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Television's Future Could Be 'Horrible'

television Song, Dance and Destruction Made by Whedon and many of his regulars during his frustration withthe writers strike, the tale of a hapless villain/song-and-danceman sparkles with all the knowing pop culture glory of "Buffy."

But it adds new levels of comic absurdity, as Dr. Horrible, achallenging role played to perfection by Neil Patrick Harris,shares the screen with a cowboy chorus and blogs about his evilplans until he realizes the authorities can see blogs and foil saidplans. He's torn between taking over the world (he wants changejust as our candidates do) and winning the love of sweet,altruistic Penny (Felicia Day).

Vying to enter the Evil League of Evil, Dr. Horrible has a nemesis,the beefy, do-gooding cad Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion, fromWhedon's "Firefly"). And the delight isn't just in the gloriouslyconflicted Dr. Horrible but in the catchy, comic tunes the castbreaks into to advance the story. It is no faint praise to say that"Dr. Horrible" brings to mind musical episodes of "Buffy," "Scrubs"and "The Simpsons."

Kicking It Over From PC to TV

On very short notice, Whedon first put it up for free for a week inmid-July and now wants people to pay a nominal sum to see it. Overthe weekend, I became one of many propelling it totop-of-the-charts status on iTunes, the only place it is available.

The cost is US$1.99 for each of three "acts," or episodes; thewhole thing is $3.99. It took about 30 minutes to download all 500megabytes over a wireless network

. And, of course, iTunes being iTunes, I had to update the software(another 10 minutes or so) before I could even consider startingthe download.

With two cables, for picture and sound, I then plugged my laptopinto my TV and got a presentation equal to good,standard-definition TV fare. The only issue was in Act 2, with thesound lagging just behind the onscreen lip movements, like an old,dubbed Hercules movie. (The problem persisted when I tried to watchon the laptop alone, too, so it must have been in the file itself;the same thing sometimes happens when I record NBC's "The Office"to the digital video recorder.)

When You Won't Have to Kick It at All

But if it's already that simple to display iTunes (or Amazon Unboxor CinemaNow or Hulu, etc.) content on your TV screen, the eventualultimate merger can't be that far off. Just recently,

TiVo

 (Nasdaq: TIVO)  announced that YouTube  content can be seen through those digital video recorders.

You could watch "Dr. Horrible" on your iPod, to be sure, butdespite being made in a week and for less than $100,000, this is afully designed production, entirely worthy of screen real estate.

And its rapid, viral marketing

 -- which has paid off in people being willing to pay to see it anddo the work to download it -- suggests that Whedon has discoveredone portion of the video future.  

© 2008 McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. All rightsreserved.

© 2008 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.