ESPN2 HD!!!!! - January 2005!!!!!  

When?
2005

Wow, another HD channel that Direct is gonna have to add. Simply spectacular news, to say the least!

Sa-weet!!!

Now come on NHL and players, get that CBA signed!!!

Let's see, 300+ from ESPN HD, 100+ from ESPN2 HD, that would equal over 400 live HD events in '05. Wow.

a very bold and welcome move by ESPN, they are to be commended. i look forward to having to choose which HD event to watch.

quick ?, is carriage of the new ESPN2HD likely to be covered by existing carriage agreements (for ESPNHD) or will negotiations have to begin anew for what is a new channel?

Oh great! I see another cable rate increase on the horizon...:rolleyes:

That would equal 0 on TWC - HD Viewers might just make their impact known by leaving in masses. - most everyone has digital cable so $60 - 100 / person or so................

Are cable and satellite companies that already have ESPN-HD going to have to negotiate for ESPN2HD, or will they get it automatically?

This is awesome news things are really picking up in the world of HD

Finally, the IRL can be in HDTV!

Good news. Now if they would stop with the permanent crawl/ticker, things would be just about perfect.

Oh, and if I could buy them a la carte...

Until then, live free or die! OTA only.

-Reagan

Speculation ... Could ESPN have chosen to go live with ESPN2-HD in Jan 2005 because that coincides with the earliest D*will be able to carry them? (with the end of NFL ST, freeing up HD bandwidth). This would assume the 2005 season of NFL ST HD would be carried on future capacity.

I highly doubt it. I'm sure the timing has more to do with more of their digital broadcast center coming on line (construction finishing up).


Well, certainly ESPN2-HD has been part of ESPN's ("secrect") plans for quite a while so I would assume MOST existing carriage agreements would cover both ESPN-HD and ESPN-HD2.

Great news! Thanks for the post!

This is great news and I wonder whats next. Lets see the two ESPN alternates will be HD next just when HD games will be shown. I will say this much this last year has been amazing for sports so lets just look at what has changed from just one year ago.

We now have ESPN HD of course. We will be getting ESPN2 HD very soon. We also saw CBS ramp up their HD NFL games from 1 to 3 every week. We also had Fox go HD and shock us with 6 HD games every week. Now we have NFL Sunday Ticket showing them all this year. We have ESPN HD showing on average 4 college football games in HDTV every week.

Now this isn't related to sports but we have also had the most anti-HDTV people moving or gone HDTV this year and this includes Fox, Starz and Sinclair. Now also facter in that we now have Voom that came out of thin air.

Lets look at things this way. Here is what is availble now even if not on all providers but I think soon they will be.

ESPN HD
ESPN2 HD
HDNet
HDNet Movies
Discovery HD Theater
Bravo HD+
InHD 1 & 2
TNTHD
NFL Network HD
HBO HD
Cinemax HD
Showtime HD
Starz HD
Encore HD
The Movie Channel HD
PBS, NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC, WB and UPN doing HDTV.

NFL Sunday Ticket doing all this HDTV.

The fact is there are other HD channels out there such as 29HD and the Voom HD exclusives but I'm counting the main stuff and all I can say was that not much more than one year ago we only had the locals not counting UPN and most areas WB nor Fox. We only had ESPN HD for a very few months. We only had HBO and Showtime HD. Only a select few had Discovery HD for a very heavy price tag. We had pretty much no NFL Sunday Ticket in HDTV. We didn't have much at all and now look at what we all have even if we for now have to get other providers.

I think the fact is that its getting going rather nicely now with things only getting better with DirecTV planning on locals in HDTV and launching most of these HD channels if not all of them.

We see cable getting agressive as well as satellite companies with 6 free months HDTV package. Also HD DVR and pretty cheap HD boxes with OTA tuners from DirecTV for what 300 bucks not much. We also have HDTV sets going down in price and I think we will have a pretty big drop on HDTV sets and I think also the DirecTV HD DVR this Christmas season. I also see deals like right on DirecTVs website saying that you can get 500 bucks off the purchase of select Samsung HDTV sets with the purchase of both the set and Samsung HD box. So right now we all can go out a buy a Samsung HDTV set priced over 1 grand and get 200 bucks off a Samsung HDTV box from DirecTV. So that box costs 300 regular so you are going to buy the HDTV set either way so why not get a DirecTV HDTV box for 100 dollar bills. Not bad at all I might say.

I hate to say this but I spent almost 700 bucks for my first HD box from DirecTV and I wish I could buy one now with an HDTV set for 100 bucks. Hey for that 700 bucks I could have spent 50 bucks more and got an HD Tivo with more programming today. I have never been more excited about HDTV than maybe when ESPN HD was launched but I'm still in shock hearing that Sinclair, Fox and Starz are getting in the game. Then I heard about the NFL HD rampage and Sunday Ticket. Now I hear about ESPN2 going HD very very soon and its way too much to take in and believe it.

It makes sense. In January, Fox will be doing only the NFL playoff games in HD freeing up more HD trucks since the NFL regular season will be over.

Does this mean any service that already carries ESPN-HD gets ESPN HD-2 ? Or will they have to get a separate agreement to carry the new HD channel ?

Right on, Ken. That would be an average of more than one event per day in HD between the two channels. That's heading in the right direction for sure!

Can we start the "When will TWC get ESPN2-HD" threads now or should we wait a bit?

Where's all those people saying that ESPN has lost the HDTV battle? lol

Can anyone confirm this?
It took bugging D* weekly to get ESPN HD online - knowing how ESPN works do you think that they would have to redo more contracts to get ESPN 2 HD?

Excellent news!

