Espn2hd //top\\ Info

The date was March 30, 2008. A Sunday.

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: espn2hd

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 date was March 30, 2008

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. Vanderbilt upset No

Then, you flip to ESPN2. A familiar sinking feeling hits.