I'm STILL working on my video project (oh, it's good) and I'm tivoing the latest edition of Danbury Live on public access.

For those who don't know, Danbury Live is a show in which volunteers go down to City Hall, record various local government meetings, and broadcast them on Comcast. In other words, they're doing what many in Danbury wants the city to do.

Now one of the laughable excuses we hear from the Republicans who are against broadcasting public meetings is that the quality is poor. Now I'm not going to even get into how politically dishonest that excuse is but this is what I'm going to do for you. I was at this particular meeting and I happened to videotape it with my digital camcorder while the volunteers used a older video camera (probably a VHS) which is of less quality. Now, later when I'm done recording the show, I'm going to post a copy of their show and a copy of my video footage. Trust me, after you watch the two videoclips, you'll clearly see that broadcasting these meetings would be easy and cost next to nothing.

Again, for the record, here's a breakdown of my setup:

Canon ZR550 digital camera (250.00)
Tripod which extends to 8 feet (80.00)
Digital videotape (3 for 15.00)
2002 Macintosh PowerBook G4 with iMovie (valued now at 1,200)

The cost for all my stuff is under 5,000 and I'll put up my video against anything broadcasted on television right now.

Now, unlike my other videoclips which I post on Tivo, I'm going to offer a link where you can download the videoclips as I'm going to allow people to download a high quality file which you can watch on TV (I'll give you directions on burning the video to DVD later).

Now, take into consideration the following.

1. The Common Council chambers audio comes from the speakers in the room. The place is wired up for audio and you can hook up to the system quite easily.

2. The lighting in the room isn't the greatest but with a better videocamera would have no problem under those conditions (a 400 dollar camera would do).

...developing.