TVSquad

Lycos Cinema is a pretty nifty concept. Registered users can login to the site, find a movie they want to watch, and then invite friends to watch on their own computers. The movie plays almost simultaneously on each computer, which lets users chat in real-time about the movie they're all watching. The site featurs a combination of free movies and TV shows and videos available for rental. You can pay to watch a movie yourself, or pay a bit more for a 5 or 10 person rental.

But there's one major problem. The content is absolutely horrid. There are no contemporary movies or TV shows. And the older titles are pretty much B-list material. If you like Godzilla films, Lyco Cinema might be the site for you. But if you're looking for the latest summer blockbusters, you might want to try Netflix.

After a five-week hiatus, Lost returns tonight with the season's final five episodes. TV Squad is hosting a a live chat during the 10pm ET airing of "The Shape of Things to Come." Share your thoughts on the show's first post-strike episode, and read other fans' opinions.

The chat will start 15 minutes before the episode airs. Check TV Squad's front page later tonight for the recap post; the chat link will be posted there. From the looks of ABC's promos, "The Shape of Things to Come" is going to be action-packed. A lot of ground needs to be covered by the season's end. The first eight episodes introduced a lot of questions about the fate of the 815ers.

Yesterday we talked about NBC's plans for video-on-demand around the world. Today, we have news of their plans for getting all of their nutty fans together online. Possibly. It should be noted that the information comes from an anonymous source, known only to us as "NBC Insider," but after getting a look at the screenshots, they look highly believable.

What we're talking about is the NBC Viewing Party. In a nutshell, the service will allow fans to open a chat room and watch an episode at the same time, all synced up and everything. It's done with flash, so it should play nicely with Mac OS and Windows, and is reported to work in Firefox, IE, and Safari.

(S09E01) In honor of the Big Brother 9 season premiere, we're doing a live chat during the 9pm ET airing of the episode. Watch the show and share your thoughts with other Big Brother fans, all in real-time! What could be better?

Click here to enter the chat.

The full review will follow shortly after the jump. The full review is posted. You can check out AOL TV's coverage of Big Brother 9 here.

The wait is over! The newest chapter in the Lost story begins tonight. To celebrate, we're hosting a live chat during the Lost season four premiere (9pm ET). It's a great opportunity to discuss the episode with fans and share your opinions with other TV Squad readers.

The chat will begin shortly before the show starts. A link to the chat will be provided in the recap post, so check the front page later tonight to join the conversation.

Take it from someone who has seen the premiere in advance--you don't want to miss this episode. It is just as exciting as the season three finale, and you'll want to talk about it with your fellow Lost fans in real time as the drama occurs. See you tonight!

Windows Media Center makes it easy to access your movies, pictures, and audio from the comfort of your couch via a remote control. But sometimes you want to use the PC in the living room to do a few things that you normally do in the office like read RSS feeds or even chat with friends. That's where plugins like Media Control come in.

The Media Control Plugin for Windows Vista Media Center was originally designed to add ffdshow support for playing media encoded with codecs that Windows doesn't necessarily like. But the latest version of the software also adds Windows Live Messenger integration.

You'll need to do some registry editing in order to enable Live Messenger to show up in Windows Media center, as s well as configuring the addin. But in the end you'll get to chat with your friends while watching Godzilla movies on a Sunday afternoon without lifting your butt from your couch. You know, assuming you've got a wireless keyboard for your media center PC.

[via Chris Lanier]

Tonight, there's going to be a live chat during the highly anticipated season two premiere of Heroes. The chat will start around 15 minutes before the show, so be sure to check the front page for the post if you'd like to participate.

If you've been keeping up with our Heroes coverage over the course of the summer or any of Isabelle's Spoilers Anonymous posts, you already know we're in for an exciting season opener.

Tonight we'll determine the fate of D.L. Hawkins, witness the death of a character, and be introduced to a host of new heroes.

Be ready to discuss all these things and more with fellow Heroes fanatics in tonight's chat. Hope to see you there.

(S03E20) First of all I want to thank everyone who attended the chat tonight during the episode. The room's still open for anyone who wants to hop in and discuss what went on (if I'm there, I go by 'TVSKeith'). I'm pretty sure there's plenty to talk about.

As I was watching the show tonight, and having read so many comments on this show here at TV Squad throughout the season, I realized there are going to be two main schools of thought here. One one side we'll have those who felt the trial was the most important piece of the episode, while the other will find it to be the haunting music, those who were driven by it and surprise ending. But of course if you've got any sense about you, you'll realize they're all important pieces to the puzzle.

Nickelodeon is paying attention to its demographic. Not only do the kids these days enjoy the cartoons, they also enjoy the online experience. So, the network has significantly built upon its website by adding games, videos and chat capability. It's what the bigwigs are calling "a virtual community for kids."

