Espn2hd -

Today, ESPN2HD is simply "ESPN2" — the HD is implied, a forgotten suffix. But for those of us who remember the dark ages of the 4:3 pillarbox, the name “ESPN2HD” carries a quiet nostalgia. It was the moment the little brother finally got his glasses, stood up straight, and looked the world — and every blade of grass on it — directly in the eye.

The story of ESPN2HD is the story of legitimacy. For years, ESPN2 was the channel you settled for when your game was bumped. But with HD, it became the channel you sought out . The difference between SD and HD was the difference between watching a game and being there. And by 2012, when ESPN finally shut down the old standard-definition simulcast of ESPN2, no one mourned. The blurry square was dead. Long live the widescreen. espn2hd

But a revolution was coming. By 2005, HDTVs were dropping below $2,000 for the first time. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were pushing HD gaming. And more importantly, ESPN2’s programming was changing. It was no longer just the "deuce" for roller hockey and bass fishing. It had become the home of crucial NASCAR races, the growing UFC phenomenon (starting with “The Ultimate Fighter” finale in 2006), and the nascent buzz of Major League Soccer. The NFL Draft had started to bleed over from ESPN. College football’s Big 12, Pac-10, and Big East games were increasingly landing on ESPN2 as prime-time slots. Today, ESPN2HD is simply "ESPN2" — the HD

There was one infamous glitch, of course. In 2011, during a tight college basketball game between Duke and North Carolina, the ESPN2HD feed glitched for 47 seconds, freezing on a frame of Coach K screaming, his face stretched into a Francis Bacon painting. Twitter melted down. But it was fixed. And fans forgave, because the other 99.9% of the time, the deuce was finally, unequivocally, beautiful. The story of ESPN2HD is the story of legitimacy

That was the curse of ESPN2. It was the secondary channel, fed a secondary signal. HD was expensive. Bandwidth was a finite, expensive resource. Satellite and cable companies poured their precious digital bits into the main ESPN. ESPN2? It got the leftovers: a blurry, standard-definition analog or low-bitrate digital feed that looked like it was being broadcast through a screen door.

The year is 2003. You are a sports fan in suburban Ohio. You have just convinced your parents to buy a “big screen” — a 42-inch rear-projection Sony Trinitron. It weighs 300 pounds and hums like a refrigerator. You also have a new digital cable box from Time Warner. Why? Because the local broadcast networks are promising “High Definition” for the Super Bowl. You’ve heard the words: 1080i. Widescreen. Crystal clear.

The frustration reached a boiling point on a Tuesday night in February 2007. Vanderbilt upset No. 1 Florida in men’s basketball. The game was on ESPN2. The buzzer-beater happened. The student court stormed. It was an all-time highlight. But to millions of HD owners, it looked like a pixelated mess. On sports blogs—Deadspin, Awful Announcing, the old ESPN message boards—the cry was unified: