ScreenScribe

Don’t expect to see any of Prime’s best and brightest for 2012 in HD. Sky chief executive John Fellet again has ruled out the prospect of the satcaster’s free-to-air channel switching to HD in the foreseeable future. He says Prime’s ratings, which hover in the 4%-5% range, would need to average 7%-8% to justify the [...]

Bones at last gets Blu-ray exposure here with this week’s release of season six on the format. Seasons four and five are on Blu-ray in the US but only have DVD distribution in NZ. “If you watched these in HD on television, you can look forward a nice bump up over what already looked quite [...]

The first two episodes of HBO’s Game of Thrones are the star attraction of SoHo’s opening night. Sky’s new premium HD drama channel will launch 3pm on October 31, and will be free for all subscribers to sample from then until November 30 (thereafter, it will cost $10 a month). The channel fittingly will open [...]

On the eve of Sky TV unveiling its plans for two new HD channels, viewer interest in the possibility of one being an HBO-style channel is growing. It’s obvious that viewer frustration with free-to-air networks shunning, dumping or delaying premium drama is biting deep. This is reflected in comments left not only on this site [...]

New Zealand at last looks set to get its HD equivalent of BSkyB’s Sky Atlantic and Foxtel’s Showcase – which is great news for those bewildered by the likes of HBO’s Game of Thrones and Treme not having been picked up here for free-to-air broadcast. Just this week Will Harvie, the editor of The Press’s TV [...]

Kiwis can get a taste of True Blood: The Complete Third Season two weeks earlier than American fans of the flamboyant vampire saga – and for a recommended retail price that’s much lower. The five-disc set goes on sale today for $72 whereas the US RRP is $US80. Only one advance review so far has [...]

Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, James Rasone, Lee Tregesen, Jon Huertas. Directors: Susanna White, Simon Cellan Jones. Screenplay: Ed Burns, David Simon, Evan Wright. Cinematography: Ivan Strasburg. This shockingly raw, seven-part drama was co-written by The Wire’s David Simon, stars True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgard, and is the alpha male, anti-hero flipside of its HBO stablemates, Band of Brothers [...]

The 2009 relaunch of Star Trek has gone where none in the sci-fi franchise has gone before on Blu-ray: to win three major prizes in Home Media Magazine’s Third Annual High-Def Awards. It won Best Theatrical Blu-ray, Best Single Extra for its “Starfleet Vessel Simulator,” and the Consumers’ Choice Award for best overall Blu-ray Disc [...]

Last night’s HD premiere of The Vampires Diaries staked out the slot for TV2 but didn’t have the ratings bite of last week’s Go Girls season finale. However, it easily won the 8.30pm hour against TV One’s The Forgotten and the first half of TV3′s movie, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. The pilot was watched [...]

TV2′s newest HD drama, The Vampire Diaries (8.30 tonight), has more merit than its “Gossip Girl meets Twilight“ description suggests. It’s no True Blood, which resumes on June 30 (Prime, 9.30pm), but the premiere is freaky, creepy, sleekly-made escapism that doesn’t suck as much as you’d think. The Los Angeles Times likened it to a [...]