February 17th has come and gone, thankfully without many problems for the third of public stations that chose to drop their analog signals as planned. The sunset of PBS standard definition National Program Service (NPS) feeds was also completed on schedule this month. Aspect ratio issues are now in sharp focus for public stations and the industry as a whole.  We had planned that industry AFD readiness would align with the changes in NPS services, but as you may know, we are ahead of the equipment vendors on this one. Many stations and producers have shared their concerns, recommendations and issues with center-cut, letterbox and how to deal with mixed aspect ratio content.  Unfortunately there is not a common agreement on how to deal with these issues.  Our commercial counterparts have mandated center-cut safe production, while PTV producers have for the most part decided to use the full capability of 16:9 widescreen displays.  Some stations have directed their cable and DBS partners to center-cut, while others want letterbox.  Some cable and DBS distributors have decided on their own how to deal with down-conversion.  Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a single solution that can realistically be implemented to resolve these issues.  We can only hope that we don’t alienate viewers while this situation stabilizes.