Chuck Season 2 Blu-ray

Finally the Blu-ray of the second season of Chuck has a 5th of January release date.
The UK market probably wasn't considered big enough to justify it's own release when the R2 DVD appeared and the US release as normal is timed to help promote the returning broadcast of the next season.
The irony is that it looks like the show could be returning so than expected as NBC's 09/10 shows are not really doing the numbers.

Amazon US

Blu-ray offers from Amazon UK

Finally a half decent promotion from Amazon UK which quite frankly is most welcome because price wise and certainly the selection of cheaper titles has been pathetic and that's in the middle of a recession.

Amazon 2 for £17

Holi holi day

A week off work, well a week and a day and even longer when you add two weekends.
Nothing planned as I'm really just using up my quota of paid days off which you lose if you don't take them by the end of the year so it's Boxset marathon time:)
I have The Professionals and Quantum Leap and already onto the second disk of House season 5 bought for £17.99 from BangCD, very good price.

V

The new version of "V" arrives Nov 3rd, high hopes but ready to be disappointed.

Michael Shanks

The news is that Michael Shanks best known for playing Daniel Jackson in the Stargate franchise is coming to Smallville playing the Justice League member "Hawkman".
Michael did buff up during his SG years so he'll probably be able to pull off the costume:)

Stargate Movie Blu-ray

Movietyme have the 15th Anniversary edition of Stargate at a reasonable £13.99 (£1 voucher and free p&p) and it's region free so I've been tempted back in the US Blu-ray market which I've ran away from with the poor exchange rates.
It's the first HD disc I have double dipped and hopefully there will not be many more:)








The second TV/DVD movie from the Battlestar Galactica franchise (The Plan) is also being offered but at a more ridiculous £20.99 which rules me out.

SG:U

I don't need the eye candy but I ain't going to complain about it either:)

New US Shows on UK HD TV

PAY Telly

House SKY1/HD 4th at 9pm
Fringe SKY1/HD 4th at 10pm
In Treatment SKYArts/HD 5th at 10pm
Stargate:Universe SKY1/HD 6th at 8pm
Bones SKY1/HD 8th at 9pm
Lie To Me SKY1/HD 8th at 10pm
NCIS FXUK/HD 9th at 9pm
Dollhouse SciFi/HD 20th at 10pm
NCIS:LA SKY1/HD 21st at 9pm


Free Telly

True Blood CH4/HD 7th at 10pm
Generation Kill CH4/HD 7th at 11.20pm

Unseen Academicals

Unseen Academicals is the latest Discworld novel from Terry Pratchett and joy my copy has arrived:)
We are back in Ankh-Morpork were sport mainly football has been introduced and the Unseen University has a team including the Librarian in goal.

The hardback is currently listed at a very reasonable £9.49 from Amazon UK.

New toys for the PC

I've decided to get serious about protecting my data stored on the hard drives and while the really important stuff is backup manually onto a memory stick I really don't want to lose another 700gig of stuff again. To combat this I've just bought a WD My Book World Edition II which offers 4Tb in Raid1 format which is more than enough to store my HD movies and certain other material plus being DNLA compliant the PS3 recognises the unit without requiring the PC to be running and it was a lot cheaper than the price on the WD website:)

I'm currently moving data onto the NAS drive both from my older Dlink NAS and the from the internal hard drive and once that's done (not a speedy process) I switch the Dlink to Raid and I should be good to go.

The latest episode of Gatecast has just been posted so have a listen and feedback of any sort is welcome.

Dr Horrible hijacks the Emmys

Silver Lining

Well they do say every cloud has a silver lining and in this case after a 750gig hard drive crashed quite definitively losing quite a bit of stuff I am swearing about hours after I have found the hard drive that contained the HD caps of The Lord of the Rings. I had assumed I'd wiped that drive last time I had a boot drive emergency but when you are not looking you find things so not all bad but the shear cost and impracticality of backing up non-critical content always means there is risk of losing stuff.

I've decided to add another NAS device with RAID which can be shared between the PC and PS3 and take some of the load off my existing setup, still not ideal but nothing is perfect.

Starktoons

I listen to The SModcast by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier and they were talking about this guy who did some shockwave type animation of a discussion they had, it was absolutely hilarious and so true.
Take a trip to Starktoons for the SMod animation and explore further as there are some very funny pieces of work on the site.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

It's been announced by Disney that a fourth movie in the franchise is to be made with an expected release sometime in 2011. I do hope the rumour earlier this year of Russell Brand doesn't come about:)

Robert Carlyle Interview

Sorry for the lame early morning hosts...

SG:U Clip

Harry Potter: Books v Movies

I cam late to the party but I've just finished the 7 Harry Potter novels so
a few thoughts in terms of the comparison to the movies so far.


Philosopher's Stone
Pretty much an excellent example of a film from a book, a few minor
differences but on the whole it had the feel and compactness you
would expect.
Chamber of Secrets
Again a movie that kept pretty tight to the novel it was based on.
Prisoner of Azkaban
The first of the larger novels which required significant editing
to produce a viable screenplay but that said it still helf true but
I enjoyed the book more.
Goblet of Fire
My favourite of the movies made so far bascially because it's
the first time we see the trio as young people not as kids and we
get limited Quidditch action. That said I did enjoy the more
complex novel and the background goings on in the school.
Order of the Phoenix
Not keen on the movie and I'm afraid that coloured my reading of
the book. I skipped pages and actually the Quidditch storylines
were pretty entertaining as they played more of a part in the
draconian clampdown on school activites.
I also preferred the expansion on the House Elfs role in the world.
Half-Blood Prince
I didn't come away from the movie with a positive experience.
The book is much better and underlines the sometimes hard decisions
a writer and director have to make to try to keep the spirit of the story
while making it work on a screen.
Deathly Hallows
A excellent finale to the series and I'm pretty sure the decision to split
the book in to two movies will prove a good idea and not just for Boxoffice.

Avatar Trailer

Digital Spy have the teaser trailer for the long awaited Avatar.
It looks impressive but hardly realistic but got to give it some leeway a streaming video is not really the standard in picture quality the movie should be judged by.
What we see in the teaser tells a pretty basic story and I do wonder for all the expectation if this will be all bells and whistles but very simplistic.

Official Website

Star Trek Confusion

Thanks to Scott over on ScifiDig forums....

Star Trek: Confusion




Anyone reading this blog that has been listening to The Gatecast and wondering where we are well at least 3 (maybe 4) shows are in the can. It's not always easy trying to organise a schedule when one guy is across the pond, the other is playing dressup and I spent three nights editing shows..
:)

Harry Potter

I just bought the boxset of the Harry Potter novels prompted by the recent Potterthon on Galactic Watercooler and their endorsement of the novels even for people only familiar with the movies. I bought them in paperback and blimey a couple of them are freaking huge!