TVSquad

Remember when Brett mentioned Tin Man a few months ago? The miniseries, debuting on Sci Fi in December, is a re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz, this time set in the Outer Zone (note the acronym) and starring Zooey Deschanel (a total celeb-crush of mine) Alan Cumming and Richard Dreyfuss (who I don't have crushes on).

The miniseries is filming in Vancouver, and so is the new Flash Gordon series. Since both series use some of the same retro-futuristic sets, the folks involved with Flash Gordon will be making a few tweaks to certain Tin Man sets and incorporating them into the design for the planet Mongo, home of Ming the Merciless.

That's not a bad way to save production money, and it's not like it hasn't been done before. Once, while Leonard Nimoy was sick for a month with pneumonia, a horse from Bonanza was given fake Vulcan ears and played Spock for four episodes. That's why Kirk rode around on Spock's back for all subsequent episodes, so the series didn't lose its continuity.

Looking for a cheap way to throw a second, third, or 17th TV tuner onto your media center PC? Newegg's selling the Plextor PX-TV100U for $39.99. But after a $30 rebate, you can pick this little guy up for under $10 (plus shipping).

The PX-TV100U is a USB 2.0 tuner, allowing you to record shows in MPEG-1/MPEG-2/DivX. The encoding is done through software, so you'll want a reasonably fast computer, and I wouldn't recommend picking up a dozen of these thinking that you can record 12 shows at once without crashing your PC.

You can also capture video from an analog video source like a camcorder or VCR through the PX-TV100U's composite and S-video inputs.

There are more details about NBC Universal's extreme cost-cutting measures, and this time they effect you, the viewer. Yesterday, Jeff Zucker announced that the network will no longer air comedies or dramas in the 8 o'clock hour because they're too expensive. Zucker says that advertisers just won't pay enough money during the 8 pm time slot to cover the costs of comedies and dramas. Instead, the network will air game shows and reality shows during that hour. What does that mean for The Office and My Name is Earl? Hopefully all it means is a later time slot. Or I will be forced to replace the first letter in Jeff Zucker's last name with an 'F' everytime I mention him in a story.