HDTV: The Next Big Thing?

Feb. 18 -- The boob tube is hot again, thanks to crisp, high-definition sets and broadcasts. High-priced hype? Mark Cuban isn't waiting to find out. He's betting a chunk of his billion-dollar fortune that TV's future will arrive sooner than you think.

Mark Cuban does nothing in half-measures. The Dallas-based Internet billionaire loves basketball. Instead of getting season tickets, he bought the Dallas Mavericks. Instead of flying first class, he bought a Gulfstream V — over the Web. He can't even watch TV like a normal person.

In 2000, shortly after he sold his Internet media service Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion (netting $1.7 billion of stock for himself), Cuban went shopping for a new home theater:

"I just said [to the salesperson], 'Give me the latest and greatest of everything.'"

He got a 100-inch projection screen and, along with it, the new high-definition channel that came with DirecTV. All it had on was a continuous loop of guys kayaking and snippets of an old NBA all-star game. It was incredibly frustrating, yet the picture quality was so amazing, he says, "I was glued to the screen."

He went to an online forum and read dozens of posts from like-minded souls, all of them bedazzled but wanting more. "Why weren't other companies getting into it?"

Launching His Own Network

The average couch potato would have just shrugged and changed the channel. Cuban changed channels by bankrolling one. In the biggest bet of his 45-year-old life, Cuban has invested a sum exceeding $100 million to start HDNet, the first all-hi-def network.

Just three years old, HDNet has 1,200 hours of original programming shot in high definition and almost as much in licensed content. It's on 24 hours a day and at any given time has eight crews shooting all over the world; it airs 15 hours of new, original programming per week.