HBO HD Inconsistencies (Audio and video)
 

I've been enjoying the HiDef channels with my recent change over to RCN cable and for HBO-HD it's been kind of hit or miss. 'Episode III' was amazing. As was 'Titanic' - the 2.35 image was glorious to say the least, I saw alot of detail in the costumes and jewerly I have not really noticed in standard DVD form - however, the sound for some reason was not up to par. The sound from my Motorola cable box was sending a 2-channel mix to my Yamaha receiver which in turn was decoding it at Pro-Logic sound - I did a faux 70mm sound effect, which was a letdown since this film should have been in Dolby Digital 5.1. James Cameron's 'True Lies' on the other hand looked absolutely fantastic, albeit in reformatted/cropped 1.78, the sound this time around was correctly presented in bombastic 5.1 sound. It was a letdown to record the late night airing of Michael Mann's 'The Last of the Mohicans' which was presented in full screen - ack! For a HD channel, the presentations range from the bad to the spectacular.

Showtime's HD channel is much, much better. I find the picture to be better and the channel always shows in OAR. It ticks me off how inconsistent HBO is with OAR.

This is a bug with the Comcast HD DVR. Anything that's saved is recorded in stereo. I haven't seen many complaints, but I'm not subscribed to the discussion over @ AVS.

I have the Motorola HD-DVR from Comcast and it will certainly record the full 5.1. HBO's airing of Titanic is an older HD transfer and only has a 2.0 soundtrack. This has nothing to do with the DVR.

Once upon a time, HBO used to air 2.35:1 movies in their full OAR, but they only offered 2.0 audio back then. Later, they upgraded to 5.1 audio, however at the same time they instituted a policy of cropping all movies to 16:9 regardless of their original aspect ratio. So now your choice is to watch an older transfer in its OAR with 2.0 audio, or a newer transfer in 5.1 but cropped. There are very few exceptions where you'll get both OAR and 5.1.

well that explains alot - thanks Josh. (maybe I should upgrade my cable subscription to get Showtime HD also- hmmmm)