# Issues with New HD Channels



## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

Ok,
What in the world is up with the World Fishing Network, and the Hallmark Movie Channel? WFN has NOTHING IN HD, but strangely isn't that bad, more of a Outdoor fishing camping Channel. Would be nice to have some HD on it, its not even up converted SD. And what in the world is up with the HallMark Movie Channel? HD with Sidebards on every movie I have check in on. Even the new Phantom of the Opera. Whats worse are the GOLD side bars they are using, to frame in the movie, hurts the EYES. Thanks for not Stretching the channels but come on already.


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## Ressurrector (Jan 1, 2008)

GrumpyBear said:


> Ok,
> What in the world is up with the World Fishing Network, and the Hallmark Movie Channel? WFN has NOTHING IN HD, but strangely isn't that bad, more of a Outdoor fishing camping Channel. Would be nice to have some HD on it, its not even up converted SD. And what in the world is up with the HallMark Movie Channel? HD with Sidebards on every movie I have check in on. Even the new Phantom of the Opera. Whats worse are the GOLD side bars they are using, to frame in the movie, hurts the EYES. Thanks for not Stretching the channels but come on already.


haha I wonder the same...your right it isn't even upconverted.not sure if that's a blessing or curse really.... BUT you KNOW you always wanted to see an underwater camera of a small mouth bass in HD shades of Sega Bass fishing but REAL!! Dish has DONE their end........ they gave these guys an HD channel now if they won't provide REAL HD content its the channels fault... but as bad as this seems to be devoid of HD content I give this channel maybe 6 months till it gets the axe............. maybe less


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

Monday night I saw an HD movie on the Hallmark channel, didn't stop long enough to see what it was, but it was HD.


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## Kman68 (Jan 24, 2008)

Outdoor shows are being shot in HD, yet very few are telecast in HD. The current season of "Spanish Fly" in HD is beautiful. Would like to see "Fishing the Flats" in HD. It started using HD cameras last season, 2007. Saw it in the guide on WFN, but the episode is listed as 2002 production.


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## projectorguru (Mar 5, 2007)

GrumpyBear said:


> Ok,
> What in the world is up with the World Fishing Network, and the Hallmark Movie Channel? WFN has NOTHING IN HD, but strangely isn't that bad, more of a Outdoor fishing camping Channel. Would be nice to have some HD on it, its not even up converted SD. And what in the world is up with the HallMark Movie Channel? HD with Sidebards on every movie I have check in on. Even the new Phantom of the Opera. Whats worse are the GOLD side bars they are using, to frame in the movie, hurts the EYES. Thanks for not Stretching the channels but come on already.


Nothing new here, they will start showing HD as we move down the future, remember when Direct was so proud of all the HD? Same thing hardly any showing much HD, but will down the road


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

Hallmark HD has been out for a while, and maybe I have bad timing, but everything has in in 4:3 with Gold Bars. They need to make sure somebody who isn't colorBlind make up the format's.


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## normang (Nov 14, 2002)

Just expand your pic on HMHD, so that the gold bars are gone. Course it may look stretched, but then you won't see the bars..


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

Only thing worse than bars on a HD channel, is STRETCH-O-VISION


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## davethestalker (Sep 17, 2006)

Rather have Speed HD. I've yet to see any sort of HD content on TWC as well. Every so often when I look at Toon Disney, Disney, ABC Family, and Cartoon Network, I have not seen any HD content either. Although 700 Club was in HD the other night.

It does not make sense to me to add channels that are not aggressively adding HD content. It really ticks me off to watch Speed and see words being cut off where I have black bars  Especially, when your CEO has a vested interest in some of the content on Speed.


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## daemon (Apr 24, 2006)

I want Spike and Speed HD


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

davethestalker said:


> Rather have Speed HD. I've yet to see any sort of HD content on TWC as well. Every so often when I look at Toon Disney, Disney, ABC Family, and Cartoon Network, I have not seen any HD content either. Although 700 Club was in HD the other night.
> 
> It does not make sense to me to add channels that are not aggressively adding HD content. It really ticks me off to watch Speed and see words being cut off where I have black bars  Especially, when your CEO has a vested interest in some of the content on Speed.


Toon Disney and Disney have shown some HD. And are not stretching their other programs, so I give them a thumbs up.


