ScreenScribe

The final season of TV3′s HD hit, Outrageous Fortune, which continues 8.30 tonight with its 99th episode, will not be released on Blu-ray. The DVD of season six has been confirmed for November/December but unlike Australian producers, Kiwis are holding back from releasing their product in HD. Outrageous Fortune’s release will coincide with the second [...]

The HD season premiere of Fringe narrowly out-rated Nurse Jackie last night — but not with TV2′s target audience. The sci-fi series drew 8.6% of TV2′s key demo, 18-39 year-olds, compared with Nurse Jackie’s 8.7%. But Fringe won in the other network demos, 25-54 (7.9% vs 7.7%), 18-49 (8.1% vs 7.7%) and household shoppers with [...]

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 [...]

TV2 is resorting to movies to rebuild its Wednesday night viewership in the face of HD heavyweight Underbelly’s popularity on TV3. It’s not know how long the network will run movies like Rush Hour (8.30 tonight), Rush Hour 3 (next week) and Troy (July 7). But chances are it will only be until Underbelly: The [...]

TV2 will be relieved FlashForward at last has done its dash, after its time slot opposition, Underbelly: The Golden Mile, helped TV3 to win the night on Wednesday. As it did with Lost, TV2 is to be commended for sticking with the sci-fi flop to keep the faith with its cult following — unlike TV [...]

The first — and best — of the Underbelly series will be released on Blu-ray in August. The award-winning dramatisation of Melbourne’s ’90s gangland wars was one of the first shows TV3 aired in HD (but, ironically, was repeated in SD). The latest series, The Golden Mile (TV3, 8.30pm Wednesdays), bridges the first and second, [...]

MediaWorks has improved its video on demand service for TV3 and C4 shows but says it’s still too costly to stream them in HD. “We offer 770 kilobytes as our top-quality stream, though we can go higher at any time,” MediaWorks’ director of interactive Siobhan McKenna told ScreenScribe.tv. But she says HD would be too [...]

TV3 will launch series three of the Aussie gangland hit, Underbelly, with a two-hour special on May 5. The original Underbelly was one of the first 1080i dramas TV3 screened after it became the first NZ channel to go HD two years ago. It flopped spectacularly, partly because of misjudged programming, and was shunted off [...]