Formula 1 F1 TV coverage thread

Sky are owned by Disney now, seems like the F1 subscription is quite expensive, I may aswell stick with sky as I have never paid over £26 per month for the full package, iam happy paying that but I know people who pay nearly £90 per month for the exact same package.

 

ESPN decided to crap the bed over the break...

First off, you can't watch replays of anything on the game console/smart TV app. Just live and episodes of their shows, not sporting events. You could only watch replays of events on the phone app. Which was fine, as I have Chromecast and would stream it to my TV like a normal broadcast. I go to the app now to watch this morning's practice sessions and you can no longer cast to a screen. So I'm stuck watching it on my phone's relatively small screen and that sucks. Why?

Edit: Oh turns out you can watch past episodes on the main app now. No explanation given...

 

News today for UK F1 fans. Channel 4 does a deal to show highlights of F1 with British Grand Prix shown live from 2019. Less than we had but much better than nowt a?.

 

One race?

 

Yes. The one at a truly rubbish circuit. Highlights for the rest of them? 10 minutes maximum then. Including introduction and podium. And a advert break. Maybe 10 minutes is too lomg...

 

Silverstone being a "truly rubbish circuit" is just an opinion so easy to ignore that wee comment. For the rest, Channel fours highlights progs have been more than adequate to date. Don't see it as likely that they will change to that which you describe. In any case it's better than nothing which is what it looked like we were going to get for the next 5 years. I'll take it.

 

I just tried to go back and watch the practice sessions for Russia on the ESPN app for Xbox One and I get a message that says this is not part of your tv package. I've always been able to watch practice this way.

 

So far I've been relatively happy with the F1 TV Pro subscription, although they managed to lose the stream for a while at Singapore.

It's still early days for F1 TV, but if they can get the reliability up, then IMO it'll be an OK deal for around £85/$110. per year.

I could of course watch the German or Swiss coverage for free (l speak German so language isn't a problem), but as a Brit F1 is not the same without the British coverage, in fact it's not the same without Murray.

 

I've also got the F1 TV Pro subscription and this morning I was going to go back and watch all of the practice sessions that ESPN won't let me watch. But the only sessions available are P2 & P3. P1 isn't there and qualifying isn't there either. I thought with the paid subscription all of the sessions were available whenever I wanted to watch them. If I wanted to re-watch all of the sessions from Spa I could.

I'm watching P2 right now but the commentary has been cutting in and out.

 

Keep on scrolling down past the highlight versions. all the full versions are towards the bottom of the page (or more towards the middle of the page in truth) with the exception of the very last session which is right at the top of the page.

The commentary on the practice sessions tends to be a bit of a mixed bag, often with big pauses between anybody saying anything, not to mention that the practice sessions are probably also practice sessions for the commentary and the tech guys setting up the stream.

Just bear in mind that F1 TV is still in shakedown mode, and from my point of view I'm not expecting trouble free viewing until next season.

 

P1 was down at the bottom of the page. Qualifying appeared after I had watched P3 so about 6 hours after it was live. It looks like F1 TV is cutting out all of the Sky extra fluff pieces like the Command Center or whatever it is that Paul DiResta and Anthony Davidson do on that screen and the commentary between the qualifying sessions.

I think I'm going to try uninstalling the ESPN app from the Xbox and reinstalling it. It wouldn't be the first time an app has went all crazy on me.

 

Confirmation of what happened in the US with the NBC/ESPN situation, and why commercial-free races are not necessarily a good thing in the long run:

https://autoweek.com/article/formula-one/revealed-f1s-40-million-gamble-streaming-races-scared-nbc

 

That's a pretty good description of how it all went down. It's good that ESPN found a someone willing to be the exclusive sponsor for the commercial free broadcast. But NBC kind of has the same issue with their English Premier League Football which also goes commercial free during their telecast. Out to the right of the game clock we see a rotating banner of advertisers that changes roughly 6 or 7 minutes per half. If Mother's for some reason decides they're not going to renew, ESPN could sell that space on a rotating basis but I don't know if it would be enough to pay the total bill to go commercial free.

