to wipe it, reformat, and start over. That'll be $200, please." So help me, that's what they did. No fix, just give up. Finally: a terrific slogan often used by computer radio talkshow host Leo Laporte is: "It's not your fault!" I think that's a good tactic to take, because a lot of neophyte computer users assume they must've done something wrong when a computer fails. Often, it's just bad software design, bugs, and other flaws that make the computer crash. My opinion is, there shouldn't be a single button or menu you can click on that will make the computer crash, short of the reset or power key. It's unforgivable in software design. I'm a major nut when it comes to human user interface design, and I scream about this stuff every day. Too much software is designed by computer engineers and not real people. P.S. The PC Jr.? Yikes! Hey, I was using a Trash-80 computer in 1979, and bought an Apple II in 1980 (and used CP/M). (in a wheezy old man voice) In myyyy day, we didn't need no 'Gooey'! We had nothin' but a DOS prompt... and weeeee liked it!

In theory, standard 1080 HD has about six times the resolution (aka apparent sharpness) of regular NTSC or PAL video. HD also has a native aspect ratio of 16x9 (1.78:1), so you get a picture about 20% wider than a regular squarish TV set. Whether it's worth the extra cost is something each buyer has to work out for themselves. Note that just because a set is labeled as "digital" or "HD" doesn't guarantee a minimum quality level. There are $600 HD sets, and $50,000 HD sets, and they're as different in quality as a $10,000 car and a $100,000 car. There are also about 36 different kinds of "digital" video, all the way from essentially the same 525 TV we see every day, to quality beyond 1080. And there are other higher-res formats in the wings, including 2K and 4K data, which I encounter all the time at work. Things are changing fast. But regular over-the-air U.S. analog broadcasting is going away. The main reason it's going away is so they can use all the space now occupied by VHF channels. All the future digital channels will be in the UHF band, and the FCC will make billions of dollars selling these frequencies for other uses, like new wireless telephones, data, downloads, and so on. But I bet many people will opt to buy a cheap ($50) convertor box that just converts digital broadcasts to analog, so they won't have to replace their sets. Not unless it's super-bright, no. On a stage, brightness and screen size are the biggest issues, not picture quality or HD per se. Projecting high quality movies at home and projecting concert images on stage are two completely different applications. It's like the difference between a public address system and a home stereo. Not the same thing. If I were you, I'd rent a few comparable systems for a day or two and see if they produce the kinds of pictures you want to see on-stage. Don't forget you'll also need a good reflective screen (assuming the concert halls in which you perform don't have them already installed), and those are expensive and delicate. I like the E.J. Stewart screens, particularly the StudioTek 130 (which I own two of). Bottom line: HD won't necessarily give your audiences a brighter, sharper picture on a large screen. A lot depends on the images feeding the projector. If it's a top HD camera, you have a fighting chance at reasonable picture quality. If it's just a cheap SD camera, the projector will have to up-rez it, and the quality can suffer. (Note also there are lipsync issues with some projectors, usually a frame or two late, meaning the projected image on-stage is a little "late" compared to the live performers.) You can see, this is not a simple subject.

The sad reality is that both formats are not doing well. The studios are panicking at the realization that consumers are not flocking to purchase HD players (including Blu-Ray) in big numbers. I think ultimately, what will happen is that the various firms will realize that there's too many dollars at stake to fight about compatibility, and there will be enormous price drops on combo Blu-Ray/HD-DVD players. I suspect an under-$600 combo unit will be out by the end of the year. Note also that there's been a few minor industry scandals about picture quality problems with early discs and players. (HD is a major part of my day job, so I know more than I can say about it.) Let's just say that newer discs will look and sound better than the old ones. Once again, early adopters who jump into formats like this can get stung. I've bought into (almost literally) every video format going back to Betamax in 1976 and laserdisc in 1980, and I'm discouraged that things are so screwed-up in HD-land. You'd think that the manufacturers and studios would learn from the sad lessons of history, but it's not happening quickly. BTW, my partner and I own four HD sets (including three projectors), and so far, we've resisted investing in any recording gear except for HD Tivos. We're going to be a lot more cautious about this stuff than we've been in the last 20+ years.