Couldn't care less about team radio, even if the crack down is only making the races 10% better its worth it.

It feels like a backward step to have less of it. It's not quite the same but if they started seriously reducing the amount of onboard shots people would complain, even if there was a time in the relatively recent past when onboards were a rarity. The crackdown on driver coaching was the right thing to do, but FOM seem to be taking it to another level beyond that, unless there really is almost entirely zero radio chat across the entire field now.

I'm not sure it makes the racing any better or worse, it just makes the sport slightly more opaque. The end result is the same, we're just a little bit less clued up on why it happened. That may be a good thing, though. Perhaps the problem with the sport is that too much information means the result is too clearly predictable - limit the information output and the likely result takes longer to coalesce.

I've always thought you'd effectively achieve a similar result by banning coverage of winter testing and not releasing the times: the champions at the end of the season would be the same but you'd have put off the obvious realisation of who they'd be as long as possible.

Based on what we heard on Sunday's Channel 4 broadcast, it would be Prost refusing to be shut up whilst he went on and on refusing to stick his neck out

It was a bit of a lackluster performance by Channel 4 this weekend - nothing wrong with it, but it felt like they'd run out of innovative ideas for their videos after a number of years broadcasting, rather than one of their first live races.

They also seemed to be going back 10 years to the bad old days of misleading their viewers. Indeed, they were lucky that their helicopter ride at Barcelona (filmed weeks ago, but talking about 'this weekend') was with Ricciardo rather than Kvyat - he would have seemed surprisingly cheerful

I wasn't really sure of the significance of their pretty white Mercedes car in their opening video, but they either had two cars or were trying to stir up some Top Gear-style controversy by switching number plates from one which said BBO to BBC. Why do they run these risks when they have the Mail Online moral police breathing down their necks?

Sky coverage was improved by the removal of Herbert (who didn't really need to make an arse of himself by texting in with crazy ideas) but the Fiorano video would ideally have been a bit more probing and the flashback to 1996 was manifestation of everything that is wrong with their coverage. They had a 2 minute set of highlights from the race, before discussing it for another couple of minutes - which was Hill and Brundle competing with each other to see who could be the most self-deprecating.

I am a big F1 fan, but my memory of a race 20 years ago is pretty hazy - and I'm sure they had many many viewers who were not born when it happened, and more who'd never seen it. In a 90 minute build-up that has so much inane filler, why not expand the feature out to 10 minutes and explain the background / Hill's multiple spins / the different set-up choices between the cars? Still, Sky came in to their own with Ant's analysis of the Strat mode switches when replaying the Mercedes' start.

FOM made just about everyone's T-bar cameras available online showing the start in Russia (looks like they're recording locally to SD cards) - hopefully they will do the same this week.

This whole feature grated on me.

Could have interspersed the World Feed footage with some new thoughts and opinion (or unseen angles given their relationship with FOM) but instead it felt run of the mill to me.

Agree that the feature was typical Sky F1 - short to nearly the point of pointlessness - though it was interesting to see a bit of tension between Brundle and Hill as to whether they should be racing in that sort of conditions today.

Said it before on Sky features. Some promise to be superb. It really irked me a lot of Brundle's F1 car driving features (especially what 2012 was it when the Ferrari one was on), you got probably a minute of different 'promos' across all the practices, F1 show and Quali. Sometimes a 'behind the scenes' cut on the F1 Show of a couple of minutes. Then the race show you got a max 3 min VT. About only half of that of Brundle on the track in anger. Other half was fodder you'd already seen either in promos or the behind the scenes insider VT. Utter garbage.

Yes that remains one of the biggest mysteries of Sky features - what is the point of going to the considerable expense of doing a filming day at a track, only to broadcast a couple of minutes of it with even half of that padded with vanity shots? I quite genuinely don't understand!

Yet again I found Channel 4's live coverage a breath of fresh air if only for the variety of opinions and lack of filler. I was somewhat sceptical of the rotating pundit idea but if there's one thing they've improved on the BBC it's that. Belgium with Webber, Prost & Coulthard should be worth a watch.

By comparison Sky have only had Herbert this season with cameos from Di Resta, Hill & Brundle and it has become extremely tired, formulaic and lacking insight. Having said that, Spain was considerably more watchable with Davidson's excellent analysis and without the white noise that is Herbert. I genuinely wish Sky would have the balls to drop him. He has literally no redeeming qualities as a pundit other than the ability to talk for hours without actually saying anything.

