Actually when they HBO was in the 70's back in the day that was an mpeg2 feed for older hd receivers(h10, hr10-250 etc. via 110 satellite, the 501 feed was the newer mpeg4 feed for the newer receivers at the time, h20, hr-20. So they where wasting bandwidth at that time buy supporting 2 different formats, If you look back the 501 hbo feed was much less compressed then the 70 feed, especially on football sunday. But now the audience channel for example is only 1 feed but remapped to many different channels so yes its not wasting bandwidth.