I remember a practice session a few years ago where the BBC's audio feed from the circuit (Malaysia I believe) went down, leading to David Croft (on TV duty as the main tv commentators didn't tend to cover Practice) calling the action down the phone! Brought back memories in a strange geeky way!
I know during the ITV era, there was on Japanese Grand Prix, where a typhoon 200 miles away caused quali to be moved to the morning of the race.
Due to the weather on the Saturday could cause trouble on the Sunday, that ITV had the following back-up in this order to keep the commentary going.
Normal via satellite circuits..
Independently powered ISDN codec box and line
Mobile phone (and fixed land line if that wasn't working)
Two commentators in a booth at TLS as a last resort.
I know during the ITV era, there was on Japanese Grand Prix, where a typhoon 200 miles away caused quali to be moved to the morning of the race.
Due to the weather on the Saturday could cause trouble on the Sunday, that ITV had the following back-up in this order to keep the commentary going.
Normal via satellite circuits..
Independently powered ISDN codec box and line
Mobile phone (and fixed land line if that wasn't working)
Two commentators in a booth at TLS as a last resort.
On the F1 Coverage thread on DigitalSpy there used to be a poster who - from what they posted - clearly worked at ITV Sport. He once posted that the above - bar the backup commentators - was the normal setup- ie Unilateral out of the truck on two satellites, EBU sourced world feed + ISDN (possibly two taking diverse routes away from the truck), two TBUs. A greater amount of backup that the BBC used a few years later when it was unilateral via satellite then down to EBU sourced world feed plus ISDN.
The biggest issue ITV ever had was during the 2001 Brazilian Grand Prix when power issues meant commentary was lost on several occasions, the pictures continued though, I think with little more than a small glitch on the picture.
The biggest issue ITV ever had was when the studio 3 gallery desk which was handling the live transmission that day had a complete meltdown - during the pre-race show.
Picture rolled briefly before LNN tx routed the FOM world feed/track ambient sound straight to air.
Kept that feed until about 4 mins later, they got (via what I presume was a back-up ISDN) Jim Rosenthal to apologise, and went to a break. I guess that was when everyone moved to a spare gallery, as when ITV F1 return everything was back to normal.
ESPN went commercial free for qualifying and the race in Bahrain and are doing so for the rest of the season, that should keep a lot of F1 fans in the US happy
The feed has been updated slightly to include a new halo graphic from the F1 car's chassis. This is to cover the new rear view mirror. I saw this watching the live practice 2 round earlier on Channel 4 HD. I have to admit that I like it; the new halo looks really nice. The colours look really good. I know that the pic here is from Sky but it is taken from the boards.ie 2018 F1 general discussion thread.
