How does ESPN acquire the rights to HD broadcasts from the various sports? Does ESPN pay the station or does the station pay ESPN to show the HD highlights?

I only ask this now because of the new MLB season and the incarnation of ESPNEWS HD. With all the big hype of ESPNEWS HD, I would probably say well less than half of the games shown on ESPNEWS HD this morning were in SD (not counting the ESPN/2 games), with a majority of them originating in HD, as I watched on ESPN2 HD at 5:30 this morning.

Just thought someone knew how this works, because I thought ESPN would get more HD highlights with the addition of the new channel, but I guess not.

I did a week long thread last summer, noting games that were available in HD and what highlights were shown on Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter in HD.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=838141

How does ESPN acquire the rights to HD broadcasts from the various sports? Does ESPN pay the station or does the station pay ESPN to show the HD highlights?

I only ask this now because of the new MLB season and the incarnation of ESPNEWS HD. With all the big hype of ESPNEWS HD, I would probably say well less than half of the games shown on ESPNEWS HD this morning were in SD (not counting the ESPN/2 games), with a majority of them originating in HD, as I watched on ESPN2 HD at 5:30 this morning.

Just thought someone knew how this works, because I thought ESPN would get more HD highlights with the addition of the new channel, but I guess not.

With the giagantic side bar and bottom line, what difference does it make if it is SD or HD?

With the giagantic side bar and bottom line, what difference does it make if it is SD or HD?Also, SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight. I just made a point of it now with the launching of ESPNEWS HD.

AM SportsCenter HD and ESPN News HD waste way too much screen space with all the ticker and sidebar crap on the screen. It ought to be rebranded "Bloomburg Sports" I don't need to know what the next eight events are on the "rundown"

HDNews (on Voom) just showed HD highlights of the White Sox/Indians game from CSN Chicago, and the KC game on FSN KC, Pirates game from FSN Pittsburgh, and the Mets/Marlins on SNY HD.

Edit: Also Tex/Sea on FSN NW in HD, which SportsCenter showed in SD.

However, the courtesy was given to MLB Productions, and not the individual cable station, as seen on ESPN. Is that how HDNews is getting the HD highlights and not ESPN - getting it directly from MLB and not the individual station?

AM SportsCenter HD and ESPN News HD waste way too much screen space with all the ticker and sidebar crap on the screen. It ought to be rebranded "Bloomburg Sports" I don't need to know what the next eight events are on the "rundown"

There is a difference between "the rundown" bar on SC and the graphics on ESPNews HD.

The rundown on SC covers part of the 16x9 HD image, there is no image manipulation, it is just covered.

On ESPNews HD, it is still a complete 16x9 AR HD image, only in a smaller window with graphics wrapping around it.

On ESPNews HD, it is still a complete 16x9 AR HD image, only in a smaller window with graphics wrapping around it.
And that's a good things??? I should buy a bigger screen so that ESPN can fill it full of their crap?

Funny thing is espns highlights of there own games look better than the broadcast????????

And that's a good things??? I should buy a bigger screen so that ESPN can fill it full of their crap?

I consider it a very good thing, HD hightlights (when and hd feed is available to Espn) and scrolling news alerts, along with box scores and stats; all at the same time.

I love the setup

And that's a good things??? I should buy a bigger screen so that ESPN can fill it full of their crap?

Did you expect ESPNEWS to suddenly dispell with all their graphics just because they were going HD? This is a marked improvement over that space wasting lower-third they used to have.

Funny thing is espns highlights of there own games look better than the broadcast????????

Well there could be a bunch of reasons for this, not the least of which is the transmission path during the live event. It is often the case that HD highlights from any network look better than the actual game -- its really noticeable with NBC Sunday Night Football, where the ESPNHD highlights are cut from the NBC backhaul (bypassing the NBC transmission mess).

Also generally speaking the highlights should be ubiquitous across all networks. The branding of the individual channel makes little difference (in fact it rarely even gets taken into account whether or not the show is on ESPN or ESPN2 while the show is in production -- and often anchors will forget that they're on ESPN2 instead of ESPN in the rare case Sportscenter or NFL Live or something gets bumped to The Deuce for whatever reason). All the networks share the same post-production facilities, and feeds, and except in very rare cases its very rare to get more than one feed from an event (the exceptions generally being ESPN games being simulcast by YES! and NESN - in which case the highlight will always be the ESPN feed). Sometimes you might have a situation with split courtesy, half a highlight from FSN and the other half from Comcast SportsNet, but this is extremely rare.

Very odd this question was posed on here, as I was thinking the same thing last night.

the Suns/Nuggets game was available in HD on FSNHD Arizona, Altitude HD, and NBATV HD, but the highlights on NBA Fastbreak and Sportscenter were FSN Arizona in SD.

There are two reasons why you might see SD highlights of HD events:

1) Rights issues: some broadcasters charge a premium fee to allow others to use highlights from their HD feeds. ESPN generally doesn't pay those extra fees since they don't charge them to others for highlight usage. In addition, some channels provide a "highlight feed" that provides the only footage that can be used. These are very often SD.

2) HD Recording Ports: Not all of the server ports are equipped for HD. This was originally done as a cost savings measure when there was a whole lot more SD out there. As more HD has become available, they've upgraded to allow recording of more HD events, but with the number of events they take in every single day, some events still have to be taken in through SD channels. This is becoming less of a problem as systems get upgraded and more ESPN networks are going HD.