MTV Channels rebrand & go widescreen

According to this thread on DS

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1482479

and this website shows the logos

http://www.mediabg.ru/ru/news/40/ - in Russian
http://www.mediabg.ru/en/news/40/ - in English but without the new logos on the Russian page

they are dropping the "music television" wording that you couldn't ever read anyway.

I'm sceptical of this. The link seems rather vague about the widescreen change - it says

Which seems to imply that it's only the logo that's changing to 16:9 ratio? But hopefully not, they've been needing to change for a while.

I read it as the channels are all going 16:9 - I hope I've read it right.

If so, hopefully the Comedy Central (non-HD) channels will go widescreen at the same time.

Adverts have been in 16:9 letterbox for a few weeks now.

New shows on MTV are in 16:9 now, letterboxed.

About time - it's ridiculous to have 16:9 content shown in a 4:3 frame.

I'm glad MTVN HD is getting renamed, that name just makes no sense. But MTV HD rather than MTV Live HD would be more fitting because they show a lot of videos too. But then again, MTV1 shows no music.

Makes perfect sense to me - it can either be read as MTV Networks HD, or MTV/Nickelodeon HD - both of which adequately describe the channel's content.

I have to say I like MTVNHD more than any of the other music channels. Clean and crisp.

But how many people actually know what MTVN HD stands for? It just looks like a typo.

Every major junction they have a "Now, Next and Later" slide which has the MTVN logo, beside both MTV and Nickelodeon logos. It's not tricky to work out.

The N actually stands for Networks, not Nickelodeon. But the name has always sounded off to me.

I thought it was intended to read as "MTVNetworks HD" too, with its initial premise of being an HD mix service for the Viacom channels, but was corrected by someone on here who said that it stood for "MTVNickelodeon HD" and that only, as per the aforementioned Now/Next menus (which carried on using the classic Nick logo even after the main channel had switched to the new one /funfact).

The launch of Nick's own HD simulcast has therefore rendered the 'N' superfluous for the past 6 or so months. I'm not sure why it wasn't dropped then.

And I guess it was only a matter of time before the botched crop job logos made it over here. Not that it bothers me, what with being outside their target audience of people who like their content obstructed by permanent slugs and timebars.

You'd almost think they were embarrassed about their output given their keenness to hide it...

If they do go widescreen, I wonder if this will affect their non-MTV branded channels too (ie VIVA, VH1 etc).