Funny how I got an HD feed then. You may not understand what HD is or the difference between NTSC and PAL formats. I'm sure you do. Either way - it was in HD. Trust me. The SD signal on the regular TSN channel was of very substandard resolution. I've had full digital signal for years - it wasn't just a clean digital signal.

Not widescreen SDTV, not a digital signal that looked good. It was HD. We get F1 satellite feet then they add ITV audio over top once Vic and Gerry stop yapping about the obvious.

You could see the difference in Speed as well. The difference between the two channels was staggering.

So F1 is being broadcast in HD but the European broadcasters aren't bothering to use it, but TSN and Speed are?

You can understand why that seems highly unlikely?

some said it was upscaled, i searched on a site and found...

"And as for the PQ: Yeah, it's clearly upscaled... but it's also the best F1 I've seen by a mile! big_smile It doesn't even compare to the sh*tty 4:3 that Speed is broadcasting. 16:9 european encodes I've seen are better of course, but this is about half the way between the ITV standard resolution broadcast and real HD programming. They must be upscaling directly from the raw feed from the FOM so there's not much quality loss. Compression shows in this release though... some x264 encoders do a better job than others (using custom scipts for encoding)."

"It is upscaled at the source from the international feed. You may already be aware that unlike in North-America, most countries have adopted much better standards for television broadcasting, even for standard definition. For example, while we get crappy 480x320 resolution (in a 4:3 ratio), the actual source signal from the FOM is 16:9 PAL/SECAM standard of 720x480 at 50Hz. Altough the framerate is lower (25fps versus 30), the feed is then converted to 60fps anyway (720p = 1280x720x60fps).

Since the quality of the original signal is very good (for a standard res. feed), once upscaled using very advanced equipment, the result is something much better than anything you could otherwise view on your HD-ready TV if it did the upscaling itself (like it does when you fed it standard res. channels).

So if you thought this upscaled race looked good, you won't believe your eyes when F1 is finally shown in full-HD format (1080i or 1080p). "


ive seen a smattering of HD motorsport, and it is much better, nascar especialy as you get a *way* better impression of speed

http://krutyifix.extra.hu/ you can get some free amature (but very very good) footage there <. and HD downscaled to dvd res looks fine on our tv,(maybe a smidge better than DVD) although its playing through a home theatre computer . stuff ive converted from HD to DVD looks fine too

720 lines is HD. Don't be fooled by Sony's 1080p hype. Television signal HD is 720 lines. 1080i is 720p "interlaced".

Again for the masses, 720p and 1080i is TV HD. 1080p is DVD HD. This confusion is why Sony was able to capitalize over HD DVD. Cheaper HD DVD players displayed 720p. The expensive players displayed 1080p. Sony only sold 1080p. Many people have been fooled into thinking that 720p or 1080i is not HD. Sorry, it is.

British SD PAL is 625 lines and 25 frames. North America SD NTSC/M is 525/60.

We get the HD 720p signal right off the bird. Add some Brit audio and we're gold.

HD and flat screen TVs are a marketing con. They're an example of greed just like buying a brand new car on credit when a 2nd hand one will do perfectly well. 80% of the population i.e. those fascinated by material possessions have bought the hype and run out and got one.

I still have a non widescreen CRT, what do I need a widescreen HD TV for? Will it really improve my life that much? I don't think so. HD is hardly like the jump from black & white to color.

I hear its good for games. But for regular TV why bother?

This really depends on where you live. In the states the picture quality of SD was piss poor and the jump to HD was a large leap. In Europe we have a much better quality of SD transmission and the leap isn't so great. The problem now is that with digital transmissions the broadcasters often over compress the signal (Football on ITV is virtually unwatchable) which exaggerates the difference between SD and HD.

Yup. Try watching terrestrial through a freeview digital box on a cheapish flat screen and the picture is absolute crap. Much, much worse than a decent CRT TV that recieves a flawless anologue signal.

It is very easy to start with a good quality signal and degrade it to absolute rubbish.

HD is certainly not 'a con', marketing or otherwise. But you may find yourself with a HD resolution screen watching an SD broadcast. In this case it is quite possible for the picture to appear worse than an old SD CRT screen.

Most domestic screens only display certain resolutions, and in the case of LCD and plasma technology the physical screen resolution is fixed (eg 1080 or 720 vertical lines). Your screen then has to show, for example a PAL SD signal (625 lines), which requires interpolating into an image that fills the screen.

