DBSTalk News on Starz HD!

[Scott Greczkowski]

As you may have heard Starz will be launching its own suite of HD services soon!

Because the press release was a little vauge I decided to contact Tom Southwick who is one of the PR people for Starz/Encore.

The press release failed to mention the launch date of the new offerings, Tom tells me they will be available by the end of the year.

The Starz HD Package will indeed be made available to C Band Subscribers (unlike ESPN-HD which is unavailable to Big Dish Owners)

Starz is currently in negoations with both DBS providers.

The new "Sharper Movies HD" channel will be available seperate from the Starz Superpack and will be its own new channel, again the movies shown here will likely not be recent movies shown on Starz.

Hope that give you a better picture of whats coming from Starz!

[Mark Holtz]

The question will be then is if the channels will be shown in their original aspect ratio, or still be panned-and-scanned to fit the 16:9 window.

[Eyedox]

... The Million Dollar Question ...

[invaliduser88]

Will it be true HD (1080i or 720p) or the HD imposter (480p)?

[MikeW]

Will this mean they will have first run movies on Starz-HD then run it later on Starz-SD?

[Chris Freeland]

Originally posted by invaliduser88
Will it be true HD (1080i or 720p) or the HD imposter (480p)?

The impression I got from the press releases that I got was that StarzHD and Sharper Movies HD would be 1080i, Starz Hi Res would be 480p wide screen, the latter would be for those cable systems who did not want to use the bandwidth for real HD.