HBOffal

HBOffal is your guide to Cable/Satellite Movie Channels. HBOffal rates the various movie services only for the presence or absence of garbage components, those extraneous self-promotional materials some service use to adulterate the movies they show. The content of the movie services is not rated. Whether the movies shown are bad or good is not relevant to the HBOffal rating. Currently, HBOffal does not rate Pay-Per-View services.

HBOffal is a continuation of a project started by Mark Lewis.  As before, accuracy of information on this website is only as good as the information submitted by you, the viewers.  If you were automagically redirected here from Mark's site, please update your bookmarks to point to this new address.

WHAT'S HOT

03/28/05 ACTION ALERT: Effective this morning, the Starz/Encore network has gone over the top.  They have replaced their already intrusive on-screen bugs with ones that are quite large and "flashy".  And the worst news is all the Starz/Encore channels seem to be showing them full time!  It's hard to believe any company could be that antagonistic to its caring viewers.  The only exception seems to be the two remaining High Def channels, Starz HD east and west, which remain logo-free.  (The two other High Def channels they've been offering are going dark effective 3/31/05.)  Unfortunately for me, I ordered a year of Starz at the beginning of '05 so I'm stuck with a worthless, unviewable set of channels for the better part of a year.

02/13/02 ACTION ALERT: Several years ago, Showtime thought it was a cool idea to start putting a SHO logo down in the lower-right corner of their movies, presumably to distract your attention  from the feature films.  A flood of angry mail led them to put a halt to the practice.  Now guess what, in this era of scrolling banners, dancing cartoon logos, and voice/video overs that all but replace the closing credits of movies, they are at it again, presumably thinking that viewers' standards are now low enough to accept this.  Please take a moment to do as I have done and let them know (by email or better yet, by snail mail) that this is not a good idea.  I think a point that should be stressed is they have never gained one customer by resorting to this practice, but they have probably lost hundreds, so it just doesn't make sense. 

10/01/01 ACTION ALERT: American Movie Classics is now interrupting its movies with commercials.  Email sent to them is read by an auto-responder, so they don't seem to care what viewers think about this little change!  If you care, snail mail is probably the way to go.  In the meanwhile, the service is no longer rated here.

08/23/01 ACTION ALERT: Two of the MultiMax (Cinemax) channels are experimenting with full time onscreen logos!  These channels are ActionMax and ThrillerMax (the east and west feeds of each).  They are probably doing this to gauge the practice's acceptance by viewers and the suits at HBO/Max are reading their mail and responding.  Send them snail mail if you are interested in seeing this practice stopped before it spreads to other services. 

03/01/00 ACTION ALERT:  HBO is now Pan'n'Scanning widescreen movies on its High Definition channels.  The sides of 2.35:1 aspect ratio movies  are being chopping off to fit them on the 16x9 High Def screen.  If you deplore this practice (even if you aren't High Def equipped now), let them know.

HBOffal Request: It is doubtful that we will be able to maintain the Letterbox chart as has been done previously.  If any of you have access to statistics showing percentage of OAR (Original Aspect Ratio) movies shown on the pay services and are able to generate a chart similar to the one on this site every 2-4 months, please contact us.  We can use you <g>.