Television channel
TVCine is a Portuguese premium television brand used on four movie channels, operated by NOS. They showcase recent movies and premieres from all the major studios, as well as comedy, action, classic and old movies.
History
TVCine originally began life as a Portuguese version of the Brazilian premium channels Telecine in 1998, only consisting of two channels at the time. One dedicated to more recent films, Telecine 1, while the other was dedicated to older films, Telecine 2.
The channels were eventually fully acquired by the theatrical Portuguese distributor Cinemas Lusomundo (now NOS Audiovisuais) and on 1 June 2003 the channels were rebranded as Canais Lusomundo. Telecine 1 became Lusomundo Premium and Telecine 2 became Lusomundo Gallery.
On April 16, 2004, a third channel was launched as Lusomundo Action dedicated to action movies, and in 2005 a fourth channel was added as Lusomundo Happy, dedicated to movies that were more family friendly and more emotional. Following the launch of Fox and Fox Life on TV Cabo, Lusomundo signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, valid from June 2005. With these developments, TV Cabo claimed that the ensemble of the Lusomundo channels had an estimated 250,000 to 270,000 subscribers.[1]
The TVCine brand was launched on 1 November 2007, replacing the Lusomundo branding of the channels. In May 2009 they started to broadcast in 16:9 24-hours a day, instead of the old 4:3 format.
As of 1 September 2015 TVSéries has granted HBO series exclusivity in Portugal and has adopted "Home of HBO" as its tagline,[2][3] until the closure of the channel on 14 January 2020 following the launch of HBO Portugal, which would eventually become HBO Max.