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## Bobby H (Mar 23, 2008)

Does anyone know the bit rates being used for audio and video on the HD channels? Some of them definitely look better than others. I think HBO HD must be running at a higher bit rate since its image quality seems to be better than most of the others.

Can the ViP 722 receiver display technical data about the channel currently playing to show stuff like audio and video bit rate? My Playstation 3 will do that for Blu-ray movies.

The news channels (CNN HD, CNBC HD) look pretty good. Although I think the Weather Channel HD is kind of funny. About the only thing I see in HD is graphics on the local forecast stuff every 8 minutes.


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

Bobby H said:


> Does anyone know the bit rates being used for audio and video on the HD channels? Some of them definitely look better than others. I think HBO HD must be running at a higher bit rate since its image quality seems to be better than most of the others.


HBO has started to pre-compress their shows (they can do this since almost nothing is broadcast live) with a multiple-pass compression process that maximizes compression with the least impact on picture quality. At least one other network is also doing this for much of their content.

The advantage is that those programs don't have to rely on real-time compression, which, while good, simply can't compare to a multiple-pass compression job. Thus, the broadcasters (DirecTV, Dish, Comcast, etc.) can pass HBO without further compression, while most shows are still compressed "on the fly".

Expect to see more of this in the future, as the networks that run pre-recorded content figure out that they can achieve much better quality without an increase in bandwidth by pre-compressing their shows.

Live content will always have to live with on-the-fly compression, of course, but you can't really do anything about that and keep it real-time.


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## Henry (Nov 15, 2007)

Watched Part 2 of Blackbeard on Hallmark. Observations:

1. PQ was HD (full screen - no bars)
2. Contained commercials.
3. No CC provided.


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## elbodude (Jul 13, 2006)

GrumpyBear said:


> Ok,
> What in the world is up with the World Fishing Network, and the Hallmark Movie Channel? WFN has NOTHING IN HD, but strangely isn't that bad, more of a Outdoor fishing camping Channel. Would be nice to have some HD on it, its not even up converted SD. And what in the world is up with the HallMark Movie Channel? HD with Sidebards on every movie I have check in on. Even the new Phantom of the Opera. Whats worse are the GOLD side bars they are using, to frame in the movie, hurts the EYES. Thanks for not Stretching the channels but come on already.


I am eagerly waiting to see Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef on Bravo HD.


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## Banin (Jul 31, 2006)

elbodude said:


> I am eagerly waiting to see Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef on Bravo HD.


I watched Top Chef last night on Bravo HD, and it looked liked upconverted SD (maybe not even upconverted). It wasn't stretch-o-vision though, so it was still a better picture and I changed my DVR timer


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## lamp525 (Nov 3, 2006)

daemon said:


> I want Spike and Speed HD


also fxhd


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## kbuente (Mar 25, 2007)

My main concern with the new HD channels offered is that they didn't include WGN in HD! 

As I understand it, they don't even have to come up with more bandwidth as it is in test mode...just release it already!


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

lamp525 said:


> also fxhd


FXHD and Speed are, News Corp channels. Don't count on getting those Fox...(DirectTV) owned channels anytime soon.


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

GrumpyBear said:


> FXHD and Speed are, News Corp channels. Don't count on getting those Fox...(DirectTV) owned channels anytime soon.


DirecTV does NOT own Fox... 

The problem with those channels is that Fox intentionally put of conversion to HD because they didn't want to invest in 1st-generation equipment that they'd quickly have to replace, and because they wanted to wait until there was enough HD penetration with the broadcasters to get their HD signal to the people.

So... now Fox's stations are about a year behind the curve, but they are actively converting their equipment to HD and trying to get the bugs worked out. None of their channels are fully ready yet. Expect to see HD versions of Fox channels being lit up by Fall.


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## homeskillet (Feb 3, 2004)

Information for "The Weather Channel HD"
=========================

Rehearsals begin in May with the first of the new HD studio presentations to premiere on June 2. Upon completion of this transition to the HD studio in 2008, almost all of the programming on the network will originate in the true HD format. The network will have production and transmission technology in place to provide select field coverage of severe weather in HD starting with the first day of hurricane season, June 1.

http://press.weather.com/press_detail.asp?id=183


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

homeskillet said:


> Information for "The Weather Channel HD"
> =========================
> 
> Rehearsals begin in May with the first of the new HD studio presentations to premiere on June 2. Upon completion of this transition to the HD studio in 2008, almost all of the programming on the network will originate in the true HD format. The network will have production and transmission technology in place to provide select field coverage of severe weather in HD starting with the first day of hurricane season, June 1.
> ...


