Heads up, fans of the hit TV series Lost. Amazon has a little sale going on through July 16 that may interest you. Buy two seasons on Blu-ray and you save $20; buy three seasons and you save $30; buy four seasons and you save $40. You’ll need to enter the promo code LOSTBLUS to see the discount.

Meanwhile, here’s the trailer to the movie that did time travel right: Back to the Future. Lost is garbage juice compared to this movie.

via High-Def Digest

Bad news, “Lost” fans. Well, those of you who download 720p caps of the show. It looks like ABC, per juicy message board rumors, is doing something screwy with the video as it airs in order to fit in more commercials—removing frames after the 2:3 pulldown, that is. So, when cappers convert the video into bite-sized x264 chunks for us, it results in jerky playback. (Dupe frames that are present in the original broadcast are removed from the cap.) You’re not going to notice the dropped frames when watching the show on TV (due to the nature of broadcast television), but it makes capping the show a pain in the neck. The resulting cap, less the dupe frames, plays back like garbage.

This dropped frames issue only seems to have affected S05E01—episode two doesn’t exhibit the same problem.

The moral of the story is, as “scene” cappers grapple with this dropped frames issue, we’ll have to wait longer than usual for “proper” caps, perhaps after the shows airs in the UK, where, presumably, Sky won’t drop frames left an right to fit in more adverts. Clever way for ABC to combat piracy, though.

A little personal information about me: I’ve never seen a single episode of Lost. I understand it’s quite popular, though. A co-worker of mine at a previous place of employment was so adamant that I join the Lost-watchers club that she leant me the first season and then asked me every day what I thought of the show. After a month of not even taking the first disc out of the sleeve, I returned it to her.

If you’d like to try to force someone to hop on the Lost bandwagon or if you, yourself, would like to churn through the first three seasons in rapid succession, Amazon has Seasons 1, 2, and 3 for $58.99, which is less than half what they normally cost. That deal’s good today only, though, so hop to it if you’re interested.

Lost – The Complete Seasons 1-3 [Amazon]

I’ve been playing Ubisoft’s “Lost: Via Domus” for a few minutes and so far it’s not too shabby. But, then again, I’m a huge fan of the show so I may be playing favorites. The game begins with you on the plane experiencing the crash from the perspective of survivor of Flight 815. You wake up in the jungle and can’t really remember too much of what happened. I’ve run into Kate and she’s sort of uncooperative thus far and doesn’t seem too keen on answering any questions or helping. There’s also some woman that randomly appears but as I get closer she disappears. It’s creepy and scary. It appears that when you encounter other characters you go through a Q&A phase. When you think you know them you revert to a flashback of the plane where you snap a photo for future reference. It’s kind of weird, but makes sense. I’ll be sure to finish this game when I get back from CTIA.

Has anyone else played this?

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Lost, blah blah Ben blah blah smoke monster blah. Blah blah Whitmore blah blah (”NOT PENNY’S BOAT!” said the hobbit) blah blah!

Cash also says it is absolutely possible that a plane’s black box would still be in working condition after four months on the ocean floor. The current record goes to a recorder that, after nine years at the bottom of the Mediterranean, was perfectly fine. “The water, in general, doesn’t hurt them at all,” Cash says. “It’s the air that hurts them once they’ve been wet. It starts the corrosion and rust process.” Once the black box is found at a wreckage site, it’s transferred to the lab in a water-filled cooler so the data can be retrieved and copied right away.

Blah blah mystery blah smoke monster blah with Sawyer in the blah blah up inside Jack. Blah blah I’ll bet anyone 50 bucks this show ends up like Twin Peaks and angers us all to no end. Blah.

Lost’s Black Box Story Holds True, NTSB Records Chief Says: Hollywood Sci-Fi vs. Reality [PopMech]

You watched LOST last night, and it was good. But ever notice there are no opening credits for that show? It’s artistic choice, and we support it. But what if it did? And it was in the early ’90s or late ’80s? It’d undoubtedly be the video above. Kudos to Streeter and his crew at College Humor for this. Kudos.

via

Incidentally, wasn’t yesterday’s episode really good? They finally figured out that they can reveal information to us. We won’t tell anybody.

