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Data from shopping site Pricegrabber.com showing that Blu-ray player prices have increased since the beginning of the year hammers home the sting of the early-adopter trade-off: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. For savvy buyers of Blu-ray...

At a late winter press event, Panasonic Corporation of North America rolled out its complete 2008 line of 21 plasma and LCD flat paneltelevisions, all branded VIERA for the first time in North America. A Panasonic spokesperson explained that VIERA stands for "Visual Era," and for "exceptional picture, connectivity and customer service and satisfaction" [But the latter didn't make such a spiffy acronym!-Ed.].

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/403rookie.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>When high-school baseball coach Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid) was looking for a way to inspire his perennially losing team to win, he decided to issue a challenge they couldn't refuse. If they made it to the district playoffs, he would try out for a major-league baseball team. Fortunately for Morris, his team fulfilled their part of the bargain, and he went to the tryout in which his fast ball was clocked at 98 mph! It wasn't long before Jim found himself pitching for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as a 35-year-old rookie. The best part of the story is that it actually happened in 1999.

Video: 4/5
Audio: 3.5/5
Extras: 3/5
Bandai Visual delivers the next episode in the Freedom series. For those not familiar with this series it was created as a marketing series for "Cup-O-Noodles" though it really has no tie in to the product except some of the characters eating it in the show. Each segment is thirty minutes long and each segment has been released on HD DVD individually, making this is a bit of a steep investment considering the length of each release. This fourth episode finds our main characters on Earth's soil and on the way to Florida to meet the girl in the pictures. This episode wasn't quite as engaging as the ones before it, but it's an essential part of the story. The animation was also a bit disappointing in comparison to the previous episodes with most of the longer shots not coming off quite as detailed, but this was obviously an artistic choice of the creators. I'm still looking forward to seeing where it all goes and I have word that the rest of the series will be released on HD DVD despite its recent demise.