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I knew DirecTV's HD switchover from MPEG2 to MPEG4 was coming, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon.  When I checked the listings this morning for the Sunday Ticket games I realized that none of them were listed in HD and I immediately knew what was going down.

I guess I need to call up Direct and have them swap out my old MPEG2 receiver for one of their new swanky receivers.  So I guess for the short term, I'll be forced to watch the Bucs in blurry SD.  Given how they're playing in the first quarter of today's game, I'm not missing much...

Last night I watched Exit Wounds, the final episode of Torchwood season 2.  In my mind, you can pretty much summarize the whole season as "meh."  Which may be a little unfair, because there were several pretty good episodes sprinkled throughout.  But the series really dragged itself down starting around episode 7 with some pretty lousy shows, and really wasted Freema Agyemen's repriesal of her role as Martha Jones.

I think what bothered me most was the closing of Freema's first episode, Reset, where Owen is shot and killed, and the start of the next episode, Jack hustles out and deus-ex-machinas a resurrection glove that brings him back as essentially undead (minus the zombie-ism).  I felt a little bit betrayed, since they had been actively working on making him not as much of a jerk over the course of the season, and then seemed to completely change what they were doing with the character.  It seemed to me like they were envolving him (and his relationship with Tosh), and then, not liking where it was going, applied a cheap reboot to the character.

Also, as occurred last season, the series plods along slowly until the final two episodes of the season, when suddenly everything hits the fan, and they try to cram these momentous plots and character interactions into 90 minutes.  I really wish that if they wanted to end each season with epic shows, they do a little bit better job of pacing the overall season to build up to these events, and not just suddenly flip the switch and have "everything change."

One final note, the casting decision that they made in the final episode sucked, since I think they took a few of the characters that they had really worked to develop as interesting, and chucked them into the trash.  Now we're pretty much left with a couple characters that I really don't have too much invested in.  And good Lord, I wish they'd try to make Jack a little less serious.  He's a completely different character when on Doctor Who, and I like the free-flowing, smiling Jack so much better than brooding, angry, crying, Torchwood Jack.

So, will I watch the next season?  Yeah.  It's British sci-fi, which I dig.  Will I hold my breath and countdown the days to the season premiere like I do with the Doctor?  Not so much.

I really loved the Showtime series Dead Like Me, which I actually caught via repeats on Universal HD.  To me, it had great writing and interesting characters, and I was a little bit disappointed to see it get cancelled after just 2 seasons.

As I was browsing Joystiq this morning, it seems that DLM is getting resurrected via a direct to DVD movie.  Should be interesting to see how it turns out.  There's a trailer for it--which is thoroughly underwhelming--but you can see it here.

The only night I finally caught up on all the episodes of Bionic Woman that I had recorded and not watched.  As I was watching the last episode, Trust Issues, I realized just how boring, uncreative, and uninspired this series turned out.  Truth be told, the only reason that I'm really watching is because of Michelle Ryan, who I originally saw in the interesting BBC series Jekyll.  And unfortunately, even she can't keep this series interesting.  So far, the major themes of the show include:

• Jamie Summers leads a double life, supposedly selling timeshares, but in reality working for a non-government covert operation
• She is raising her younger sister, and has to keep her sister in the dark about her real life
• There's a tech guy there who stays back at the offices and monitors Jamie through one of her eye implants
• There's an older man in charge who is all business and with whom their is lots of friction with Jamie
• Jamie can run really fast, and can kick butt

As I looked back on this list, I thought to myself, "this seems suspiciously familiar...oh yeah, it's Alias!"  Except without the clever writing, style and plotlines (well, pre-Superbowl episode Alias).  For fun, I went back and watched the 3rd episode of Alias, and was amazed and how great it was.  The music was intimately tied into the pacing of the show, the look of Jennifer Garner just "popped", the way certain scenes were shot--with whole emotions being conveyed just through looks; the whole experience was superb.  The people behind Bionic Woman should go watch Alias and take notes if they want their series to survive past Season 1.

How much do people love Veronica Mars?  Enough to have 1600+ comments on the E! Online article discussing its possible cancellation.  Although this year has lost the vibe of the first 2 seasons (I blame the beast know as CW), I still wouldn't be able to stand the fact if it got canceled...

If you have any heart, help save Veronica.

Placed my order yesterday for my pcHDTV 5500 tuner card, and this afternoon I went ahead and put in an order at NewEgg for the machine which will serve as the front-end player for my MythTV setup.  I looks like I'll be dropping the tuner card into my server in the basement and using that as the Myth backend.  Hopefully it won't be too difficult, mysql is already installed on the box, but I will need to splice the line running to antenna run heading to the family and create another run into the wiring cabinet.  I also will be dropping in a 400GB SATA drive into the server to house all of the recordings and assorted other videos which I already have ripped.

The frontend box I will be assembling based on a MicroATX form factor.  I was a little cheesed with the fact that the mini-itx mobo that I wanted to use--the EX10000EG--lacked any decent linux driver support for what I wanted to do, so I was forced to roll my own system (which I have a suspicion will be a little more noisy than I'd like).  However, the case I picked up is pretty nifty looking, and will hopefully blend into my home entertainment center nicely.

This just in, the Doctor's only a month away!  I have a few guilty geek pleasures, and the Doctor is one of them...

From Ars Technica. FOX and Fx are following ABC's path, and jumping into the downloadable television programs on a pay-per-download basis. The going rate seems to $.99 a show, but Fox is also offering pre-broadcast downloads too--that is, you'll be able to (for $2.99) download and watch a program before it actually airs.

It seems like it's been forever, but last night (or yesterday afternoon, depending on where in the world you were) was the latest Doctor Who episode.