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Nick Jr. debuts "mini pilots" on mobiles
Jumping on the mobile TV bandwagon, kid's channel Nick Jr. has debuted three new "mini pilots" on wireless carriers, ahead of launching them on Nick Jr.'s broadband video service and the channel itself. The three pilots include Pass the Pinha, Jinny Starfly and All Aboard, all developed by Nick Jr.'s Institute of Applied Play, and run between one to three minutes each. Unfortunately, Nick Jr. wasn't kind enough to say which carriers would actually be carrying the pilots.[Via MocoNews]
HDTV Listings for May 16, 2006
What we're watching: As NBA Playoff action continues, the Heat look to make it a short series vs. the Nets tonight, while the Suns and Clippers both look to take an edge in what has become a best-of-three series. The parade of finales continues with Boston Legal, NCIS, The Unit and Law & Order SVU taking a bow.Our traditional high-def listings continue below.
HDTV Listings for May 15, 2006 - Presidential Address update
What we're watching: Finales, finales, finales. Three hours of Grey's Anatomy tonight, two of them new. After last night's episode if you're a fan of the series this is a must-see. Prison Break completes its second season (it only feels like it's been on forever) with the long awaited escape, while How I Met Your Mother, One on One, All of Us and Half & Half wrap things up for the year as well. We were all "witnesses" to the Cavaliers surprising Game 3 victory over the pistons, but with a guaranSheed Pistons win tonight, there's not much sense in tuning in until Spurs-Mavericks at 10:30 p.m.After all that, I highly recommend Discovery Channel's documentary Shipbreakers if you haven't seen it already, and there's also some show called 24...Update: The re-air of last night's Grey's is apparently going to air after President Bush speaks, so you may want to put an extra hafl hour or hour on the DVR in case the finale does not start on time. Prison Break and 24 are both listed as being bumped 20 minutes, no word on the other networks. Also don't forget that Presidential Address' can often be a good opportunity to see the difference between the HD broadcast of each major network.[Thanks for the heads up James!] Our traditional high-def listings continue below.
HDTV Listings for May 12, 2006
What we're watching: No season finales here folks, the NBA Playoffs second round is not yet on elimination game status, while Close to Home, Las Vegas and Numbers continue their seasons as normal tonight. Numbers brings back bird flu as a topic, if Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America didn't already scare that nasty air-breathing habit out of you.Our traditional high-def listings continue below.
HDTV Listings for May 11, 2006 - DVR ALERT
What we're watching: Just making sure everyone is aware, two of our high definition mainstays, My Name is Earl and The Office are doing things a bit differently tonight for their season finales. Instead of slotting a rerun in the place of the now-departed Four Kings, Will & Grace, Earl and Office will all be 40 minutes long, shifting the start time earlier by ten minutes for the latter two. Please adjust your DVRs -- and your lives -- accordingly.Also ending their season tonight are Smallville, Everybody Hates Chris, Love Inc., Eve and Cuts.Our traditional high-def listings continue below.
HDTV Listings for May 9, 2006
What we're watching: Close only counts in hoseshoes, so despite a narrow loss or a blowout, the Mavericks and Cavaliers are both down 1-0 in their second-round matchups, they'll try to get back on track tonight on TNT-HD. If you feel like being scared silly in a ripped-from-the-headlines drama, Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America should be good to keep you inside for weeks.Also new tonight are back-to-back episodes of The Unit, and season finales for Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars.Our traditional high-def listings continue below.
Preview of new Guitar Hero II co-op mode
In case you missed it on Friday, IGN posted a pre-E3 hands-on preview of Guitar Hero II's new co-op mode. It's a departure from the first game's multiplayer mode in that the two players have to depend on each other a lot more to pass each song and thereby make beautiful music together.While the old multiplayer option will still be around in the sequel, the new mode mixes distinct lead guitar and bass or rhythm parts where each player affects the other in various ways, whether by failing if either performance slips (as in DDR), sharing the same Rock Meter (with mistakes from either player resetting the score multiplier), and needing to both go vertical at the same time to activate the shared Star Power. Thankfully, different difficulty levels can be assigned to each player.The Joystiq team out in L.A. will probably find something to do until they get their sweaty paws on a guitar controller or two on the E3 show floor (maybe one of those wacky press conferences will help pass the time), but we're sure the wait to try the latest build of this rockin' series will be worth it. The seven songs available at E3 are listed below.[Thanks, murph]
Hawaii is not an HDTV paradise
As our commenter BDevorzon noted, a combination of mountain-blocked OTA broadcasts, cable/local affiliate squabbles and limited satellite access combines to make the production home of one of the best HD programs, Lost, very unfriendly for high-definition TV owners. DISH network doesn't provide service to Hawaii at all, and DirecTV has not added locals for the area yet. Only the ABC affiliate in the area has an agreement with Time Warner Cable to show their high definition signal although negotiations with the others are ongoing. Although they do broadcast OTA, the layout of the islands makes that a tricky or impossible proposition for many. We're trying to muster up the same sympathy for our Hawaiian brethren that we showed for North Carolina residents before the Super Bowl but man they live in Hawaii. If Michigan was located a bit closer to the equator I'd shut the TV off and go outside once in a while. As it is, we at HD Beat probably won't get any closer to the island than a game of Test Drive Unlimited, but we do feel your pain.
HDTV Listings for April 5, 2006
What we're watching: Lost continues to grow increasingly convoluted, and yet we can't stop watching. It would have been great to read that map last week in high definition, if it had been written in English of course. Even though March Madness is over, things are just heating up in the NBA, with the playoffs right around the corner and everyone fighting for seedings. Four teams that are going to be a part of the postseason action in the Western Conference are in action tonight in a doubleheader on ESPN-HD.Our traditional high-def listings continue below.
World's first liquid cooled 360 to go on show
According to CoolIT Systems' press release, the "world's first truly liquid-cooled Xbox 360" will be on show at CES next week, featuring CoolIT's MTEC liquid cooling technology. While this technology is sophisticated and undoubtedly works well to cool the 360, it doesn't seem particularly useful as it doesn't address the problems many consumers have had with their power bricks overheating. It's more likely that CoolIT are taking advantage of a high-profile overheating device to showcase the company's technology. Still, with that said, there's something undeniably cool about a liquid-chilled 360.
Fix non-iTMS video labels
Another gem from MacOSXHints covers a method, albeit not exactly pretty, for labeling TV video files you bring into iTunes as TV shows. This helps with organizing videos and I believe using the new Search Bar in iTunes 6 (Edit > Show Search Bar).The MacOSXHints post offers a command line tool by the name of AtomicParsley for doing the editing and applying the correct label, while a commenter on the post created a GUI wrapper for it. Make sure you follow the instructions when using a tool like this, because it's playing around with some real low-level stuff in your video files.While these are some handy tools, I'm much more of a fan of simply editing all the files in iTunes using Get Info and applying a Grouping label. A Smart Playlist can then organize everything for me - no fuss, no muss.
