The content may be the same but the audio (5.1) and video (1080i) resolution are not. There's a company out there that handles the censorship for HBO and other movie channels. I'm guessing they do it offline but if they do it online, that might explain the one-hour delay.

What is MOST important is that currently, Malaysian cinemas are showing more "stuff" than Astro. No full frontal nudity but definitely more violence and more foul language. I don't understand the discrepancies but Astro can make a case for it, if they want to.

That sounds about right. AEC and Vaanavil should be next. Then Astro will have to deal with the Chinese and Indian channels and asking them for HD feeds.

This is good news because that will push OTA channels (Media Prima and RTM) to change their transmission to HD. This means that everything else down the production line will have to be upgraded.

When Formula 1 was on, did you complain to MMC that it was not a HD feed but an upconvert?

You can complain to Astro that ESPN HD's quality suffers, but you can't claim that they are "cheating on HD" because they are merely re-transmitting the content based on what ESPN is giving them. Just like how some movies on HBO HD is not in HD or in 5.1. What you need to do is demand ESPN to give you the quality as before.
fuad