I'm trying to imagine beaming up an HD signal from HD equipment while some idiot is standing out in 100 mph winds.:sure:


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## rbyers (Jan 15, 2004)

Most of the new channels seemed to be mapped to the 94XX numbers .... Except for the Smithsonian channel. There seems to be plenty of room for it up there, so why is it only at 374? I'm already annoyed at E* for dropping all of the Voom channels. It isn't necessary to annoy me with this petty nonsense.


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

IIP said:


> DirecTV does NOT own Fox...
> 
> The problem with those channels is that Fox intentionally put of conversion to HD because they didn't want to invest in 1st-generation equipment that they'd quickly have to replace, and because they wanted to wait until there was enough HD penetration with the broadcasters to get their HD signal to the people.
> 
> So... now Fox's stations are about a year behind the curve, but they are actively converting their equipment to HD and trying to get the bugs worked out. None of their channels are fully ready yet. Expect to see HD versions of Fox channels being lit up by Fall.


I didn't say DirectTV owns Fox . I said those Fox...(DirectTV) owned stations. News Corp owns Fox, used to own DirectTV. and News Corps still favors DirectTV with their Fox station. So Don't count on getting any Fox....(DirectTV) owned Stations. Speed, FX, FoxMO and a slew of other, Fox Stations. sheesh 
:backtotop


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

HDG said:


> Watched Part 2 of Blackbeard on Hallmark. Observations:
> 
> 1. PQ was HD (full screen - no bars)
> 2. Contained commercials.
> 3. No CC provided.


I thought there was a law or regulation or something that CCs have to be provided although I have noticed many channels, especially in HD, do not have them. Maybe I'm thinking that all tvs have to be able to decode CC, I'm not sure now but I know there is a regulation set by government about this subject. Does anyone know what this rule is?


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## Kman68 (Jan 24, 2008)

GrumpyBear said:


> I didn't say DirectTV owns Fox . I said those Fox...(DirectTV) owned stations. News Corp owns Fox, used to own DirectTV. and News Corps still favors DirectTV with their Fox station. So Don't count on getting any Fox....(DirectTV) owned Stations. Speed, FX, FoxMO and a slew of other, Fox Stations. sheesh
> :backtotop


+1 When SPEED HD first rolled out as a DirecTV only station, SPEED had no HD equipment and no HD programing. According to SPEED the only reason SPEED HD went live was because Direc provided hosting. Visit the SPEED message boards and read Insider post after post explaining to the ignorant masses that very little of their SPEED HD content is in fact HD. The sheeple don't care, they believe that no black bars on a 16x9 image equals HD.

Read a redundant article this morning about voting and the moron bloc.


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## rogburr (Oct 24, 2006)

shortspark said:


> I thought there was a law or regulation or something that CCs have to be provided although I have noticed many channels, especially in HD, do not have them. Maybe I'm thinking that all tvs have to be able to decode CC, I'm not sure now but I know there is a regulation set by government about this subject. Does anyone know what this rule is?


New channels are not required to provide CC during the first four years of broadcasting. It all comes down to the question as to what constitutes a "new channel." For instance, the SD Travel Channel has CC on most shows, while their newish HD version has no CC. Is their new HD channel considered a new channel?


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## grog (Jul 3, 2007)

What's on HD tonight.

HD Guide Selected
Changed guide to (HD) and scanned the channels using the remote up button.

SD = 14
HD = 56
Black Bars = 8
No content "Check back often"! = 112 (*)

* Most of the "No content" stations never have any content (RSN).

Overall this is not bad at all. I know a some of the content may be upconverted but most of the HD content looked very good.

A lot of the stations listed include the duplicate mappings.
All I did was surf with my remote, nothing more!

