The Biography Channel to go HD on November 28th
by Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Nov 16th 2007 at 1:41PM
DirecTV signed a deal that'll make it the first HD provider to carry the Biography Channel in HD. No word if anyone else will carry this simulcast of the original Bio, but from the very start, half of their primetime programming will be produced in HD; and by the middle of next year, 65% of all the programming will get the HD treatment. In the meantime, SD programming will be upconverted to the "the enhanced format" -- which we're pretty sure means stretch-o-vision.
Filed under: Satellite, New content
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TrentD @ Nov 16th 2007 2:00PM
Stretch-O-Vision is worse than SD, if you ask me. Let my display's high quality scaler take care of the image and adjust it to my liking.
Jeff N. @ Nov 16th 2007 4:39PM
I agree. I hate that stretch-o-vision. At least they have some true HD content coming on. TBS HD has not shown one true HD anything. It's all stretch-0-vision!!!
Big Sam @ Nov 16th 2007 4:52PM
The quotes should be around "upconverted" as well as "the enhanced format" since neither of those is true.
Strap @ Nov 16th 2007 5:44PM
Agreed. I just can't get excited about all these new "HD" channels because I know most of what they'll be showing is stretch-o-vision crapola.
Kevin Murphy @ Nov 17th 2007 1:23PM
It's time the FCC set a standard for HD broadcast formats, such as always pillarboxing SD, and/or having consistent mandatory flags for SD and presentation format. This would allow TV and set-top-box manufacturers to offer preference settings and automatically meet the customer's presentation wishes, even if it is for the lame-ass moronic stretch mode.
Banned, in particular, would be TNT's half-crop, half-stretch mangle-vision, and their habit of labeling all their content "HD" when none of it is.
On a better note, A&E and Turner seem to be the last cretin hold-outs. The 5 new channels added by DirecTV this week all correctly pillarbox SD content. Which makes it not a total loss -- at least there's quality SD broadcasting on DirecTV again.