Exclusive Lost movies [CAV]

Hate to spoil it for the battered fans of Lost, but those cool GPS satellite phones that the whoevers from the whatever on the good ship Howsyerfather are using to track each other on the island are not real.

“No satellite phone handset that I am aware of has any form of touch screen available to the user,” said a spokesman for Globalstar Inc., a satellite phone network.

Does any of this particularly matter? No, and in fact it infuriates me that people are so obsessed with this cock-tease of a show — myself included, but not to this extent — that they would do the legwork to call someone and find out that a fake phone on a fake show is fake. Next: Battlestar Galactica fans call Webster’s re: this whole “frak” thing. Is it a real word?

Satellite Phones on TV’s ‘Lost’ Can’t Be Real [Textually]

My friend Viva (yes, that’s her name,) just sent me this link to every episode so far, which I’m sharing with you, so that you can have them all streaming for free to your desktop.

Get some headphones and become less productive at work. It’s Friday, and you’re welcome.

LOST, every episode [SurfTheChannel]

As geeks (yes, you’re geeks), you’re likely eagerly waiting for the next season of ABC’s LOST to surface. We’re with you on that one. But did you know that LOST has a lot more in common with Gilligan’s Island than the word “castaways”?

In fact, the first incarnation of Gilligan’s Island was as a dark, mysterious drama, just like LOST? It’s true, but sadly this was considered too dark and complex for the family-friendly 1960s viewers, so the show was re-tooled as a sitcom. ABC went back to the original idea for Lost on Gilligan’s Island as the basis for LOST. I know that’s a lot of italics, but stay with me.

YouTube brings you the surviving clips from the show that could have been. As you’ll see, many of the recurring elements of LOST are demonstrated a good four decades before Locke and Sheppherd started locking horns. Enjoy.

First, there are some decent games based on TV shows. Unfortunately, unless you’re a tween, most of the games probably aren’t going to be your thing. Of course if Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zak & Cody and That’s So Raven are what you’re playing — and you’re not 12 — well let’s just say there is list for those kind of people in most communities.

But more importantly, this brings us to the bigger issue. Why are games like those, as well as Kim Possible, Scooby Doo and Sponge Bob actually quite good? On the one hand it could be that kids play the games, and the under 12 market, for which these games are aimed, is just a less judging audience. But having seen many of these games as a reviewer, there seems to be something more to it. The Disney Channel games are very true to the shows, which are basically just sitcoms for a younger audience. The game developers aren’t trying to create an Emmy-worthy episode with plot twists and over-the-top sequences. Instead, they’re making a game that is evocative of the show, without trying to do anything particularly special.

This has been the problem with nearly every TV-based game tie-in to date. Let’s recap:

Star Trek — This has been the worst franchise in the history of video games. Even Stars Wars has failed to produce as many losers as this series. Now I’m not saying Trek is bad, but rather anything to do with Star Trek in a video game. For some reason there have been practically no good Star Trek games. In fairness part of the problem goes back to the fact that Paramount was really greedy back in the mid-1990s and sold the Star Trek license to a slew of companies. One publisher, such as Microprose would get The Next Generation, while Activision would get the original series and so on. This made for competing games from the same brand! But then some companies didn’t know what to do with the franchise. At one point Interplay even released a ground-based real-time strategy game called Star Trek: New Worlds. When was the last time you saw any ground combat on Star Trek?

But even when Activision managed to get all the different shows, the results would have only been worse if William Shatner decided to program them himself, did all the voices and sang for good measure! Now Bethesda has the license… but let’s hope Star Trek never boldly go to the gaming arena again!

The Simpsons — Great show. Let’s leave it at that. Simpsons Road Rage, the Crazy Taxi clone from a few years was good, and even the follow-up Simpsons Hit & Run, which was just a GTA clone, wasn’t exactly “the worst episode ever!” But these games still lack the spark of the hit show. How many lines did each actor record, around five? Because after about five minutes you can tell they phoned it in worse than anything Krusty the Klown might try to pull. This fall another game is on the way, which is based on this summer’s Simpsons Movie. Another part of me is dying inside.

