Hewlett-Packard has signed a deal with Sony Pictures to turn out DVDs from the studio's library whenever customers request them, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Thursday). The deal will allow consumers to order movies that ordinarily would not be stocked by dealers because they are too obscure or too old. HP indicated that it expects to sign similar deals with other studios. "We're hoping this provides another option to make available products that wouldn't necessarily garner widespread retail shelf space," Jason Spivak, head of strategic development at Sony Home Entertainment, told the Times.Added Doug Warner, head of HP's digital content business, "If studios can sell more catalog than previously, they can generate more money."

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert was scheduled to undergo surgery today (Thursday) to reverse some of the effects of previous operations related to his battle with cancer, Ebert said on his blog Wednesday. "On Jan. 24, I'll have another surgery, which I hope will solve some problems I've still been living with," Ebert wrote. "I'll be in a hospital for a while (nothing like last time, I trust!). I have written a lot of advance reviews, Great Movies and even Answer Man columns for use during my absence. I plan to return full-time as soon as possible." Ebert has been unable to speak since undergoing a tracheotomy in 2006 during an operation for complications from a previous surgery for cancer of the salivary gland.

In yet another sign that the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray is nearly over, with Blu-ray emerging as the de facto hi-def standard, sales data, published by The Digital Bits website, indicated Wednesday that Blu-ray players accounted for 93 percent of the high-definition players sold for the week ending January 12. The week was the first following Warner Bros. announcement that it would no longer release films in the HD DVD format after April 30. High-Def Disc News also reported that during the same week movies released in the Blu-ray format accounted for 85 percent of high-definition sales.

Despite what some analysts regarded as cutthroat competition from Blockbuster, online DVD renters Netflix reported a 6 percent boost in fourth-quarter earnings to $15.8 million on revenue of $1.2 billion. The figures beat analysts' expectations. The company also reported an increase of 451,000 new subscribers in the quarter, bringing its total number to 7.48 million. It said it expects to finish this year with between 8.4 million and 8.9 million subscribers. Despite the upbeat report, Netflix shares plunged 7.5 percent on the Nasdaq to $22.01 in mid-morning trading even as other media stocks began to recover from the pummeling they took earlier in the week.

Movie Gallery told a federal bankruptcy court in Virginia Wednesday that it plans to close several hundred additional stores and asked the court for permission to spend about $1 million to pay its employees bonuses while those stores are being closed and for severance payments when they actually shut down. The company has already closed nearly 600 underperforming and/or unprofitable stores under "Phase 1" of its bankruptcy plan. Nevertheless, it continues to operate about 3,640 Movie Gallery, Hollywood Video, and Game Crazy stores.

People magazine was the only entertainment-related magazine able to put Heath Ledger on its cover this week, since all of its rivals had already gone to press following his death. As a result, the magazine will have the advantage this week in the competition at the supermarket check-out lines over such competitors as Us Weekly, Star and OK. Us will feature Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus; OK, Britney Spears; and Star, sister Jamie Lynn Spears. Meanwhile, the gossip website TMZ reported today (Thursday) that Jake Gyllenhaal, who costarred with Ledger in Brokeback Mountain and became close friends with him, is too upset to comment on his death. Gyllenhaal is currently filming Brothers in New Mexico, and, according to TMZ, "the set has been closed to non-crew members and extra security has been hired" to prevent reporters from approaching the actor.

UPDATE: Entertainment Weekly, which, like People, is published by Time, Inc., says it was also able to "crash in" a Heath Ledger cover for its latest edition, which hits the stands today.

Fox had its best week in history last week -- except for the weeks when it aired the Super Bowl -- as it took the top-five positions in the Nielsen ratings list and posted a 13.4 average rating and a 21 share for the week -- more than twice the rating of any other network. Final figures indicated that the NFC Championship, in which the New York Giants defeated the Green Bay Packers, drew 53.94 million viewers, a number unlikely to be beaten by any other program this year save for the Super Bowl. American Idol, which also overwhelmed, was less overwhelming than in previous years as the first night of the season drew 33.4 million -- down 11 percent from the premiere a year ago. CBS was the second-ranked network for the week, averaging a 6.3/10. NBC finished third with a 5.1/8, while Fox trailed with a 4.1/7.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research: 1. NFC Championship: Giants at Green Bay, Fox, 29.0/43; 2. NFC Championship (Post-Game), Fox, 21.6/33; 3. American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 17.7/26; 4. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox, 16.7/25; 5. Fox NFC Championship (Post-Game), Fox, 13.1/21; 6. NCIS, CBS, 9.9/15; 7. CSI: Miami, CBS, 9.7/16; 8. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS, 9.1/14; 9. Deal Or No Deal (Monday), NBC, 9.0/14; 10. Without a Trace, CBS, 8.8/15.