The List
---------------------
0002 - Local HD ==> SD
0004 - Local HD ==> HD
0005 - Local HD ==> HD
0030 - Local HD ==> SD
0105 => HD
0110 => HD
0112 => HD
0118 => HD
0120 => HD
0122 => HD
0129 => HD
0138 => HD
0139 => HD
0140 => HD
0142 => HD
0144 => HD
0154 => Black Bars
0172 => SD
0174 => SD
0176 => HD 
0180 => SD
0182 => HD
0183 => HD
0183 => HD
0184 => HD
0200 => Cool Red Bars
0208 => Black Bars
0214 => SD
0215 => HD
0362 => HD
0364 => HD
0366 => HD
0369 => HD
0374 => HD
0383 => HD
0385 => HD
0394 => SD
0402 => Black Bars
0403 => Black Bars
0409 => No content "Check back often"!
0410 => ""
0411 => ""
0414 => ""
0415 => ""
0416 => ""
0417 => ""
0418 => ""
0419 => ""
0420 => ""
0424 => ""
0425 => ""
0426 => ""
0427 => ""
0428 => ""
0429 => ""
0430 => ""
0431 => ""
0436 => ""
0439 => Black Bars
0440 => No content "Check back often"!
0441 => ""
0442 => ""
0443 => ""
0444 => ""
0445 => ""
0446 => ""
... skip PPV
0541 => No content "Check back often"!
0542 => ""
0543 => ""
0544 => ""
0545 => ""
0546 => ""
0547 => ""
0548 => ""
0549 => ""
0550 => ""
0551 => ""
0552 => ""
0553 => ""
0554 => ""
0555 => ""
0556 => ""
0557 => ""
0558 => ""
.. skip PPV 
0561 => No content "Check back often"!
0562 => ""
0563 => ""
0564 => ""
0565 => ""
0566 => ""
0567 => ""
0568 => ""
0569 => ""
0570 => ""
0571 => ""
0572 => ""
5409 => ""
5410 => ""
5411 => ""
5414 => ""
5415 => ""
5416 => ""
5417 => ""
5418 => ""
5419 => ""
5420 => ""
5424 => ""
5425 => ""
5426 => ""
5427 => ""
5428 => ""
5429 => ""
5430 => ""
5431 => ""
5436 => ""
5710 => HD
6453 => Local HD => SD
6454 => Local HD => SD
6455 => Local HD => SD
6456 => Local HD => SD
9419 => HD
9420 => HD
9421 => HD
9422 => HD
9423 => HD
9424 => HD
9425 => HD
9426 => Black Bars
9427 => HD
9431 => HD
9432 => HD
9433 => HD
9434 => SD
9436 => Neat red bars
9437 => HD
9438 => SD
9439 => SD
9449 => SD
9461 => HD
9462 => HD
9463 => HD
.. skip PPV
9469 => HD
9487 => HD
9488 => HD
9489 => HD
9491 => HD
9492 => HD
9494 => HD
9499 => HD
9500 => HD
9501 => No content "Check back often"!
9502 => ""
9503 => ""
9504 => ""
9508 => HD
... skip PPV
9514 => No content "Check back often"!
9515 => ""
9516 => ""
9541 => ""
9542 => ""
9543 => ""
9544 => ""
9545 => ""
9546 => ""
9547 => ""
9548 => ""
9549 => ""
9550 => ""
9551 => ""
9552 => ""
9553 => ""
9554 => ""
9555 => ""
9556 => ""
9557 => ""
9558 => ""
9561 => ""
9562 => ""
9563 => ""
9564 => ""
9565 => ""
9566 => ""
9567 => ""
9568 => ""
9569 => ""
9570 => ""
9571 => ""
9572 => ""


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

rogburr said:


> New channels are not required to provide CC during the first four years of broadcasting. It all comes down to the question as to what constitutes a "new channel."  For instance, the SD Travel Channel has CC on most shows, while their newish HD version has no CC. Is their new HD channel considered a new channel?


I suppose CCs cost money and no station is going to provide them as a "public service" for that reason. The Travel Channel should not be considered "new" simply because it is in HD but they don't provide CC because it might cost them a few bucks to do so. They use the loophole of a "new" channel to get out of it. Besides, that is really stupid to begin with. I can maybe see a one year window for new stations to provide captions but four years makes no sense. Why not five years - or ten? It's a matter not only of money but numbers. Most people do not use captions and they are not concerned that the minority of viewers that are hearing impaired might switch channels. They just don't care.