I don't see NBC getting F1 back anytime soon. I don't know where they would put it. Since they're getting the complete Indy car package along with the full IMSA package to go with the second half of the year NASCAR season. Most F1 sessions and races are early enough (or late enough ex. Japan & Australia) to not have a conflict with the other series but there was still the occasion where some sessions or even a race was shoved off to CNBC due to a conflict on NBCSN.

 

Canadian GP
United States GP
Mexican GP
Brazilian GP

All of those are in normal time slots that would overlap.

 

Presumably you can still watch their channel online - how are there people who "don't have NBC" who would be excluded from watching? And advertising works just as well on TV apps as it does on aerial/cable broadcast TV.

I just wish that Sky hadn't had their deal closed before the CVC sale - look at the UK in 2019 to see why American F1 fans had a lucky escape with their deal falling through.

 

While NBC is a free, over-the-air channel, the vast majority of the races were on NBCSN, which is a cable channel that often isn’t included in basic packages.

 

Surely they have an app? I can't think of any (major) UK channels that don't and we're usually behind the rest of the western world in broadcast tech.

 

https://www.nbcsports.com/

It sort of works like Fox Sports Go in that you have to have cable company activation to watch things on it. I know I was watching practice sessions from Europe on it at work in the mornings.

They also have gold packages that you have to pay a yearly subscription for things like Premier League, Cycling, Rugby, etc. That is the only way to go back and watch replays for games and events you missed.

 

Thats true, however if liberty media REALLY cared about it they would buy sky uk out of that exclusivity contract and give the sport back to the fans. Who are dwindling year on year, liberty say all the right things but they have done nothing to attract more fans in the uk. Hopefully the silverstone deal will be renegotiated, so in turn silverstone can lower their prices which put alot of us off going there.

 

Channel 4's highlight coverage has new restrictions

Only 50% of the total running time of C4's programme can now be taken up by the on-track coverage - down from between 60-70% last year.

They are not allowed to do interviews in what is known as the 'pen' - where all the drivers are taken to do a round-robin of broadcasters after qualifying and race - or in the pit lane. Any 'pen' interviews they use will have to come from Sky. The amount of interviews C4 can do in the paddock is restricted. And they have been forbidden from doing a 'grid walk'.

None of these restrictions apply to the live British Grand Prix.

Highlights can not start before a minimum of three hours after the race.

Feels weird to not be able to watch races live/full anymore after over 30 years of watching for myself. Only cut down highlights except for the British GP.

I look forward in hope to 2025, maybe something better can be done when this crap deal ends.

 

I have Sky Sports Mobile, but it's really not the same watching it on a phone.

 

Man.. I was trying the F1 TV pro service.. it was very bad for FP1 & FP2... I ended up getting a free trial of Hulu Live so I could watch it on ESPN.

I was trying to get away from ESPN but man, the F1 TV streaming service is really bad live.

 

Do you mean poor quality laggy video?

 

I wish ESPN didn't have to end the broadcast when Sky Sports goes to it's first commercial break during the post-race coverage..

It's 2:00 am here in the central time zone, no sports story is going to break at this hour and rehashed March Madness highlights can wait till sunrise

 

F1 TV worked well for me. On only a couple of occasions the image went to low res, but it sorted itself out quickly.

My only issue was that I had to watch the second half of the race with the buffering icon spinning on the screen even though the image was crisp HD. Didn’t clear until I stopped the stream. Weird.

 

It was cutting out .. black screen a lot. Also breaking up like a poor OTA signal.

I read it was better during Qualifying and the Race, but I am now in a home with cable TV so no need for it currently.

 

Ben Edwards is to step down from the UK's Channel 4 coverage at the end of the season.

 

Will say that I will miss Edwards here as much as I did when he moved over from the BTCC. With official highlights always tending to feature the Croft/Brundle team, it seems a real shame to me that there are so few high-quality clips of his BBC/Channel 4 commentary available.

 

He will be missed. You get used to hearing the same voices and it becomes quite comforting. I have no idea who they'll get to replace him. I have to say that i have no idea how much longer C4 have the highlights rights for. Their current line up is pretty good IMO.

 

David Coulthard has just announced that Alex Jacques will be the lead race commentator on Channel 4's 2021 F1 coverage.