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10 New Pilots Headed For A Crash Landing

It’s not very politically correct, but I’ve always been fascinated by dead pools. I’ve never actually participated in one, but there is something about wagering on life and death that appeals to the degenerate gambler in me.Since I’m pretty sure that participating in a dead pool is illegal in San Francisco, I suppose that I will have to live with the next best thing, dead TV pools. Marketing Shift is putting on a contest where they are asking readers to try and pick ten of the new shows, that you think will be off the air by the end of the fall season.

The winner of the contest will be the first person to have all ten of their picks canceled. The winner will receive a little bit of link love from MarketingShift.com, but the loser ends up with an internship at ~~Cat World~~ the CW

If you want to see a list of all the candidates for the pool, you’ll find it on Marketing Shift’s website, but here are my picks for their first annual TV dead pool contest:

NBC Direct Will Never Replace My TiVo

NBC has announced that they are introducing a program that will let you automatically download some of their shows to your PC. With the announcement came the latest round of TiVo doom and gloom articles, that assert that this technology will some how be able to replace a DVR. While I like that NBC is being innovative and are offering more choices to consumers, I am also skeptical about the long term prospects for this one.

I suspect that NBC is hoping to build a strong subscription base for the shows, so that they can then try and pitch companies on paying for ads by the download. There may be some advertisers that will be foolish enough to accept these arrangements, but over the long run, the advertisers will figure out why it’s doomed for failure.

Sling and DirecTV Stream the NFL with Supercast

There’s news out of Sling Media today, and since I don’t work for the company (unlike Dave), I feel perfectly justified in covering it. :) Sling is collaborating with DirecTV on a new offering called Supercast, which brings online streams of NFL games to the Web every Sunday. Subscribers to the DirecTV/NFL SuperFan package can … Read more

Slacker Cozies Up with EMI, Warner and Universal

Streaming music company Slacker has big news out today. The company has inked a deal with EMI, Universal and Warner Music Group to let customers access their music from soon-to-be launched Slacker Portable Players. This makes Slacker among the first companies to offer a mobile streaming music service that is not accessed on a cell … Read more

PS3’s Virtual ‘Home’ Delayed

Bad news for PS3 owners… Looking forward to setting up your new digital digs in the upcoming “Virtual Home” world coming to the Playstation Network? Well real-estate still isn’t for sale, and it won’t be for a while. In another embarrassing blow for Sony, the much touted “Virtual Home” has been delayed until Spring 2008 … Read more

CNBC HD… Isn’t?

CNBC is going HD. Sort of. The channel will broadcast in 16:9 and they’ll show HD graphics, banners, and tickers on the sides. But the 4:3 talking heads will preside in all their (upscaled) SD glory. While I can sort of understand saving money by delaying the HD studio gear investment, it’s still somewhat baffling … Read more

Free Fall Season Online Premieres Reviewed

It was a long and boring summer for television this year, but with the fall TV schedule just around the corner, I’m starting to get excited about some of the new shows that are popping up. At the start of the summer, I thought that I would have lots of exciting new shows to check out, but with the exception of Burn Notice (which is freaking awesome), this summer’s crop of new shows was a major let down for me. Too much reality TV and not enough compelling fresh content.

Normally, the start of the Fall TV schedule is a pretty busy time for me. If I don’t catch a show from the very beginning, there is a good chance that I’ll never tune in, so I try to catch as many of the pilots as possible. I won’t end up subscribing to all the shows, but I like to check all of the new ones out, so that I can figure out which ones deserve a season pass. This year, this task got a little bit easier because a couple of the studios have been making some of their pilots available early.

Last week, NBC released free pilot downloads on Amazon’s Unbox service, for 4 of their upcoming shows. Not to be outdone, CBS decided to release an episode of the Big Bang Theory early. Over the weekend I checked out all five of the early releases and had some mixed reviews on the new shows.

Dragon’s Lair HD DVD Review

Infinite free respawns never felt so good? Kevin Tofel, of jkOnTheRun, shares his Dragon’s Lair thoughts and pics.

Ah, 1983. A time when I was waiting for my growth spurt, had no gray hair and could often be found in an arcade or pounding away on my Commodore 64. I enjoyed all different game genres in the arcade: I didnât discriminate on which machine was worthy of a quarter. However, I was always drawn to Dragonâs Lair which was one of the first laserdisc-based games. Maybe it was the movie-like cartoon graphics that captured my attention. (Actually, it was more likely glimpses of the spunky liâl Princess Daphne, but I digress so letâs get to current day.)

Fast forward to 2007. Iâm still waiting for that growth spurt, I bleach the grays and have no time for arcades these days. And whatâs with these âtokensâ? everyone keeps trading real money for: is this Second Life in the real world? No, these days, I stay home and play games in high definition on an Xbox 360 and 60-inch Sony SXRD set. Itâs all exactly as I would have predicted back in 1983, of course. ;)

Thatâs why I was excited to get a copy of Dragonâs Lair in HD-DVD to review. With the remastered disc from Digital Leisure and my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, I figured Iâd be giddy with Daphne sightings, er, I mean, ready to once again quest away as Dirk the Daring.