NBC and iTunes Offering Free Conviction Pilot Episode?

[bankshot]

EDIT: Wait. I can't find any confirmation that Arrested Development has been cancelled. Does someone know something that I don't? Please share.

The assumption has been that it was canceled ever since Fox reduced this season's episode count (I think it went from 22 to 13?) and declined to officially renew it for next season. They haven't officially stated it was canceled, but it's as close as you can get (apparently a Fox exec claims AD's return is "highly unlikely"). Of course, AD has been on the verge of cancellation every season (despite winning the Emmys!! ), so maybe there's a little hope.

If you saw one of the episodes last month, there were a number of great references to the show's actual plight and possibilities of getting picked up by HBO or Showtime:

Michael: Hello. Hey, so what’s going on with the fund-raiser?

George, Sr.: Well, I don’t think the Home Builders Organization is going to be supporting us.

Michael: Yeah, the HBO’s not going to want us. What do we do now?

George, Sr.: Well, I think it’s show time. I think we have to have a show during dinner.

Heh. I really hope it does get picked up by another channel. 'Tis such a shame that such great comedy is lost on mainstream America, and a network like Fox can't even support it when it's winning all these awards. Pathetic when they don't consider 4 million viewers to be successful enough to keep it alive. Bleh.

 

[shidoshi]

Have you actually tried watching them on anything other than an iPod screen? I have only downloaded three videos - two BSG and one music video - but all three look good on my 20" iMac at full screen.

Are they great? No, but certainly watchable and to my wife, an average viewer non-perfectionist in terms of video quality, thinks they are close to what she sees when we watch DVD's on it.

I've watched some of these fullscreen on my 20" iMac, and I think they look terrible that way. Yeah, they're watchable, but they are nowhere near good, and absolutely no replacement for actual broadcast TV.

No offense to your wife, but iTunes downloads aren't anywhere close to DVD quality. iTunes downloads start off at half the resolution of a DVD transfer (actually, less than that - DVD is 720x480 while iTunes downloads are, at best, 320x240), and then if you watch them fullscreen on your iMac, you're blowing them up to more around three times their resolution. With a DVD, on a regular SD TV, they are being displayed at pretty close to their base resolution, which helps a lot. Even if you play the DVD on your iMac fullscreen, which also looks bad, at least at that point the size difference is only twice the original resolution.

 

[Dark Horse]

Bah. Rubbish. Not available on the UK store. why why why.

And more importantly, how can the US store still reject my registration when I actually live in San Francisco and have a US billing address (but on a UK credit card).

Too clever for me...

 

[ezekielrage_99]

I just want Australias to get TV Shows on the iTunes store, I hope they do it soon.