You can see this issue quite easily on most computer monitors (LCD etc), because software players allow you to see the image 'full screen' or 'true resolution' (ie pixel matched). The pixel matched image will look sharper than the full screen image.

From some of the above posts, it does seem that FOM are using HD at the circuits, so I can't see any technical reason why the BBC can't broadcast HD. I suspect either cost or they weren't even given the option (Bernie thought bubble: "HD for free? Is it April 1st?")

i doubt a true HD stream is avalible, as the bbc have repeatidly stated theres not one avalible.

my HTPC is hooked up to a old sony 28"(or so) CRT and tv looks pretty good on it. windows (the operating system) is horrorific, with text you can struggle to read, horrid refresh rate...

A good flatscreen just stomps all over it tbh. CRT's tend to blur stuff slightly, while TFT's are absolute. a TFT might give you a truer view whats being broadcast and actully look worse..

HD just makes most things better

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/artbeats_red.html

try 480 and then 720, sometimes it doesnt make much difference, and sometimes its like your watching something entirely different.

If the CRT you refer to is a PC monitor, it is multiscan, which TV CRTs aren't.

The blurring could be age, or set-up related.

The best TV picture I've had was from a 21" Sony CRT monitor fed from a decent scan converter. (Which was, in turn, fed a signal from a Freeview box)

nah, our tv isnt a PC moniter, its a proper oldskool widescreen tv.

normal tv does look quite good on it, i think the best ive seen it perform is when its linked up to the HTPC....

but ive aquired *ahem* plenty of broadcast HD that someones capped, reencoded and made availble that looks alot better than SD

Re-read the post above yours. Your TV is receiving a 720p signal, but that 720p is the result of your broadcaster taking the original SD raw feed and applying clever upscaling technology to produce the 720p feed. You get a better quality picture than you would in SD, however it still isn't a true HD feed.

When F1 starts being broadcast with a proper HD feed, you'll find you get another step up in picture quality.

Nuff said!

Tony.

As others have said, the difference between HD and SD depends on which side of the pond you're on.

For us NTSC-ers in North America, SD is 4:3 480i (320x240). The quality stinks, especially when it comes through miles of coax as an analog signal.
For our PALs in Europe, SD is 16:9 576i (720x576), and often transmitted digitally.

FOM produces and uplinks the F1 world feed in widescreen 576i.

Speed and TSN both upconvert the 576i world feed to 720p for their HD channels. I'm used to watching Speed in the above-mentioned crappy 4:3 analog 480i, and seeing the 720p broadcast on FOX over the summer was a real treat. It looked good, but it wasn't HD.

The flipside of that is when something like the Indy500 is beamed over here and watched on an HD channel/screen, it looks *awful*

You literally want to bang your hand on the side of the screen to see if the picture will improve.

OK, now I understand.

ps For those wanting to know what the acronyms mean:

LCD: Liquid Crystal Display
TFT: Thin Film Transistor
CRT: Cathode Ray Tube
HD and SD: High and Standard Definition
NTSC: Never The Same Colour
PAL: Pictures At Last!

Tony.

I'm really sorry , but that is not quite right - at least in Europe.

In Europe we get 1080i HD TV broadcasts. This is not "interlaced 720p".




In the UK, we have "HD ready" which are 720p TV's (actually 1366 x 768), and "Full HD" which are 1080 (1920 x 1080).
1080i actually has to be de-interlaced to display on a LCD or Plasma screen (unlike CRT which use interlaced signals) so it is actually a pretty good picture.
Blu Ray and HD DVD output 1080p to the screens (well all mine do!) I'm not sure if early HD DVD only did 1080i, but I wouldn't think they only did 720p.

There is a reasonable explanation here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080i

Bloody hell

and I thought that discussing who Rushden should play up front against Torquay got heated

As a sign of their increasing coverage of F1 they have put a video of Senna winning at Donington up on their Motorsport page at the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport...one/7817881.stm

It was brilliant to watch that again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/sporteditors/20....html#comment86

"86. At 11:19am on 08 Jan 2009, Roger Mosey - Director of BBC Sport wrote:

Jordan D: that's the "when did you stop beating your wife?" question!