Fox's The Moment of Truth from reality-show producer Mike Darnell, in which contestants are hooked up to lie detectors, drew the highest ratings of any new show of the season Wednesday night, posting a 13.1 rating and a 20 share in the 9:00 p.m. hour, following an audition episode of American Idol. (The Idol episode pulled a 15.3/23 at 8:00 p.m., down 16 percent from the comparable night a year ago.) But if the ratings were the best of the season, reviews were likely the worst. Max Roush in TV Guide wrote: "Who with a brain or a soul could do anything but despise Fox's new bottom-of-the-reality-barrel time-waster, which turned out to be as dull as it was degrading?" Adam Buckman in the New York Post called it "a slow-paced bore." Mark Perigard in the Boston Herald described it as "cringe-worthy." And at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, journalism student Bassem Etim, writing in the student newspaper, the Badger Herald, pronounced it, "the beginning of the end of TV as we know it."

The History Channel's Life After People, in which visual-effects artists depicted how the major structural landmarks of the Earth, including the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Seattle Space Needle would eventually deteriorate and collapse if people no longer existed, drew the cable network its biggest audience in, er, history. The History Channel said Wednesday that 5.4 million viewers tuned in on Monday, making the two-hour program the most-watched cable-network show of the night. That figure also topped or strongly rivaled several broadcast network programs during the same time period.

NBC, which finished last season in last place among the major networks, said Wednesday that, unlike its rivals, it does not plan to shelve the scripts that it had intended to develop into pilots and perhaps full-time series before the writers' strike hit. "We bet on the writers we were in business with, and we feel that it is important for us to give them the opportunities that we bet on," NBC Entertainment executive vice president Teri Weinberg told Broadcasting & Cable. Universal Media Studios chief Katherine Pope told the trade publication that not all of the scripts will be produced as pilots, indicating that some "may go direct to series."

Dan Rather's efforts to get CBS to produce in court documents that it has previously withheld concerning the investigation into "Rathergate" could backfire, the network suggested Wednesday. Speaking to reporters, CBS lawyer Jim Quinn said that the network was prepared to produce "virtually all of the materials" that Rather has requested, including a report by documents examiner Erik T. Rigler, which Rather has suggested had been hushed up because they confirmed the authenticity of the controversial documents he referred to on his disputed 60 Minutes II broadcast about President Bush's National Guard service. But Quinn said Tuesday that the Rigler study, far from supporting Rather's claims, will do "just the opposite."

CBS, which had often called up Bob Barker to host a primetime version of The Price Is Right -- usually during the summer rerun period -- will be calling up current host Drew Carey to do so for the first time beginning February 22. The network indicated that the show will run for six weeks. Carey, who has pulled double-duty on primetime network TV in the past when The Drew Carey Show and Whose Line Is It Anyway ran simultaneously on ABC, won't have to do so again when Price returns. CBS said that it is pulling Carey's Power of 10 from its schedule but indicated that the game show would likely return later in the year. Wednesday night's edition drew a dreadful 3.0 rating and a 5 share.

The union representing employees of Thai Airways has filed a complaint with the country's Ministry of Culture claiming that the TV soap opera Air Hostess War (Songkhram Nang Fah) presents a damaging image of airline hostesses. The union particularly objected to an episode in which actresses playing the hostesses engaged in a brawl over a handsome pilot. The union has also lashed out at the show's producers, Exact, for depicting flight attendants wearing skirts that are much shorter than those worn by actual Thai Airways flight attendants. The soap opera is an adaptation of a Thai novel originally created on the Internet by a former Thai Airways hostess. Union President Somsak Srinual said in a statement that the depictions "could mislead society, especially youths, to misunderstand or hate people in this profession." A Culture Ministry spokesman said that the government planned to bring all sides together on Friday to discuss the issue.