Here are the nine categories offered and the number of episodes currently available:

• America’s Game – 42 Episodes
• Game of the Week – 149 Episodes
• Greatest Games – 18 Episodes
• Hard Knocks – 28 Episodes
• Live Wire – 17 Episodes
• Season in Review – 13 Episodes
• Sounds of the Game – 57 Episodes
• Super Bowl Highlights – 43 Episodes
• Team Highlights – 225 Episodes

LIFE took four years to complete, and was filmed entirely in high-definition over 3000 days in all continents. The goal of the BBC/Discovery Channel production was to explore extraordinary animal behavior when faced with life or death. Topics for the series include: The Challenges of Life, Reptiles and Amphibians, Mammals, Fish, Birds, Insects, Hunters and Hunted, Creatures of the Deep, Plants, Primates, and The Making of Life.

LIFE is narrated by none other than Oprah Winfrey, and tells 130 stories of the natural world in extreme survival conditions. 54 of the stories have never been seen on TV before. Some television firsts include footage of dolphins creating circles of mud to entrap fish — a method called ‘mudringing’, greater bulldog bats hunting fish filmed at 2000 frames-per-second, and a pebble toad’s escape from a tarantula by bouncing like a rubber ball down a mountain.

Read more from the source.

The Pacific was created by producers Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman who brought us Band of Brothers (which took place on the European front). This time, the story takes you to the Pacific Theater and the missions of the 1st Marine Division. Episodes will cover the first battle on Guadalcanal, the rain forests of Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

The series is based on books by Robert Leckie and Eugene B. Sledge, who also get some writing credits along with several others. Much of the series will focus on the “no surrender” war mantra of the Japanese, and the demonization of the enemy which came from both sides.

The premiere of the 10-part series of The Pacific airs Sunday, Mar. 14 at 9:00 PM. The show is available in HD with a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio and Dolby Digital for audio.

The way it works is you log in to Yahoo! Sports online and select your teams. The picks will automatically show up in the U-verse TV app, accessible from the “Go Interactive” button on your remote. Winning teams will show up green, losing teams red. The U-bar app also shows weather, stocks and traffic info.

The Yahoo! Sport app will be available for U-verse TV customers at no extra charge.

The US version of the 11-episode series is narrated by Oprah Winfrey, while the UK will get their own version with Planet Earth’s narrator Sir David Attenborough. The series will feature never-before-seen on television footage such as Komodo dragons hunting a buffalo ten times their size, and Capuchin monkeys using rocks to open palm nuts. The film also documents events such as the development of a coral reef on a sunken boat, all underwater using time-lapse photography.

LIFE on Blu-ray will arrive June 1, 2010 with a suggested retail price of $69.99 (DVD $59.99). The four-disc set, with content entirely in high-definition, will contain all 11 episodes as well as The Making of Life. Extras include deleted scenes, a “music only” viewing option, and Life on Location, a collection of ten production video diaries.

Here’s a link to a LIFE trailer on YouTube (embedding not permitted).

The Playstation Move works with the current Playstation Eye to simulate a 3-D environment and help track the depth of the player. Officially, Sony has stated that the Playstation Move will support many games from casual to hardcore including Move Party, Little Big Planet, EyePet, Motion Fighters and SOCOM 4.

Attached to this post is the official trailer for the Playstation Move, which does a lot more to explain the controller’s capabilities than I ever could. Enjoy.

Netflix is only hinting at this for now, but their survey speaks volumes about the possible iterations of such a service for mobile device in the future. The only caveat is that the service would not function over 3G networks and only be available using wi-fi (really, all mobile streaming services should have as much clout with AT&T and other mobile network providers that MLB.com has… for they are able to stream live games over 3G without much of a hiccup during playback). CEO Hastings is staying mum on all other details including possible roll-out dates for such an app. So file this under “big wish” for late 2010 or early/mid-2011… Since Netflix has done this type of survey before (attempting to gauge interest in a PS3 or Wii version would seem a no-brainer, but I guess this helps Netflix allocate costs for such a project) and spelled out exactly how such streaming would function via third-party devices, it seems like this will become a reality… so iPhone and Nintendo hand-held users can certainly rejoice, and then wait patiently. For PSP users, the wait might be longer, but keep an eye out for possible surveys for that platform as well.

In other Netflix news… A very unhappy customer is suing Netflix for “restraint of trade”, due to the recent accord Netflix’s Reed Hastings struck with Warner Bros. It seems she and her counsel think that the agreement for a 28-day wait on new releases from Warners represents nothing short of a conspiracy between the two companies and is a breach of the agreement Netflix has with users to deliver new films and causing users to lose value on their monthly membership. We’ll check in with this to see how far it might go (yet another class-action lawsuit against Netflix?) but for now it appears that this is in the early stages and Netflix has yet to truly respond to the matter. You can read the details here.