I was disappointed (yet unsurprised) by some of the forced narrative on Sky this weekend. They've always had a tabloid style, presumably to fill their excess airtime, but they were scraping the barrel. Their first question to Toto on Saturday was about the rumours of Hamilton taking a sabbatical, an absurd suggestion followed by more questions about favouritism within Mercedes. After Russia I thought they might have had more sense than to bring that up again.

On the grid walk, Brundle put it to Bernie that perhaps the team owners meeting that morning was to discuss pushing him out of the sport which Bernie unsurprisingly dismissed. However moments later Ted 'quoted' Bernie as saying he believed that was the subject of the meeting, a case of putting words in Bernie's mouth to create a story.

Unfortunately the usually brilliant Rachel was pushing Sky's agenda in the post-race interviews too. Lewis was simply asked, "Do you lay the blame anywhere?" and no more on the incident. Nico on the other hand was treated to an interrogation by comparison. It was put to him that he was distracted while playing with the wheel before she attempted to force him to blame Hamilton by saying, "I take it you don't agree with the stewards?" and, "You lay the blame at his door basically". Pretty disappointing line of questioning from one of the better members of the Sky team.

I get the feeling Brundle isn't toeing the line as much this season given some of his input, particularly his scathing criticism of new qualifying, his vocal opposition of the aeroscreen and his quip to Simon when discussing the 'growing popularity of F1'. His upcoming absence in Baku probably didn't go down well either. His honest opinions are the only refreshing thing in Sky's coverage these days.

As for their features, I can only agree with what has been said. If you want a textbook example of how to do a feature, check out this sublime (and very apt) example; Lee McKenzie meets Verstappen.

I believe were going to see a bit more from it in future races as he drove the 2014 F1 car while he was there.

https://twitter.com/MBrundleF1/statu...10509663113216

This post alone proves why DS needs a 'like' function.
Agreed 100%
And glad im not the only one that thought the Nico vs Hamilton interview was very lop-sided with the questioning and the fact Nico was, as you put it very fittingly, interrogated!
Sky's coverage as a whole has been rather stale, filler-based and VT-based for years.
The obsession with analysing something for the sake of it is getting worse. The use of the SkyPad is so over board, its now best mates with Nimo!!!

That's a bit unfair. Hamilton was surprisingly honest and open in the interview, whereas it was Rosberg who looked sulky and was giving one word answers. She had to work harder to get information out of him and that's probably why it seems like she was harsher on Rosberg.

I got the schedule wrong and paid for the Sky pass for this one thinking it wasn't on C4. But to be honest after watching all of Russia on C4 I was glad to get back to Sky's coverage. But each to their own.

Does anyone else with NowTV have judder issues? Watching on my LG TV app it's pretty much unwatchable. It certainly doesn't help that LG disables TruMotion for 720p, but I think there's more to it than that. I end up watching via Chromecast; with TruMotion turned up to full (which I normally hate) it's mostly okay but does still often get juddery on camera pans.

It's 720p25, and I'd put money on it being the conversion from the 1080i50* original that's the problem. One thing I notice is that I never get judder from the onboard shots, and I'd bet they're progressive rather than interlaced. Anyone know?


*Or 1080i25 depending on how you interpret the numbers.

Assuming you refering to this article: http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-...seen-best.html They made 5 clips available, that's not "Just about everyone", it's less than a quarter of the field...

If memory serves we counted a total of 12 OnBoards for the start in Russia (Using what was shown on the world-feed, Sky's post race, The f1 website & the Canal+ OnBoard highlights program) so it seems they have access to at least half of the grid.


Once again over the Spanish Gp weekend there was no sign of an OnBoard from either of the STR cars. Don't believe we have seen anything from an STR since Melbourne & it was even more surprising this time given how one of the drivers (Carlos Sainz Jr.) was driving in his home race & given the attention on Kvyat from the seat swap with Verstappen. We have got shots from at least 1 car from every other team at every race so it really stands out that there's been nothing from either STR.

They both seem to be carrying a camera & it would be strange for FOM to buy enough of the new cameras to cover GP2/GP3 & Porsche Supercup & then miss 2 F1 cars.


Oh & FOM missed the 2 Renault's colliding on the last lap, Fan video here:
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2016/05/1...gle-final-lap/
Although they have since posted an OnBoard of it on the website:
http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-...barcelona.html

I think you have got a bit carried away with your anti-Sky monologue there.

Brundle asked Bernie what the meeting was about - Bernie said words to the effect of "they are trying to get rid of me again - it will take more than they have got"

Ted then asked Toto about it and rightly quoted Bernie.

