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Enthusiast site Cdfreaks.com published a hit-or-miss list of ten things so-called high definition fans might not know about their favorite form of entertainment. While not each item will make you feel like you learned something new (No. 9 says...

As recently noted in the News Dept., Verizon is pushing its FiOS TV, net, and phone service into all five boroughs of New York City over the next six years. Of course this is a major challenge to the local cable companies, Time Warner and Cablevision. Taking a pro-active stance, Time Warner has already been running TV ads for months deriding Verizon's fiber-optic technology. Here's the scenario: A guy about to tuck into his morning cereal answers the doorbell to find a callow youth offering Verizon fiber, complete with animated effects. Waving his bowl of bran--full of fiber, get it?--the happy cable customer snarkily responds that Time Warner has been using fiber optics for years. What the ad doesn't mention is that Verizon takes fiber all the way up to the house or building served, only then reverting to coax, twinlead, etc. for various services. For my own part, I'm both a reasonably happy Time Warner customer and an embittered former Verizon customer. My dialtone went away, never came back, and the company's fully automated customer service wouldn't put a human on the phone to talk with me about it, though I do regularly get mailings begging me to come back. But what technophile wouldn't be seduced by Verizon's vision of a fiber-optic future? The company is make a huge investment in FiOS. In a country decidedly behind in broadband technology compared to other nations, the Verizon program is just what we need.

Video: 3.5/5
Audio: 4/5
Extras: 0/5
I don't understand why the movie studios continue to remake every single obscure Japanese horror film; even the really bad ones. Of course I didn't know this was a remake going in, but it was easy to tell as the film progressed since it seemed like it borrowed from just about every horror movie of the last few years. The story moves at a brisk pace but that is also one of its biggest downfalls. There is no story development, no character development and honestly, no point. There was never any sense of tension or horror and most of the time I was chuckling at how utterly bad the film was. I did think the cover art was cool though.

Video: 3/5
Audio: 4/5
Extras: 3/5
I've never been much of a TV watcher. I lived overseas for the later part of my teen years and it just put me in a mindset that I wasn't interested once I came back. Occasionally I see a show on TV that catches my eye but I rarely follow through with a whole season. I will say though, if all shows were as good as this one I'd be making a lot of time for TV. I had never heard of Damages before receiving it for review and it took awhile before I had the time to watch the whole thing but once my wife and I sat down to start it, it was hard to stop. We were always looking for an opportunity to watch another episode and never found a single one boring or useless fill in any way. Fans of legal thrillers should definitely put this on the must see list!