And lastly… The Netflix Blog has all sorts of hate for Hastings and Company today. Mostly folks are pissed that the subscription mail rental and streaming site is revamping its look, particularly when it comes to the film detail pages where Netflix provides the bulk of information about a film and allows users to share comments and share favorite films with friends. As Netflix is always striving to maintain a clean and easily navigable site, it makes sense to clean up those cluttered pages with only the most important items and information that the majority of general users want. This didn’t fly with some Netflix users who recently bemoaned the loss of Friends lists and other semi-useful features that had more in common with social networking that anything else. Users are upset that their negative comments about the changes on the Netflix blog site have been seemingly deleted by Netflix, so it’s understandable why they would be disgruntled. But hey folks, change happens, and those features weren’t used by everyone. If the dictatorship at Facebook is any indication, expect Netflix to do what they want with their site regardless of how miffed you might be.

“We are thrilled to not only offer The Twilight Saga: New Moon in 1080p HD but to also give our customers a deeper look at what went into making the film,” said Sarah Lyons, vice president, Upgrade Marketing, DIRECTV.

The 1080p HD version will be available for $5.99 and the standard-def for $4.99 starting midnight, March 20.

“PlayStation Network is the first and only service to deliver high definition home entertainment from all six major studios, directly to consumers for download,” said Peter Dille, senior VP, marketing and PlayStation Network, SCEA.

New titles available Mar. 9, 2010 on PlayStation Network include:

• 20th Century Fox – “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian”, “Jennifer’s Body” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (on March 23)
• Walt Disney Pictures – Disney Pixar’s “Up”, Jerry Bruckheimer’s “G-Force” and Disney’s “Earth”
• Paramount Pictures – “Star Trek”, “Paranormal Activity” and “Zoolander”
• Sony Pictures – “This Is It”, “2012″, “District 9″ and “Zombieland”
• Universal – “Inglourious Basterds”, “Couples Retreat” and “Public Enemies”
• Warner Bros. Digital Distribution – “The Hangover”, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” and “The Wizard of Oz

All the new BD players from Samsung boast quicker loading time and built-in WiFi (except for the entry-level C5500 which is wireless ready). Samsung did not release info on the BD-C8000 which is rumored to be a portable Blu-ray player with 10.1 inch LCD and 1GB built-in memory (enabling BD-Live).

Samsung Blu-ray player availability in 2010:

• BD-C5500 – $179.99 – Mar. 2010
• BD-C6500 – $249.99 – Mar. 2010
• BD-C6900 – $399.99 – Mar. 2010
• BD-C7500 – $349.99 – 1st half 2010
• BD-C8000 – $499.99 – June 2010

Gabe Newell, President of Valve had this to say earlier this afternoon, ”As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients. The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

One of the greatest parts of this announcement is that the new version of Steam will allow users to purchase games playable on both PC and Mac for no extra charge.

“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation. The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”

This is an incredible step forward in cross platform cooperation. We can only hope that other service providers take a page from the Valve/Steam handbook.

If the Samsung 3D ads, complete with good-time music by Train (“Hey, Soul Sister”), proved anything it’s that the selling of 3D will be completely detached from the reality of 3DTV which is not quite ready for prime-time. CES more or less proved that while the technology is nascent and almost there (but not quite), it’s the lack of content that will hamper 3DTV acceptance in living rooms across Wal-MartLand America. By giving viewers to the Oscars a taste of the future (again and again and again… I lost count at how many spots Samsung had bought up), Samsung and other hardware manufacturers are betting that content providers will follow and offer up movies and television shows in 3D. That remains to be seen, but if older and current programming is just revamped for 3D, the effect that the fictional fun-time family has in that commercial won’t be the experience most people get with their expensive 3D sets.

Those commercials were interesting the first several times around, but left me wondering just how the far along studios might be in planning for a 3D future… aside from the crass efforts to put all current 2D theatrical releases into 3D format to get a couple of extra bucks from sheeple who think they’re gonna be visiting Pandora once again. Unless a few movies and video games, which may be the only 3D offerings in the future, are reason enough to spend a big hunk of cash on a 3D set, you’ll probably just want to hang onto your regular ol’, lame, unexciting, no longer impressive HDTV for now (hey! I just bought that damn thing and am still paying it off!). That HDTV, which may or not be an environmental disaster when you finally throw it out, should still be good for at least several years, or at least until the gimmick of 3D blows over and demand grows for living-room holography devices.

See the Samsung 3D-HD-LED-TV-WHOO-WEE commercial HERE

See what living room holography looks like go HERE (skip to the 7:52 mark).

All the commotion started earlier this month when Valve quietly updated their Steam client with Mac specific button and icon images. Later came some not-so-quiet advertising depicting Valve mascots Gordon Freeman, Alyx Vance and others using iconic Apple imagery. And now — seemingly the last nail in the coffin — GameInformer magazine lists Mac, along side Xbox 360 and PC, as a platform on which Portal 2 will be playable.

For Mac users, like myself, this is almost a dream come true. Valve’s Steam client is a collection of some of the best PC games of all time. It is one of the most affordable and user friendly download services available today. If Valve is planning to release the service for Mac OS X, it will literally dump hundreds of previously unavailable games right into our laps.