Nick launched its new website today, Nicktropolis.com. There will be more than 300 hours of videos--including full episodes of some Nick shows--and more than 350 online games. It also has a Second Life sort-of spin to it. Kids can create a user name and build their own room. When they play the games, they rack up points that they can use to buy stuff for their rooms.

The "chat rooms", by the way are being called Nick Safe Chat. Kids have to get parental permission to use the chat rooms and then they can only communicate with other users via a pre-approved Nicktropolis Dictionary. You can bet that will be heavily monitored so no one ends up on Dateline.

Yet another in a long line of multi-platform series is being whipped up, this time by NBC. The new daytime show, iVillage Live, will debut on NBC on December 4 at noon. iVillage is an online site for women that was acquired by NBC. The show will take place at the Universal Orlando Resort and will cover the usual daytime talk show stuff like family, parenting, health, beauty, etc. The series will also air on Bravo and on the iVillage.com Web site. In order to bring the online and televised aspects together, people will be able to chat online during the show and have the text displayed on a scroll at the bottom of the television screen. They can also text questions to the show on their mobile phones. Basically, it sounds like TRL, but for adult women. Episodes will also be archived on the Web site.

I have to say, I don't quite see the appeal here, and it's not because of my natural male aversion to daytime gab fests. The mish-mash of a live show mixed with the random text messaged thoughts of everyday people might work for MTV, but I'm not sure grown ups will really latch on to such an idea. It's all going to depend how they approach it, but based on the description of this show alone, it sounds like a messy attempt at synergy.

If you never saw Freaks and Geeks, you probably don't remember much about it because memories are formed by first experiencing the thing you later remember. For example, I have no memory of my recent trip to Florida because I've never taken a trip there before. If you did watch the show, however, you were lucky enough to see one of the best television shows in the last ten years, and one of the most accurate portrayals of high school life. So accurate, in fact, that it was sometimes uncomfortable to watch, especially if your school experience was anything but ideal. If you happen to find yourself in Los Angeles on August 31, Paul Goebel of Beat the Geeks will be hosting his King of TV talk show at the UCB Theater and chatting with four of the actors from the series: John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Busy Philipps, and Steve Bannos. It should be loads of fun.

Jacqueline McKenzie had her turn. Now Joel Gretsch (Tom Baldwin) and Patrick Flueger (Shawn) of The 4400 will team up to appear live on buddytv.com. Catch it Monday August 21st, 9pm ET/ 6pm PT where the pair will answer questions for about an hour via webcam and audio. Since this one won't coincide with a new episode of the show, there'll be no need for fans to to split their attention. Joel Gretsch is William Shatner's son-in-law so it might be fun to see if he has a take on Comedy Central's Shatner Roast which airs the night before this chat.

(Thanks, Jon!)

This is it folks-- there's only two hellacious hours left in this 5th horribly trying day for our hero Jack Bauer. Will he make it through alive? Don't get too cocky and say "Yes Ryan, don't be dumb, he just signed on for three more seasons." That doesn't mean we won't see some bad day from Jack's past. It would certainly be a simple way of bringing back some of the characters that have left us this year. Join me and all the other 24 fanatics as we chat live along with the show tonight. Don't forget to the get to the room early so you can get your Jack "kill-count" guesses in. As with all of our chats, you must have AIM or a compatible client. Once you have that, make sure you check back to this very post at 8pm ET, and that's when I'll unveil the location for the super secret chat room. Until then, gravitas!

UPDATE:
Come one, come all;  here is the secret location for our 24 Chat! See you inside.

Disclaimer: All or parts of the discussion in this chatroom may be posted in a later column on this site.

The rumors are that another cast-member is going to be leaving the show after tonight, and if it's who I'm hearing, this is going to be one doozey of an episode. Join me and all the other 24 fanatics as we chat live along with the show tonight. Don't forget to the get to the room early so you can get your Jack "kill-count" guesses in. As with all of our chats, you must have AIM or a compatible client. Once you have that, make sure you check back to this very post at 8pm ET, and that's when I'll unveil the location for the super secret chat room. Until then, gravitas!


UPDATE:
Come one, come all;  here is the secret location for our 24 Chat! See you inside.

Disclaimer: All or parts of the discussion in this chatroom may be posted in a later column on this site.

Last night the top seven competitors on American Idol sang selections from Rod Stewart's vast library, and they still managed to completely underwhelm me. The only person I went gaga over was Katharine, but Taylor and Chris do tend to impress me just about every week. Come join me and all the other American Idol fanatics tonight as we find out together live who America didn't like. As with all of our chats, you'll need AIM or a compatible client (GAIM, Trillian, etc), once you have that, meet back here, to this very post, at 8pm ET, that's when I'll unveil the location for the chat room. See you then.

Update:
Come one, come all;  here is the super secret location for our American Idol Chat! Look for me (TVSRyan) in the chat room. See you inside.

Disclaimer: All or parts of the discussion in this chatroom may be posted in a later column on this site.