A la carte a reality?

A few weeks back, I posted some thoughts on the state of cable television, wherein I stated that the only way a la carte could ever happen would be through an act of Congress. Because any single cable company who attempted this would be fighting a losing battle against the channel providers.

Then I read this tidbit comes in:

Cable operators want to go "a la carte"
U.S. cable operators are privately working on a plan to force programmers to unbundle their networks and allow customers to subscribe to channels on an individual basis.

Wow. The cable companies are working together to force this on the channel providers. I did not see this coming. And I am very impressed.

DC Comics: The New 52 - week 4

There was no real standout this week, but out of the new batch, only one book outright sucked, so I call that a win. Since normally I start this off with a pic of the issue of the week, instead I'll give my single favorite panel:

From Red Hood and the Outlaws #1

The sensitive side of me should be disgusted about what they've done to Starfire, but the lecherous side of me laughed my ass off.

Netflix lets in the competition

I'm sure you've heard that Netflix is splitting their DVD service off into Qwikster. I'm assuming from the fact that they're not calling it 'mailflix' or something like that that they plan to sell off the DVD service at the earliest opportunity.

I barely even watched DVDs anymore, my rentals would literally sit around for months. But there were two reasons I never went to streaming-only:
1) Netflix was convenient and affordable; it was so easy to just not change anything.
2) The number of streams I could watch at once was tied to the number of dvds on my account. With four people in my home who like to occasionally use the service, having two streams available was pretty safe.

As a result of this change, there was no longer any benefit to keeping my DVD service, so it's gone. But will I keep the streaming?

Green Lantern: The New 52

Batman and Green Lantern have been such solid sellers in recent years, that with the reboot their continuities have been allowed to continue more or less where they left off. A quick look at all the Green Lantern-related books:

Hal Jordan will likely feature regularly in both Justice League and the flagship Green Lantern title, although he didn't make the cover of that latter! We'll come back to that.

DC Comics: The New 52 - week 3

Back for week 3, which was nowhere near as impressive as week 2. Since I live for Green Lantern, I'll address the #1 separately. As for the rest of the week, there was one that stood head-and-shoulder above the rest:

Demon Knights #1

mmmmmmm.... nuggets

From 1984 to 1996, KFC sold a product called Kentucky Nuggets. Let's hop into the wayback machine to 1984...

DC Comics: The New 52

Recently, DC rebooted their entire line of comics, and here in the month of September are rolling out 52 new number one comics. I decided to try them all! Here, at the half-way point, is what I think so far...

Week One:
This week consisted of two comics: Flashpoint #5, which marked the end of the old DC, and Justice League #1, which marked the beginning of the new. And I have to say, I'm disappointed with how it ended. I mean, Flashpoint was fine. But the beginning of Flashpoint was really the end (while the current books finished out their runs without acknowledging what was happening). It just feels like an awkward way to say goodbye. Especially since the story was all about Flash/Barry Allen, who's spent the better part of the twenty-five years since the Crisis reboot being... dead.

But onto the new...

Justice League #1