Yes probably a wind up from Bernie but in no way a misquote.
.

this brings me onto another question. why are all the c4/sky vts in 25fps when the live action is 50/60 fps. Its the same with sites like f1. why isnt everything shot in 60fps so that it can be uploaded as 30 or 60 rather than horrible 25fps video when not 50fps

A) It's a european production, so they'll all be shot at 25/50, and not 30/60. This is down to the 50hz frequency of electrical equipment throughout europe. Lights, Cameras, TVs, Monitors etc. etc.

B) Because they're shot at 25fps interlaced, which essentially combines 2 frames into 1 - so there's 50 images in 25 frames. This is a holdover from CRT displays who would naturally split & display the 2 halves correctly, essentially displaying 50 frames per second. With the move to LCD displays & digital broadcasts, they're still fed at 25i picture, so have to rely on software/hardware to decode the picture into 50 frames first, which takes time & resources. Frankly, most people's computers are too crappy to de-interlace 25i footage, or playback native 50p footage, which is why they just leave it as 25. The BBC is an exception to this, at least with iplayer.

The reason why they don't actually shoot in 50p in the first place is because a) all the existing broadcast standards recommend 25i, and also because it's more difficult to transmit 50p content over satellite - bandwidth is much higher as you need double the images effectively.

However with 4k footage, which usually tends to use a newer & more efficient codec, they can more easily transmit 50p content, so for 4k, the raw footage will be shot at 50fps - although one imagines for web playback & an SD/HD downscale, they'll still decode it to 25fps, because most people's PCs will struggle with 50p.

Maybe it was a request from STR to not show footage from the T-cam for whatever reason. Remember 2005?? No T-cam footage of both Ferraris was shown for the majority of the season.

I think you got a bit carried away with your pro-Sky defence there.

Here's a link to the grid walk to refresh your memory with accompanying transcript: https://vimeo.com/166729121?ref=tw-share


Nowhere in that does Bernie even suggest he believed the meeting was concerning him. Ted's retelling of that conversation to Toto was clearly misleading and, despite your insistence, a misquote..

As for being anti-Sky, if calling out the fabrication of quotes and baiting interviewees into a newsworthy reaction is anti-Sky then I suppose I am. Although you would have to ignore the numerous instances in which I've praised aspects their coverage since 2012, just make sure you paraphrase those quotes to a higher standard than your previous post, eh.

For the VTs I guess it's to give it a "filmic" look, as plagued TV programmes for a little while.

Interlacing becomes a complete PITA for anything that doesn't have that native resolution, such as PC, but works well enough for TV for giving HD resolution and smooth motion. Doing proper 1080p50 would near enough double the bandwidth requirement, and most people wouldn't notice the difference.

Didn't closely follow F1 back then, what was the reason for that? Just Ferrari's request?

I don't think people realise how much power you need to properly (and i mean properly, without any flickering on graphics/logos on screen) de-interlace content smoothly. I have an i7 and my system only just about does it. Of course, for on-demand stuff, you can encode the video as 50p, like what the BBC do with their HD iplayer streams now, but of course that does impact bandwidth...

For those talking about onboards earlier, just watched the Canal+ Onboards and they did not have any shots at all from Rosberg's car. The 3rd corner incident was all from Hamilton's CAM which showed his demeanour walking back to the stricken car looking like a man who did something very wrong (!) but the reason why the walk back? To re attach the steering wheel he threw out which he couldn't do as the car was already on the jib and was above head height by the time he almost got it attached, at which point he just let it go with a clank as it fell to the pedals. Canal+ did go back to the car when it was lowered off track during the safety car lap which saw Hamilton take another three attempts before he could reattach it. But again, no shots from Rosberg's Camera. No shots of the Renault's coming together either but don't recall Vettel's Ping-Pong comments after the Ricciardo incident towards the end on race radio (shock- yes radio) being played during the race which Canal+ did play.

It's a strange one. Even when Sky analysed the incident on the SkyPad, Rosberg's onboard stopped at the exact moment Lewis made contact. Surely it wouldn't have damaged the T-Cam in some bizarre way? Highly, highly unlikely.

I guess it's not beyond the realms of possibility the collision either directly or indirectly caused power to be cut to the camera. Things are packed very tight in these cars, maybe it was enough to short something in a wiring loom? Just remembering Webber in Korea where an otherwise unremarkable tap caused his car to go up in flames by rupturing an oil line.