Reality TV — We’ve never really understood the reality TV craze. Are these people so desperate for their 15 minutes of fame that they’re willing to put themselves through this crap? And worse, are there people so desperate to want to take part that they’ll settle for video game versions? Surviving these video games is hard enough.

OK, maybe the American Idol game isn’t the worst thing in the world. While I won’t be singing in front of my friends anytime soon, I can see this as a good party game for those who are 12, or drunk. Hopefully not both.

CSI, Homicide — The absolute best thing we can say about this lot of TV mystery games is that they’re not FMV-based games. No instead, we at least get that ‘uncanny valley’ looking digital versions of the actors on TV. In these crime dramas you’re the new recruit who gets to join the TV stars and help solve a case. Honestly, these aren’t the worse games in the world, but they’re far from classics. The problem is that they’re so linear you either race through the crime or get horribly stuck for hours. You get ‘help’ by the uncanny actors, who have fewer canned lines than those even in the Simpsons games. Maybe if these games used some sort of 3D environment instead of just having you gather items from matte paintings we could care a little more about the cases.

Desperate Housewives — You’d have to more desperate than anyone on Wisteria Lane to even consider playing this one! The game actually managed to fit in an original story that didn’t interfere, or worse contradict the existing series plotlines. But there wasn’t much in the way of actual gameplay. It was basically a lot of bad dialog with bad acting that sort of had you clicking your way through the game to watch what amounted to an unaired, and dare we say uninspired, season. Someone was merely desperate to milk a few more dollars.

The Sopranos: The Road To Respect — The show is about Tony’s struggles with his “families.” The game instead focuses on you as the new guy, who has to work his way up the mob food chain, while making sure you don’t become part of the fishes’ food chain instead. This means working with various family businesses, including sanitation, neighborhood security and transportation (as in hi-jacking). But the problem is that this is just a fighting and shooting game. You beat people up, you go on some jobs – but what is missing is everything else that makes you a wiseguy. Of course no one would want to play a game where you hang around The Bing watching topless dancers… then again, they might. The point is that The Sopranos wasn’t a show about gunplay. It was about Tony. The PS2 version of this game came out last year. THQ has wisely wacked plans for the Xbox 360 version. The show is over, so as for the game let’s just forgetaboutit.

And here is a look at why we’re very concerned about the idea of the upcoming game based on our favorite TV show:

LOST — This is one of those games that will just be terrible. There is no way this game can be good. There are 48 episodes left, which will spread out over three seasons. So you think J.J. is going to let the game offer any secrets? Are we going to uncover any new mysteries? Is Hurley going to share his stash of chocolate bars? The answer to all of these is no. Because this show is about keeping the answers from the viewer, so a result this game merely promises to be a frustrating experience that offers a few tidbits of information, while offering some B-line story. So don’t plan on getting to have deep moments with Kate or Jack. We’ll be lucky to join Nicky and Paolo!

How to do it right: Before there was LOST there was MYST. Lose most of the cast. Instead you should play as a lone survivor and wake up on another part of the island after the crash. You’ll take part in a parallel story, and while it might sound more like CAST AWAY than LOST, this could give the writers a chance to introduce a bit more mythos about the island. The downside is that it is still going to be just that… a parallel adventure that offers few answers.

What do you do when you have a failing TV show with a terrible plot line and you’re losing money on it? Create a mobile game! Duh! “Lost” is now available as a downloadable iPod game on the iTunes Music Store. For $5 you too can “Help Jack search for dynamite, tend to the wounded, and avoid the black smoke.” Sounds extremely exciting.

Other activities include helping people at the crash scene, trying to escape from the Others, and probably getting off the island at some point. Works with 5G iPods, improved ratings not included.

‘Lost’ iPod game now available on iTunes [iLounge]

As a general rule, journalists (particularly us of the tech stripe) go gonzo when trying to proclaim something a new “trend.” We take one example of a hit YouTube video and proclaim it to be the death of TV.

The stories are usually the same: Lead with an example of a internet video that became part of the geek cultural canon (take the anti-Hillary Clinton/Apple “1984” mash-up video, or perhaps the whole Lonely Girl15 thing), talk about how this sort of thing wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago, and proclaim the death of the boob tube. The tube may be sick, but plasma and LCD are to blame—not the Interweb. Cell phone-bound videos, Tivo, iTunes, and anything else that “changes” the way people watch Heroes isn’t either.

