ION sets to launch HD in 2009, no kidding this time
By Steven Kim 
posted Oct 22nd 2008 1:19AM
posted Oct 22nd 2008 1:19AM
Seriously, guys, ION promises that this time around when it says it has a schedule for an HD launch, it's for real; maybe the previous 2008 figure was a clerical error, because now things are go for 2009. ION Television will lead things off in the first quarter, with the other two offerings getting switched on sometime later in the year -- qubo will target kids' eyeballs and multilingual ears and ION Life will offer up themes of "active lifestyles and personal growth." Sounds great, right? Well, not so fast -- even though the company has taken an extra year in prep, this year's press release has some pretty familiar echoes of the previous one that we don't like the sound of: "native and up-converted HD programming."
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Well it may not be great but at least they're trying. There's a bunch of so called HD channels (and ones that could really benefit from true HD) that are nothing more than "place holders" for real HD.
I don't think I've ever watched anything on ION but again at least they're giving HD a try.
You've probably never watched ion because all they show is Paid Programming except for about 5 hours during the late afternoon and evening hours. All it is is a paid programming channel. Nothing but infomercials and a waste of space.
ION is one of those conservative channels that doesn't show anything other than so-called "family friendly" programming, 90% of which seems to be reruns of 1980s junk. The fact they haven't gone HD yet isn't particularly surprising as I suspect a high proportion of their content is either on 480i videotape, or on film that will need reframing if they don't want to broadcast in stretchovision.
Considering their programming budget is probably significantly less than $10,000 a day, I would imagine they're going to have to work on their sources of programming if they want to actually do a true HD switch. Don't expect ION to be significantly better.