SF Signal: Tube Bits for 02/21/2008

Tube Bits for 02/21/2008

Now that the HD DVD/Blu-Ray format war is over (you knew that Blu-Ray won, right?), one of the first post-war casualties is the second season of the re-mastered, original Star Trek series. Toshiba was paying for the re-mastering in a deal with Paramount, but now they no longer support HD DVD and have pulled the plug. Ouch! On the plus side, the first season is $98 at Amazon, and you can get a Toshiba HD DVD player for only $100 now, plus 7 free movies! And all in a now defunct format! Win-win!

NBC is giving classic TV shows a new lease on life. If you go to NBC's Way Back Wednesdays, you can find full episodes of The A-Team, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Battlestar Galactica (the cheesy version), Buck Rogers (horribly, horribly cheesy), and Night Gallery. Additionally, Sci Fi will be hosting Tek War (way beyond cheese), and all of these will show up on Hulu, if they aren't already there.

Gilbert Bouchard of Canwest News Service has a nice piece on companion books to TV series. You know the ones, guides to popular shows that help you fill in the blanks. The rise of these books, as stated, can be traced back to Babylon 5, with its seasons long plots unfolding over a long period of time. With the increase in serialized shows, these types of books and magazines are making a nice niche for themselves.

Sy Fy Portal looks at the upcoming genre TV shows. Of interest: Dollhouse (from Joss Whedon) and Sanctuary (the online show coming to Sci Fi). Otherwise, not much exciting. Certainly nothing like I'd really like to see: space opera with lots of ships and 'splosions! or some sort of near future Earth/Ghost in the Shell setup. Maybe they should hire me as the idea guy.

And now for John's favorite bit: ratings! It seems that Knight Rider, despite it's cheesiness, scored the best demographics for a TV movie in three years (12.7 millions viewers overall). Are we that nostalgic for even a small whiff of the Hoff? I thought it was ok, not great, and mildly entertaining.