F1 blogs and all other F1 activity will be announced formally next month. So we'll fill in the kind of detail that r4gm4n in #82 and others are asking for. We appreciate the comments so far - the F1 team have been reading them too - and we'll be offering a lot of opportunity to debate and comment. "

Interesting comment from DC regarding next year:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72712

"I'll still be involved in the sport, with my consultancy with Red Bull and through the BBC. I said when I opened the Show earlier today, I said that it's a new experience to me to comment on Formula One and I hope I do a good job, and I hope I reflect Formula One in the way that you all want to hear about it.

And if I don't, please write to me in Monaco and complain, please don't write to the BBC and complain, because I want to get it right. You can tell me. You just need to put 'DC, Monaco' on the envelope and it will get to me, because Monaco is not such a big place."

Off topic but I wonder when the ITV-f1 will be brought down.

It's staying up through the whole of 2009.

And now for Martin Brundle's round of comments: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72717

Great read.
He really does talk so much sense. I'm so pleased he decided to continue commentating.

I'm especially interested in what he said about the red button element I wonder if he meant we'll get that straight after the race as well as live, instead of, or plus?

jb's just said on DS (http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showpos...8&postcount=224) that this was one of the last remaining secrets left.

It will be from 3:15pm to 4:00pm for typical European races, more 6-0-6 style with viewers invited to call, text and e-mail their thoughts on the race and the sport in general.

Yes, I noticed that too. Presumably, they have been given the green light from Bernie rights-wise to start showing some of the old content again.

The only races that have been broadcast in true HD are the 2006 Suzuka GP, 2007 and 2008 Fuji GP's. I have the 2006 Japanese GP it is 8.2GB and that itself is compressed using x264 in 1080i. The picture and feeling of motion is spectacular. Fuji Television had this deal because it pays substantially more than any other for TV rights, that is why FOM allow then to use HD 1080i (but still only for their home race).
Those three HD races from Japan have been posted to newsgroups in the past.
F1inCinema is upconverted just like ORF. BBC will not get HD, they would have to pay more just to get their local race Silverstone in HD.

just glancing at the other comments on that website,someone suggesting they shouldn't use the chain,and if they do it should be a remixed relevant version........ARE THEY MAD!use the original!its like saying MOTD or wimbledon should change to a new remixed upto date version..there'd be outrage!if the BBC have ANY common sense,they'll use the original version

From jb26 on DS:

Why would they want to use Hawk Eye in F1? I can see it's use in cricket, snooker, tennis etc.. the path of the ball and all that, but F1?! The super slow-mo replays are more than enough. The only possible use I can think is maybe plotting the exact line that drivers take into corners but it's just one more thing we don't need.

Let's wait and see how it's used before condemning it.

Speak for yourself ... assuming what you think is what others think as well isn't a good approach to anything. You're entitled to your own opinion; just don't project it onto an assumed group of people who may or may not share your opinion.

I'd have thought it was more Virtual Spectator, using gps to display a gaphic of car positions. During pitstops they could show the car that pitted earlier catching up, for example, could be good if they do it well. Just hope FOM don't get too greedy about it...

Well that may be but I hope they get the site cleaned up soon it is horribly out of date
Honda link on bbc motorsport

It remains a bad idea to have that idiot Brundle as commentator.

why?

Because I think he is an idiot who cant be trusted and is a real bad commentator.

You are just about the only one in the country with that opinion.

Brundle absolutely makes F1 coverage in the UK worth watching.

I doubt that since I dont live in the UK

oh ok, just your axe to grind, nothing to see here then, I'll move on

Its just my opinion. Or do i need to get publicly disembowled for daring to question his royal highness Martin Brundle.

The BBC have highlights of Donington 93 on thier website, which is another perk of them having the f1 rights, all that archived footage.

Did anyone else think the Don93 footage was strangely darK? I know it was raining but its like they darkened the images to hide how shit TV quality was in 1993

and what makes him an 'idiot' and a 'real bad commentator'?you're entitled to your opinion yes,but to call him an idiot and a real bad commentator without giving any actual reasons is pretty poor-feel free to give your reasons though

Perhaps for sufficiently obvious reasons it wasn't much beyond YouTube quality, if at all, but dark? No, it didn't seem like that to me at all.

The darkness sounds like a bug I've witnessed occasionally with iPlayer. Click pause, and then un-puase it again and darkness will lift.

Maybe they'll finally do what I've hoped and use GPS and slow-mo footage to show exactly the time gained in corners by different drivers. You might see more detail of driving styles. Who brakes late/early, which car has the best traction, how teammates tackle the same corner in the same car yet have different lap times. They could trace two images side by side so you get a ghost car and you can see the differences.