In fact, the sound of a thousand people logging onto YouTube and watching SNL clips on iTunes isn’t the sound of TV’s funeral bells, but rather the best thing to happen to the medium since the remote control, and, in the end, almost certainly means higher-quality programming.

To understand this, let’s first take a look at streaming cell phone-bound video. Until now, mobile video in this country has been next to useless. It clogs up data lines, is overpriced, and actually keeps you from taking and making calls in many cases. Of course, the new service being launched by MediaFLO could change this, but for now — next-to-useless.

And when MediaFLO gets their act together, it will be impossible to view them as a threat to regularly-scheduled programming for a simple reason: it IS your regularly-scheduled programming. Most of the content is simple pint-sized feeds of Comedy Central and MTV, beamed at the exact time they’d be airing in your living room, ads intact.

Now lets now look at officially-sanctioned web-based TV streams.

ABC made waves about a year ago when they declared that they’d offer some of their hit shows (I bet Lexus-Nexus search from the time of the announcement would reveal that nearly every single news story on the topic cited just Lost and Desperate Housewives, as if they were the be-all, end-all of TV programming). The key selling points: a day after their original air-date, you can watch the shows on demand from any web-enabled computer, with only a fraction of the advertising breakage found during their original airing.

As it is now, this technology poses absolutely no threat to the scheduled airings and, if anything, will only help push viewers towards them. The key lies in what I call the “Melrose Place Phenomenon.” When it comes to serial drama and soap operas, it is imperative that a dedicated viewer catch every single episode, otherwise, how will they know what’s going on in the hatch in Lost? Miss a single episode or fail to tune in from the beginning, and it is you who is lost, lost, lost (at least until the DVDs come out.) Miss enough episodes, and you tune out for good.

The online programming is a bit choppy, confined to tiny computer monitors (for the vast majority of users), and doesn’t approach the quality of watching the show (in HD or not) on a nice plasma. It is, quite simply not a pleasurable experience.

What it is, is a way to keep updated in the latest happenings in your favorite shows. By making the programming available online, viewers are able to maintain their addictions without missing out. This is absolutely necessary for keeping ratings high on serial dramas. Once they’re caught up, they can tune in next week at the regularly scheduled time, and actually enjoy themselves.

What About YouTube?

And what about YouTube and similar video-streaming sites? They are about as big a threat to television as the cute little kitties that populate half the site. YouTube is watched by guys trying to kill time at work, 40 seconds of Macaca moments at a time, not as a substitute for high production-value mainstream programming. You’d have to be a trends writer looking desperately for a story to think otherwise.

So What’s It All Mean?

Alright fellows, add this to the obvious bin: Networks need to loosen up and realize that increased viewership through alternative channels means increased awareness of their desired channel (that is: whatever time TV Guide says it’s on). In previous years, a show’s timeslot was more important to whether it lived or died than anything else. A great show relegated to the Saturday night graveyard was doomed, while a laughtrack-infested crapfest that followed Friends was a surefire hit. Increased opportunities for people to watch network programming does not mean that TV is dead, but rather that GOOD TV finally has the chance to survive. If somebody is out on a Friday night and misses a show, they can simply watch the recording on their DVR or stream it off the network’s Web site. And in that regard, we, the quality connoisseurs, are the winners.

Actually no, you’re just blind. Quite a few blogs have been reporting that the iPhone was shown on the failing TV series “Lost”. Look at that screenshot above. Do the icons look similar to the iPhone’s? Sure. But what about the length of that device and the fact that it has a map on the screen? Hmmm, doesn’t look like much of an iPhone anymore.

Perhaps if everyone had taken a second before posting their “iPhone on Lost!” articles, they would have realized that every single movie and TV show in the past 15 years has always had an incredibly fake computerized device that does everything. In this case, it happens to have iPhone-esque buttons. Next time, don’t jump to conclusions, just wait until late June outside a Cingular store.

iPhone on Lost? [TUAW]