The commentary is in English, but whats on the screen is not, so you can't read the crawl and anything else.
Our receivers, except like HR2x series, always show 1080i now, ever since they got rid of native mode. Even if you tune to like C-Span, it will show 1080i. So that method does not work anymore. Perhaps someone with an old HR2x in native mode can tell us. Didn't you have one at one point, actually?
It looks better now than when it first came on, you can read small text on the screen that you would otherwise not be able to read. Here is the thing... It was added to the 103 satellite. Most things there are HD. There is MPEG4 SD, too, however, like many of the Spanish channels, and the PI channels that are in MPEG4 in the 300s. 1+1 doesn't fit either of those categories, so it is likely that IS HD at some level in the Directv system. The SD international channels are now MPEG4 on the 99 satellite, and the HD ones have always been treated as "regular" HD channels.