Detroit is the beta testing grounds. Chicago will be in the first 11 cities right after that. I thought Detroit was already testing, but maybe not til next month. The first 12 should all be starting in November, but "start" vs "you get yours" doesn't have to happen in the same month. Or year, for that matter.

HMC means Home Media Center. There has been much discussion of a central processing box for DVR users. This would presumably be a more expensive system, but would give DVR networking to any TV in your house. Or at least every TV you set up this way. So far, it's really just vaporware/rumor, so I wouldn't worry too much about it this year. I only mentioned it because of the cabling question by bcf1963.

Nobody knows much. Certainly very little concrete data.