Family Guy was canceled after its third season, but phenomenal DVD sales and a successful afterlife in reruns have brought the series back to prime time again. To celebrate, creator Seth MacFarlane picks his Top 5 episodes for Family Guy: The Freakin' Sweet Collection (20th Century Fox; Series •••, Picture/Sound ••½, Extras ••).
Badly dubbed dialogue and exaggerated acting make martial-arts movies unintentionally funny (to Westerners, at least). But in Kung Fu Hustle (Sony; Movie ••••, Picture/Sound ••••½, Extras •••• ), director Stephen Chow sets out to grab laughs by mining the genre's clichés.
Would a DVDO by another name smell as sweet? DVDO, the company that years ago made waves in the industry by offering a $500 line doubler at a time when line doublers cost $10k and up, is now DVDO <I>Powered by Anchor Bay Technologies</I> (ABT). The parent companies associated with the DVDO brand name seem to come and go, but the constants that remain are remarkable performance and features at reasonable prices. The DVDO iScan VP30 looks to continue that trend.
Before the advent of Tivo and cable TV’s equivalent, video-on-demand, getting comfortable with a new television series in September was something of a crap shoot. If you missed the first couple of episodes of a new show before you heard good things about it from friends, you could either jump in late without the knowledge of the usually critical first few weeks, or you could wait until the summer rerun season and start afresh. I completely missed the boat on the first three seasons of “24,” forcing me to take a third, and costlier, path: TV on DVD. In the case of a highly addictive show like “24,” the ability to watch 2 or 4 episodes in one sitting more than compensated for the cost of the discs. This year, however, I planned well, and my Directv Tivo box made the new season easy to manage.
Ah, the sweet smell of vindication. There's nothing better than seeing things turn out exactly like you said they would, particularly when it happens despite the skepticism of others. As I predicted, the Celestial Jukebox is open for business. Sometime ago, a few of us foresaw the day that music lovers would be able to quickly access every piece of music ever recorded.
Digital amplifiers are nothing new - they've been around for years in powered subwoofers and, more recently, home theater box systems. But standalone digital receivers are a somewhat new revelation.
