Entries Tagged 'Announcements' ↓

Bought a Blu-ray yet? No? You’re not alone, according to a study by ABI Research. As the company says, more than “half of the 1000 respondents, citing ‘other priorities,’ say they have no plans to purchase one; a further 23% are likely to buy, but not until sometime in 2009.”

“Most are very satisfied with the performance of their current DVD players,” the firm’s main analyst Steve Wilson said in a press release. The cost and the requirement for an HDTV to go with it were also cited as reasons why people haven’t bought yet.

Makes you wonder: If we’d had economic downturns at the wrong times in our gadget evolution, would we still be watching VHS movies and listening to eight-track and vinyl?

You can read more about it here.

… if you’re not on the cable.

THIS TV is MGM’s new digital channel, designed to be broadcast as part of free digital packages put together by local stations. Partner Weigel Broadcasting is bringing it out first in Chicago, Milwaukee, and South Bend. THIS will feature MGM movies and TV shows, although MGM’s press release doesn’t go into specifics.

I’m not sold on digital TV, but if we’re going to have it, it’s time to start coming up with some of that improved content that the broadcasters promised. This sounds like a decent start.

To read more, check out MGM’s release.

To look at Britain’s Freeview, which has been a bit more ambitious in a digital conversion, check here.

I don’t think I’ll believe it till I see it, but AMC has plans for a new six-hour version of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, a 1984-influenced psychedelic rumination on the individual vs. the state disguised as a spy drama. Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) is taking over McGoohan’s role as imprisoned spy Number Six, with Ian McKellen (The Da Vinci Code) as village boss Number Two, played most notably by Leo McKern. It’s a co-production with Britain’s ITV and Granada International, and it’s due in 2009. No mention of its potential psychedelic properties on the AMC site, but it says the new version will tackle “21st Century concerns and anxieties, such as liberty, security, and surveillance, yet also showcase the same key elements of paranoia, tense action and socio-political comemmentary seen in McGoohan’s enigmatic original.” Makes sense to me.

Find out more at AMC.

I was visiting someone who has one of those new digital-ready TVs and an antenna the other day. I couldn’t help checking out the DT channels, and I made a discovery: There’s no fuzz, but the picture keeps blacking out; it’s just for a few seconds, but it keeps going. I went back to the old analog version of the channel, and I saw no interference with its signal at all. Since I can watch fuzz, but can’t watch nothing, I wasn’t impressed.

It’s a sign of fame when you become a Jeopardy! question. It’s a sign of declining fame when none of the contestants recognize you from the answer. I was watching the Jeopardy! college championship tonight when Alex Trebek asked who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. One of the students on the show piped up with “Arthur C. Clarke,” and no one came up with the correct answer. If they’d have asked that one way back in the ’80s when I went to college, someone would have answered “Douglas Adams.”

Just think, in 25 years, Harry Potter may not even be a memory.

I almost didn’t notice it before it was gone, but Animal Planet’s running those lost episodes of the American version of Creature Comforts. If you’ve forgotten it, as many have, it’s an Aardman Animation (Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit) series that puts the opinions of real people into the mouths of animated animals. Two episodes run tonight (Thursday, May 8, at 7 p.m. EST). I checked the schedule and don’t see it listed after that.

Sure, the news hit two weeks ago, but I’ve never been the first one on my e-block to know anything: Lost fans can look forward to an extra hour of season finale this year! Instead of the 13 episodes of a strike-shortened fourth season, E! reports (and the most recent official audio podcast confirms) that we can look forward to a 14th hour, adding up to what will now be a three-hour finale beginning with part one on May 15 and finishing up on May 29 with parts two and three. Despite the two week gap (to make room for Grey’s Anatomy’s own two-hour finale), getting more Lost is a very good thing. And heck, it gives us obsessives a little more time to speculate about why this year’s jaw-dropping reveal is code-named “Frozen Donkey Wheel” (which, frankly, sounds delicious).

Wow. Just…wow.

I’m not sure what was more disturbing: Tyrol’s utter, complete meltdown, Baltar’s messianic tendencies, Chip Six’s ability to physically pick Baltar up, or Tigh’s beatdown/makeout session with Six.

One of my old professors likened certain tragic plots as being akin to watching multiple trains on a collision course. We’re starting to see the trains picking up speed and we can tell that it’s gonna be a high body count collision. Continue reading →

NBC’s shaking up its Thursday comedy lineup for the rest of the season. 30 Rock and Scrubs are swapping time slots, with Tina Fey and Co. moving to 9:30 p.m. and the Sacred Heart-ers filling the gap at 8:30.

There are two main reasons for the move: 1) A recent 30 Rock episode featuring the reality show parody MILF Island drew criticism from, I assume, people who haven’t seen prime time comedy since Full House went off the air; and 2) Since Scrubs is in its final season anyway, giving up-and-comer Rock the cherry post-Office slot makes good sense (even though it’s just keeping the 9:30 spot warm for next year’s Office spin-off, which, after last week’s ep, I’m thinking will probably be Life With the Halperts).

Problem is, Scrubs is barely tolerable this season. Before you twitter angrily about me in all caps, you should know I used to love Scrubs. It was a great show. But after sitting there stone-faced, week after pre-strike week, I couldn’t do it anymore. Since then, my Thursdays have been a neat 90 minutes of comedy, ending with a channel change at 9:30. But now, things won’t be so easy. I can try to avoid Scrubs, but it’s gonna be hard. I just know I’ll check in a few weeks to see if The Office has started yet, and there she’ll be:

“Oh,” I’ll say. “Hi… I didn’t know you’d be… well maybe I should…”

“No,” Scrubs will say, “Maybe I should…”

“Well, it’s good to see you again.”

“You, too.”

“You look… funny.”

“Thanks.”

“Um, well, maybe I can watch you sometime, if… if you’re in… you know… syndication or something.”

“Don’t bother.”

And that would be it… Thanks NBC. Thanks a lot.

I repeat:

Holy.

Frak.

A show that has generally been a tad on the dark side suddenly gets a lot darker. To emphasize that fact, the episode opens with one of the more adorable scenes in the series, with Adama reading a potboiler to Laura as she’s receiving her chemo.

A lot’s going on in this episode, so let’s get to it: Continue reading →