The Sport Thread

Interesting (non UK) Chatter

Formula One Administration looking at direct marketing in some markets rather than using established broadcaster gateways. Looking at direct distribution channels such as Apple TV as well.

Wasn't the F1 Digital+ multiscreen service in the early days of digital TV basically their own operation. Only lasted a season or two IIRC.

It's alll about greed with Bernie Ecclestone - he's pretty much pricing circuits out of hosting races now so the sooner a breakaway happens the better for the sport probably.

Trialled in 1996, started fully in Germany in 1997, think Italy and Spain got it too, possibly France as well. Only launched in the UK in its last season in 2002- that carried no Sky branding at all and was produced by FOM at Biggin Hill. It was overpriced (£13 per race weekend) but the season ticket they offered for the second half of the season for about £50 for 8 races was a bit more reasonable. The only bonus coverage aside from the F1 sessions was the Porsche Supercup races on Sunday mornings. Coverage was excellent- quite tongue in cheek compared to what Sky offer today. Once it finished it was only when the BBC took over coverage in 2009 that it came close again to the quality of F1 Digital+, and it took until Sky Sports F1 came along to get (and go beyond) the depth of coverage it offered.

Someone, somewhere, will be pleased that their disaster recovery plan was called into action.
It's fairly common practice in OBs for one camera (and CCU) to be powered from a separate power supply/UPS/generator, and for this to be fed separately to the uplink truck. This means that if the scanner is lost, they can at least keep something on air.
By the sounds of it, they couldn't get power back before their generator ran out...

Yep - for many years OB trucks used to have a lot of batteries under the floor to power the sound desk, talkback and a single camera chain for that very reason.

It's not so common practice these days, every OB truck build I've been involved with over the last
few years, have dropped that idea. The problem is UPS style batteries are heavy, don't take too kindly
to being bouched around on road trips, and require maintenance, and 'exercising' otherwise when you do need them, they only provide a couple of minuites worth of power. They're designed for nice air conditioned server rooms, not the rough and tumble of on the road .

It's only the Middle Eastern and African broadcasters that request full UPS these days (annoyingly those trucks are used in the exact environmental conditions that are 'death' for UPS batteries) !

However, small 1RU UPS units are used to run devices that take an age to boot up, such as the clients that run the vision and audio desks and routers. They are there to cope with 'brown outs' or situations where you need to swap power feeds to the truck, etc. I have known 'beauty shot' camera chains to be powered from the truck's 24 volt system, which are far less power demanding than the full size/quality cameras to allow an emergency output path when disaster strikes, as well as taking reserve power from the satellite uplink van, which of course is parked nearby, and is part of the programme chain anyway

Clare Balding Show on BBC TWO

As expected, very much a cutdown from last night on BTS. Interesting though that the minimalist titles as used by BTS were retained

Only credit being
A Boomerang & Clearly Clare Production with BT Sport
(c) British Telecommunications plc 2015

I take it Clearly Clare Productions is her own production company then.

There's some F1 Digital+ footage on YouTube.

Launch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuyO82OEijI
How To Guide : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBv6Sko2b20
Aus GP 2002 Practice 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyShGOQYmd4 (with example of channel selection)
Aus GP 2002 Practice 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikIllic1rSg (with example of channel selection)

Fascinating footage from 2002. I brought a couple of races - and quickly realised that you can only watch one screen at once. And I missed Martin Brundle as the colour commentator over on ITV.
There was no PiP or a full screen Quad mix, that Sky Sports F1 did (or may still do - I've not gone into race control yet this season).

The interesting thing was, FOM still kept back some 'toys' for broadcasters. I remember Matt Lorenzo mentioning that they had the driver tracker in the studio - now that's available for everybody.

Also, you think nothing really changes on a circuit from year to year, but even though it was 13 years ago, it's amazing to see how many cherry pickers with cameras on them, as you forgot that one set of cameras were for FOM F1 Digital+, and the other set were the local broadcasters producing the coverage for the world feed signal. There are grandstands, when today there are none, and walkway bridge just before T1 - that disappeared years ago.

But, they still haven't managed to solve the signal break-up around the car park complex of corners in Turns 3-5!

Although perhaps appealing as a second screen option I've never really seen the logic in the Driver Tracker / Timing Screen options, especially if they don't have the race pictures alongside them. Although the way F1 is going the race will probably be live on Sky and the FTA offering will be little colour dots moving around a grey picture of the track.

Of course, it took FOM a bit of time to get back up and running after they dissolved F1 Digital+ after the 2002 season. 2003 was back to the local host broadcasters, meaning that the standard of the Digital feed was lost completely (e.g. the fibre link that picked up the on-board camera signals). Then, in 2004, FOM began to build up again, gradually taking over from the host broadcasters and providing the World Feed - finishing their work, pretty much, by 2007, I think it was. It took Brazil, Japan and Monaco a bit of time to go over to FOM production - I think that Tele Monte Carlo still produce the Monaco GP to this day?

Indeed, some of the 'toys' have only come back very recently. Premiere (now Sky Germany) did an exclusive deal with FOM for multi-channel rights in (I think) 2006, and it wasn't until the BBC got the rights back that there was any desire for a UK broadcaster to use the additional feeds. By that point, there was just an onboard channel offered again (with 5 live commentary, plus some timing data shown on BBC graphics). The BBC didn't offer the full data channel in their first couple of years, as they hadn't the rights. The Driver Tracker popped up midway through the 2010 season, ISTR, and the pits channel was only produced from 2012. By the time the joint deal with Sky kicked in, the BBC had access to more of the extra feeds and now show the data sheets, pit channel, etc when they are live. Plus they show them for all sessions - it was just the race that had the additional feeds, when the Beeb first started their coverage.

Interesting to note that Sky have stopped broadcasting the extra feeds on their website from this season - they are now only on red button and their iPad app.

The other point to note from those clips from Australia 2002 (thanks for posting, Michael!) is that at the very start of F1D+ John Watson was used alone as commentator, with Ben Edwards (who is really a commentator and, indeed, now commentates for BBC F1) used as a studio expert. I have heard it said that Bernie himself made a call to the producers to ask what was going on, and that's when Ben and Wattie went onto commentary together - it might even have been in time for qualifying in that race!