Today's High-Def Headlines

Rainbow Pulls Plug On Voom HD Service - MCN
Rainbow Media Holdings, blaming a loss of carriage on Dish Network and the expected lengthy litigation stemming from that drop, is shutting down the domestic operations of its beleaguered Voom HD, its suite of 15 HD networks. Dish Network had been the largest distributor of the Voom HD services, but it dropped them in May in a contract dispute with Rainbow. That left Voom HD with only one U.S. distributor, Rainbow parent Cablevision Systems Corp., which will replace the HD services, reportedly in late January when they go off.

YouTube Launches HD Video Page - CNET
YouTube announced Thursday that it has launched a new landing page to corral all the high-definition video uploaded to the site.
Along with the new page, YouTube's HD player now launches in a widescreen window that takes up the majority of the browser window. YouTube posted an FAQ on how to how to encode HD videos and how to avoid "windowboxing"--images that are surrounded by black bars.

Time Warner Cable Pumps Up HD Volume in Manhattan - MCN
Time Warner Cable has added more than two dozen new high-definition basic channels to some of its 600,000 subscribers in Manhattan in New York City, and a full range of premium outlets’ HD multiplexes too. By a reporter’s observation, the Northern Manhattan system’s 700 (and upper 600) channel region, containing the basic HD channels, has added: NBC Universal-owned USA, Sci Fi Channel, CNBC, Bravo and The Weather Channel; MTV Networks’ Palladia; Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Channel; Comcast’s E! Entertainment, Golf Channel and Versus (separately), Style and G4; Liberty Media’s QVC; Fox Cable Networks’ FX and Speed Channel; Walt Disney Co.’s ABC Family, Disney Channel, Toon Disney, ESPNnews and ESPNU; Fox Business Network and Fox News Channel; A&E Networks’ A&E, History and Bio; Discovery’s Discovery and Science channels and Planet Green, all in HD.

Sales Growth of Flat-Panel TVs Is Expected to Slow - NY Times
Sales of flat panel TVs are going flat. In a reversal of fortune, television sales in the United States are predicted to drop in 2009, according to a new report from DisplaySearch, a market research firm. It would be the first sales decline in at least a decade, said DisplaySearch, and the first decline in revenue since 2000.

Panasonic To Buy Sanyo - TWICE
The boards of Panasonic and Sanyo officially signed off on a capital and business alliance Friday through which Panasonic will acquire controlling interest in Sanyo from major shareholders for around $9 billion to become one the world’s largest electronics manufacturers. Panasonic said it will aim to acquire the majority of the voting rights of Sanyo assuming full dilution (which takes into account conversion of Class A preferred stock and Class B preferred stock into common stock) by means of a public tender offer bid.