Premium cable programmer HBO has committed to make all 26 of its program feeds, representing all the HBO and Cinemax multiplex channels, available in 1080-line-interlace (1080i) HDTV.

The high-def expansion, announced today by HBO Chairman and CEO Bill Nelson, will begin later this year with anticipated completion by the end of second quarter 2008. (http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6451493.html?nid=3347)

Guess we can only dream of the MovieNetwork, MovieCentral folllowing suit :rolleyes:

That whould be nice if TMN and Mc does that sometime

Movie Central needs to have Encore Avenue in HD just like TMN has its secondary movie service MPix I believe in HD. I'm guessing if Movie Central had Encore Avenue in HD is would be mostly up converted SD but that would still be nice.

First things first. MC has to address the problem of a lousy HD title selection. Several HD titles shown on TMNHD are not shown on MCHD. For example, Movie Central apparently never obtains the HD version of Disney movies (see this thread). How do they get away with that?

Followup to original story:

HBO announced at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo that all of their HDTV programming will be distributed in MPEG-4. HBO will distribute a total of 26 channels in HD MPEG-4 by sometime in 2008. This HBO decision has implications for all video service providers, with particular impact on operators who operate in an MPEG-2 environment.

MPEG-2 operators will either have to transcode the HBO MPEG-4 signal back down to MPEG-2, or upgrade their networks (and customer set top boxes) to offer MPEG-4 distribution. To make things a little more complicated, HBO will encode their signal at 8 Mbps, and may mandate no further compression of that signal. This impacts TelcoTV operators who are utilizing a DSL infrastructure, because it will become a ‘bandwidth’ hog, compared to other MPEG-4 signals. The end effect may be a competitive advantage to DBS and cable MSOs who can more easily distribute an 8 Mbps HBO HD signal, thus providing a potentially better HBO viewing experience.

When oh when can we have free trade apply to TV?