Outstanding. At least until we see the "ESPN2 HD Sucks" threads popping up on Day 1. I'm glad to hear this especially since the NHL has been pretty much relegated to ESPN2 - if and when they play again.

Great news. Now if ESPN would only hurry up and switch to DD5.1. Any update Ken?

What??? You don't want to go out and buy a Kenwood receiver for SRS5.1?

If they don't have Friday Night Fights in HD, I'll personally drive down there and kick those b@st@rds in the balls.

I would like to know this as well. The big hang up for ESPN-HD being added to many cable/sat companies were the pricing and negotiations. Hopefully, all the contracts for ESPN-HD provided a way for ESPN2-HD to be added quickly. Any thoughts?

From today's Multichannel News:

ESPN to Launch ESPNU, ESPN2 HD
By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 9/7/2004 12:35:00 PM

ESPN has given itself two birthday presents as it celebrates its silver anniversary.

The sports giant, which celebrates 25 years on the air Tuesday, announced that it would add a college-sports network and a replica of ESPN in HD to its portfolio of properties next year.

Tapping into the company's vast array of NCAA rights, ESPNU will bow in March with a lineup heavy on live events. ESPN officials said ESPNU would present primarily Division I football, as well as men's and women's basketball, during its rookie campaign.

The ESPNU announcement ended months of speculation that ESPN would leverage its college rights and launch a dedicated service. It also comes as ESPN is the subject of a Department of Justice inquiry about its control of those rights and its warehousing of games.

Moreover, competitorsCollege Sports Television and FSN have stepped up their games in the space. CSTV recently acquired rights to the Mountain West Conference, previously held by ESPN, and it will begin airing action from that circuit in 2006. FSN converted three out-of-market regional networks to college services this past weekend.

For its part, ESPN2 HD will launch as a simulcast of ESPN2, including more than 100 live telecasts in its first year of operation-- college football, men’s and women’s college basketball, the Little League World Series, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League -- all of which will be originally produced and distributed in high-definition.

Together, ESPN HD and ESPN2 HD will immediately offer viewers more than 6,000 hours of originally produced high-definition programming and more than 2,000 original programs, according to network officials.

Bryan Burns, ESPN's HD chief, said ESPN has contracts with all major cable operators except Time Warner Cable, and with direct-broadcast satellite providers DirecTV Inc. and EchoStar Communications Corp.

ESPN2 is currently available to some 50 million homes and, as of last spring, ESPN HD was in more than 1 million homes, according to Burns.

"We're now going to go out with ESPN2 HD and see where we get," he said, noting that the fee is part of the company's overall programming bundle.

"We're really ramping up. Not only do we walk the walk, but we're far ahead of the curve,†he added. “ESPN2 HD is a great value for our distributor partners and fans."

Burns said ESPN2 HD would begin much like ESPN HD did, with live events. It will add some studio programming -- National Football League programming will begin this weekend in HD.

He added that ESPN Original Entertainment productions -- like Playmakers, upcoming poker series Tilt and the movies like Hustle (the Pete Rose biography) -- will all be in HD and air on the “Deuce.â€

"Long term, our goal is to shoot everything in HD, but it will take time,†Burns said. “We have the World's Strongest Man competitions that were shot years ago in South Africa. We can't go back in and redo those in the format. Over time, most everything on our air will be in HD, but it will take some time."

In addition to football and hoops, ESPN officials said ESPNU would feature baseball, softball, volleyball, lacrosse, hockey, wrestling and spring football, plus select high-school-football telecasts.

Many events will air exclusively on the network, while other ESPNU telecasts will coexist with events syndicated on other outlets regionally through ESPN Regional Television arrangements.

In fact, ERT will handle the primary production responsibilities for ESPNU out of its Charlotte, N.C., headquarters. ERT is the nation’s largest syndicator of college-sports programming, with more than 740 events produced each year, accounting for more than 2,000 live and/or original hours.

ESPN plans to promote and integrate ESPNU with its other holdings: bowing an ESPNU site within ESPN.com (espn.go.com); making programming and content available to the ESPN Broadband, ESPN Mobile and ESPN Interactive TV platforms; and including inserts within ESPN-The Magazine.

Senior vice president of programming John Wildhack said ESPNU would offer comprehensive studio programming, cut-ins and other news reports from game sites, as well as replays of high-profile college games that originally aired on ABC Sports, ESPN and ESPN2.

Wildhack said ESPNU will give "college-sports fans more of what they want. There is not a better opportunity for ESPN than this network, considering the roots of our company that go back to college basketball and football and our relationship with the NCAA."

Wildhack pointed out that ESPN is in the midst of an 11-year agreement (through 2012-13) to televise numerous NCAA championships, including Olympic Games sports events in each of the three collegiate seasons.

He noted that ESPN has worked with the NCAA to "identify growth properties" like the women's basketball and softball championships and the men's College World Series

Wildhack said ESPN had been working on this service in one shape or form for more than 12 months, and it was "absolutely not" motivated by the DOJ inquiry. He declined further comment on the matter.

He deferred questions about rate cards to other network officials who weren't immediately available for comment. He did say, "We think the lineup we're putting together over the first 12 months should be attractive to distributors."

All high-definition programming on ESPN HD and ESPN2 HD will be delivered to cable systems and satellite providers in the 720p (progressive) format.

“ESPN HD is driving our affiliates’ high-definition business, and the addition of ESPN2 HD makes the consumer proposition that much more compelling,†said Sean Bratches, president of Disney and ESPN Networks affiliate sales and marketing, in a prepared statement.

"Our affiliates, our advertisers and, most important, our viewers are requesting more HD content, and as we’ve seen the demand skyrocket, we’re committing to fulfilling that need,†Bratches added.