Home Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

Depends on the source

The HBO HD and Showtime HD constatly broadcast teh same movies that are on the normal channels.
So, whether or not the films are mastered in 1080i HD or upsampled to 1080i for broadcast depends onthe source film.

All those upsampled or original to 1080i (HD) are in widescreen mode.
Sometimes they are cropped so they are quasi widescreen, but cropped a bit to make the image bigger (instead of a thin horizontal slice, if you clip the sides you can take a bigger horizontal slice).

If you look on the HD info sites you can get a listing of which movies on HBO and Showtime HD are in HD. Normally 1-3 films per day are in actual HD or upsampled HD (which does not look as good)/
Most new titles are now coming out in HD, so things are getting better.

I think the investment for HD is questionable in the current market, and you certainly shouldn;t get it without Dish.
If you do have the moeny to spend though , it certainly looks better than DVD, but that is on my 100" screen, I dunno if the results will be as shocking on a smaller screen( but I suspect they still will)

Whenever a film is true 1080i or upsampled it normally includes a DD5.1 soundtrack on the HD channel, yes.

Does this answer your questions?


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