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## Quakeman (Apr 23, 2007)

I watched the new BSG Friday on SCI FI HD, and am not totally convinced it was at full HD resolution. It was widescreen, but something did not seem right. For example, Starbuck's face had those weird purple lines you get sometimes with an SD broadcast. The picture did not seem as sharp as when Universal HD showed BSG reruns in HD.

It could just be my imagination. However, having SCI FI consistently show HD would make me a lot less irritated about the Voom deal.


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## MQuinn (Apr 18, 2005)

Quakeman said:


> I watched the new BSG Friday on SCI FI HD, and am not totally convinced it was at full HD resolution. It was widescreen, but something did not seem right. For example, Starbuck's face had those weird purple lines you get sometimes with an SD broadcast. The picture did not seem as sharp as when Universal HD showed BSG reruns in HD.
> 
> It could just be my imagination. However, having SCI FI consistently show HD would make me a lot less irritated about the Voom deal.


The really cheesy way to get at the bitrate is to copy the program to an external HD, where it will tell you the size. BSG is indeed much smaller than most of the movies. If I recall - 2ish hour movies are between 6 and 8 GB, whereas BSG was about 2 GB..
Forgot to check if it was 1920 or 1440 width.


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## Quakeman (Apr 23, 2007)

MQuinn said:


> The really cheesy way to get at the bitrate is to copy the program to an external HD, where it will tell you the size. BSG is indeed much smaller than most of the movies. If I recall - 2ish hour movies are between 6 and 8 GB, whereas BSG was about 2 GB..
> Forgot to check if it was 1920 or 1440 width.


That's a good idea. I don't have an external drive, but I tracked a few things I recorded and deleted and came up with some numbers (length in real time, time freed on DVR, percentage):

Hogan's Heroes, HDNet, 23 / 34 = 68%
American Idol, FoxHD off the air, 60 / 64 = 94%
FA Cup Final, FSN SD, 30 / 181 = 17%
American Idol, FoxHD, off the air, 118 / 124 = 95%
Champions League Final, ESPN2 HD, 103 / 216 = 48%
BSG, Sci Fi SD, 9 / 64 = 14%
BSG, Sci Fi HD, 35 / 64 = 55%

I suppose this is a rough approximation, but it suggests that really HD shows (i.e. Idol) have a lot more data than "fake" HD (i.e. new BSG episodes). However, the new Sci Fi HD seems to use a lot more data than the regular channel.

To really compare, I need to tape a BSG episode off of Universal and see if it's different.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Quakeman said:


> I suppose this is a rough approximation, but it suggests that really HD shows (i.e. Idol) have a lot more data than "fake" HD (i.e. new BSG episodes).


Not fake, you've just overlooked another variable. HD received OTA is MPEG2. SciFi HD and Universal HD are MPEG4 which takes up about half the space of an MPEG2 recording.


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## dahenny (Apr 16, 2007)

GrumpyBear said:


> ...WFN has NOTHING IN HD...


I don't remember the source, but I heard that WFNHD would be providing some HD content this coming fall.


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## grog (Jul 3, 2007)

Size of the MPEG file does not tell you anything really.

Both MPEG2 and MPEG4 are compressed. So the content has a lot to do with the size of the file. You can only compare 'apples to apples' if the content is the same.

The cartoon network in HD should compress a lot better than say... HDTV or Travel channels content.



BobaBird said:


> Not fake, you've just overlooked another variable. HD received OTA is MPEG2. SciFi HD and Universal HD are MPEG4 which takes up about half the space of an MPEG2 recording.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

Jim5506 said:


> Monday night I saw an HD movie on the Hallmark channel, didn't stop long enough to see what it was, but it was HD.


I noticed _Frankenstein _was in HD this evening.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

GrumpyBear said:


> Hallmark HD has been out for a while, and maybe I have bad timing, but everything has in in 4:3 with Gold Bars. They need to make sure somebody who isn't colorBlind make up the format's.


Cycle through the Format (* key) and change the bars to gray. Gold bars gone, no stretch-o-vision.


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

TulsaOK said:


> Cycle through the Format (* key) and change the bars to gray. Gold bars gone, no stretch-o-vision.


Thanks for the tip, never thought about changing my bars, would effect theirs.


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## banre (May 23, 2008)

tnsprin said:


> Toon Disney and Disney have shown some HD. And are not stretching their other programs, so I give them a thumbs up.


Yup, they do show a few things in HD. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is pretty stunning!


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