For now all we know with any certainty is that Valve plans to release Portal 2 on Mac. Despite their extremely heavy handed hinting about Steam, they have yet to make an official announcement to confirm its role on OS X.

For the time being, we will just have to sit tight and enjoy the hilarious flood of ‘Valve meets Mac’ imagery.

The dispute was ongoing for two years (after the previous contract between the two companies expired), as Disney wanted the cable TV provider to pay for carriage of WABC-TV New York. Disney finally put their foot down in January, threatening to pull their ABC signal from Cablevision’s lineup.

Fierce words came from Disney’s Charissa Gilmore, who had this to say in an Associated Press article: “Cablevision has once again betrayed its subscribers. Cablevision pocketed almost $8 billion last year, and now customers aren’t getting what they pay for … again.”

Cablevision’s argument was that it already pays more than $200 million to Disney for programming, and that the additional $40 million Disney demanded was excessive. Terms of the agreement which got the Oscars on late were not disclosed.

The “win” for Disney may end up being beneficial for other broadcast networks who are also seeking compensation for their programming. The previous contract between ABC and Cablevision, (according to the AP article), gave away ABC programming for free.

The result of the dispute could also have some bearing on Disney’s contract with giant Time Warner Cable which expires in August, 2010. Interestingly enough, TMC sent an email to subscribers in the New York area today saying that their ABC access was not yet at risk.

• R480: 14.0” Display: 1366 x 768 resolution: $729.99
• R580: 15.6” Display: 1366 x 768 resolution: $829.99
• R780: 17.3” Display: 1600 x 900 resolution $929.99 (exclusively on BestBuy.com)

Vutopia is a new On Demand movie service available to digital movie tier subscribers at no additional charge. Whether or not the channel will be offered in high-definition is not clear yet.

Other HD channels to launch soon on Cox include Disney XD HD Hallmark Channel HD. We’ll get you more details on upcoming HD channels on Cox as we get them.

The NAD investigation stemmed from a complaint that AT&T had filed with the BBB, which says TMC ran advertising that showed AT&T as a character called “Ed” who conceded to AT&T’s additional HD charges rather than go with free HD from TMC.

Additional ads from Time Warner Cable focused negatively on AT&T’s contract terms, which AT&T said were unsupported.

As a result you will no longer see TMC offering free HD to subscribers. What will “Ed” do with his time now? Hey TMC, how about “HD channels no extra fee.” Just a suggestion.

iPad will be available in Wi-Fi models on April 3 in the U.S. for a suggested retail price of $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available in late April for a suggested retail price of $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB.

The Netflix base plan costs $8.99 with a Blu-ray Disc option for an extra $2 per month. This allows you to have one disc out at a time but unlimited as to how many you rent. The Blockbuster base plan also costs $8.99 per month for one disc out at time, but they don’t charge extra for Blu-ray discs.

Netflix and Blockbuster allow you to choose from their library of titles online, and Blockbuster has added the ability of picking up those titles once selected from local kiosks. Netflix is a “virtual” store with no retail stores or kiosks.

Both options have quick delivery time (between 1 and 2 days) and close to 100,000 titles (some in Blu-ray). Blockbuster has the additional service of allowing in-store returns and exchanges (with restrictions).

As far as digital delivery, both Netflix and Blockbuster offer titles on demand to Blu-ray players and HDTVs over the internet (although Netflix has more supported devices). But Blockbuster’s pay-per-title version isn’t nearly as competitive as Netflix’s unlimited streaming at no extra charge (although Blockbuster does have first-run movies — an advantage over Netflix).

Finally, both services allow online viewing on your PC but Blockbuster rentals and downloads require a PC running Windows XP or Windows Vista. Netflix is compatible with any browser on both PC and Mac platforms.

So why is Netflix leaving Blockbuster in the dust?

Blockbuster has alienated customers with their inconsistent late fee policies, which supposedly were done away with but are now returning according to an insider article earlier this week from Home Media Magazine.

There could also be the public perception that Blockbuster is going out of business, or at least bankrupt, as Blockbuster recently announced they would be closing over 545 stores this year (they have already closed over 1,300).

To pour more salt on the wounds, the fourth quarter ‘09 was disastrous for Blockbuster, who suffered a $435 million loss while Netflix profits were up $36 million. Netflix also added 1.16 million subscribers during the same quarter, which you can believe given their excessive online marketing.

Netflix has practically bombarded web surfers with ads and pop-unders from its affiliate partners. If you haven’t experienced a Netflix pop-under ad, you probably don’t spend too much time online. Sure the ads are annoying, but the product is good.

Finally, you can’t talk movie rentals without mentioning Redbox. They have about 20,000 kiosks nationwide and are currently dominating the market. Redbox isn’t streaming movies to your HDTV or Playstation 3 (not yet anyway) but have a large customer base that seems just fine paying $1 per day to rent a movie, rather than paying monthly membership fees for services they might not use.