abc family, what a joke

Lkr

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Apr 19, 2008
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They have the Harry Potter weekend, but NONE of them are in HD, let alone 16:9. I'm watching on ABC Family HD on E*. They were all in HD on regular ABC a month ago, why is it in SD now? ABC Family HD is such a joke with content. I have Harry Potter on HD-DVD, so its not a big concern, but when I'm watching TV and its on, I expect to watch a film, and then its not in HD.
 
I agree 100%. When you show something in HD one week on ABC and then on your HD channel the next week, it should be HD. Same thing they do with Disney channel. I have kids. We want to watch HD content on the family channels.

S~
 
It's funny, it seemed like the Disney nets were actually doing a little better than the others. But last night, I noticed a bunch of the HD channels had movies on, so I decided to check them all. The results were almost the opposite of what I expected. A&E had Die Hard in HD, but Bravo was showing Lethal Weapon in 4:3. (In the past, I've seen HD movies on Bravo, but not A&E). ABC Fam and Disney were both showing big budget movies in 4:3, but Sci Fi had Ginger Snaps 3 in HD. WGN had ET in 4:3, but TBS had a bunch of mediocre comedies all night and they were beautiful.

You know, almost every movie has at least an animorphic SD master available, because that's how 90% of DVDs are produced. They should at least be upconverting these for the HD channels, rather than just showing the 4:3 versions.
 
The only time I have seen HD on ABC Family was when they played Nanny McPhee. Quite the shame.

Edge
 
It's funny, it seemed like the Disney nets were actually doing a little better than the others. But last night, I noticed a bunch of the HD channels had movies on, so I decided to check them all. The results were almost the opposite of what I expected. A&E had Die Hard in HD, but Bravo was showing Lethal Weapon in 4:3. (In the past, I've seen HD movies on Bravo, but not A&E). ABC Fam and Disney were both showing big budget movies in 4:3, but Sci Fi had Ginger Snaps 3 in HD. WGN had ET in 4:3, but TBS had a bunch of mediocre comedies all night and they were beautiful.

You know, almost every movie has at least an animorphic SD master available, because that's how 90% of DVDs are produced. They should at least be upconverting these for the HD channels, rather than just showing the 4:3 versions.


HDNet Movies Had ET on lastnight in HD :)
 
The only time I have seen HD on ABC Family was when they played Nanny McPhee. Quite the shame.

Edge

Most of the new ABC Family series are in HD (Kyle XY, Middleman, etc) but thats all I've really seen.

Other than that, as many have said ABC Family HD and Disney HD are not showing most movies in HD.
 
Understand that Disney fought the whole idea of 16x9 format movies on DVD (e.g., Snow Dogs) and you can see why they are so slow to adopt widescreen format on their cable channels. I think the thinking at Disney is that kids are the ones watching and they will be the last ones to get widescreen TVs in their bedrooms, so why bother.

ABC Family and the Disney Channels all in HD are a waste of bandwidth. E* should have held off carrying them until they were ready to really go HD or at least got a good price concession on the Disney package. There are so many other real HD channels out there waiting for Dish bandwidth and we get Harry Potter in 4x3 SD.
 
HDNet Movies Had ET on lastnight in HD :)

Yes. I fast forwarded the recording to see if the shotguns were still there as it was the easiest thing to check to see if it was the 'kid friendly' version. The picture looked good but I generally dont like redone movies except in rare circumstances (Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now for example). So instead I will get out my ET original on DVD.
 
I agree that ABC Family is really dropping the ball. There have been many many movies and shows on ABC Family that are known to be available in HD, but are shown in SD. For shame.
 
I find it fascinating that these movies are shown with such poor PQ in 4:3 on "HD" designated channels. Heck, if they (ABC Family) went down to Wal-Mart, paid $15 for the widescreen DVD, and then used a $79 upconverting DVD player for their source, the quality would be far better.