Media Applications –

The use of digital media along and the Internet are key components in the every changing technology landscape.  Managed Photo’s goal is to empower churches to utilize the media technology to facilitate the connecting of friends, family and groups. Many teenagers and young adults use digital media in one or several forms on a regular basis. The social networking is further aided by websites and bulletin boards designed specifically for this purpose.  So it makes sense for any church to use a similar mechanism and encourage the younger generation to help the church develop and use the technology. 

Before media content can be displayed it first has to be captured. Managed Photos is developing the mechanism needed for churches to capture and catalog events, groups, family members and any other special interest groups.  Once the photos have been stored in a user friendly server, managed by the church, the contents can easily be pulled up, selected and imported to any type of presentation needed.  Specifically digital signage is a great way to share information.  Like wise, content can also be updated on web pages on a regular basis. The key to keeping the church engaged in using the media requires keeping the content fresh.  Otherwise people will lose interest and ignore the information.  

Using digital signage is one of the best ways to passively and economically, share digital information.  In deploying digital media there are two major aspects.

• Electrical components -The first consideration is the electrical components such as monitors, media converters and multimedia boxes. Systems can be set up many different ways. The distance between key components as well as the accessibility of the equipment directly affects how the system is designed. 

• Media loading - The second aspect regarding digital media is how the content is configured and uploaded on to the media converter.   Some systems use MS Power Point presentations. Other systems provide simply templates that can store JPEG and MPEG2 video clip type information which is then played out in a linear fashion when required.   The third type of system employs software to configure the media. The software platforms generally provide a lot of options and feature sets not available on the more basic systems.  However, the software has to be loaded onto a customer owned computer and many times requires the computer to be available while the media converter box is delivering content.  

A list of suppliers providing media solutions and their web pages are listed below:

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