22 Facts About Cinemax

Cinemax is an American pay television, cable, and satellite television network owned by the Home Box Office, Inc subsidiary of Warner Bros.

Cinemax's operations are based alongside HBO inside WarnerMedia's corporate headquarters at 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan's West Side district.

Cinemax launched on August 1, 1980, over 56 cable systems in the Eastern and Central Time Zones; a West Coast feed for the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones launched on September 1.

Cinemax would go on to experience far greater success in its early years than Take 2.

Mid- and late-1980s saw the addition of a limited amount of series programming onto Cinemax's schedule including the sketch comedy series Second City Television and the science fiction series Max Headroom (which had aired on ABC from 1987 to 1988).

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However starting in 1992, Cinemax re-entered into television series development with the addition of adult-oriented scripted series similar in content to the softcore pornographic films featured on the channel in late night, marking a return to adult series for the channel.

In 2001, Cinemax began to shift its focus from solely airing second-run feature films that were previously broadcast on sister channel HBO before their Cinemax debut, to premiering select blockbuster and lesser-known theatrical films before their initial broadcast on HBO.

In February 2011, Cinemax announced that it would begin offering mainstream original programming to compete with other premium and streaming services, in the form of action-themed series aimed at men in the key demo.

However, executives with the company stated that Cinemax would remain available for the foreseeable future as a movie-focused service through its existing distributors, and that Cinemax's original programming would not be included initially in HBO Max.

In Central Europe, Cinemax was launched in February 2005 broadcasting mainly festival, indie, European and classics movies.

At the time the multiplex test was announced, HBO's then-executive vice president of marketing, John K Billock, cited internal research that indicated HBO and Cinemax subscribers were prone to cancelling their subscriptions because they either believed that neither tended to have "anything on worth watching" or, when presented with a full monthly schedule, felt that programs they wanted to watch did not air at preferable times.

Cinemax transmits feeds of its primary and multiplex channels on both Eastern and Pacific Time Zone schedules.

Cinemax HD is a high definition simulcast feed of Cinemax that broadcasts in 1080i resolution and Dolby Digital 5.

Cinemax maintains high definition simulcast feeds of its main channel and all seven multiplex channels.

VOD content from the network is available on select virtual MVPD services, including DirecTV Stream, and Hulu, and through Cinemax's dedicated OTT video channels on Apple TV Channels, Amazon Video Channels, and The Roku Channel.

Cinemax Go was a former TV Everywhere streaming service for subscribers of the linear Cinemax television service.

On that date, Cinemax debuted its first mainstream original program, the U S premiere of the British action series Strike Back.

The series originally debuted in 2010 on Sky One in the United Kingdom, which HBO and Cinemax partnered with to produce the series after the conclusion of its first season.

On October 19, 2012, Cinemax launched its second primetime original series, Hunted, in cooperation with BBC One.

Signature feature of Cinemax was a late-night block known as Max After Dark, which featured softcore pornographic films and original series.

Cinemax did not have set start or end times for the block, as they varied depending on the mainstream feature films – and original series on certain nights – that aired prior to and following it, and depended on the number of programs and programs in particular that were scheduled to air within the block.

Cinemax was able to carry softcore pornographic programs as well as other forms of adult content within the channel's mainstream programming in part since the FCC's content regulations applied only to channels that broadcast on the publicly owned spectrum and not those only available on restricted-access cable networks, which had consequently taken considerably more leeway in their programming.