Whoopdie f'n doo for the UK viewers!!!
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/88883
- Login or Register
No account yet? Sign up
Formula One Management have today confirmed that all Formula One races this year will be broadcast in High Definition this year. While a number of major broadcasters have already confirmed provide the HD feed, many others are expected to follow shortly.
Four? I agree, there's not much point in paying extra for that. My provider offers 178 HD channels, of which I subscribe to 90. Those duplicate most of the "useful" channels in the package I have - there are 45 channels I keep on my box which don't have HD alternates. I'd say that in middle-class US, that's probably a pretty common setup these days, whereas maybe as little as three years ago, it would have been quite rare.jimbleton wrote:Durris has (to the best of my knowledge) supported DVB-T2 since the analogue signal was switched off last year (remember the adverts all over Marischal College?). Of course, with only 4 HD channels to choose from, I'd have to agree that there's little point in paying at least £100 for a new set top box or tv.andrew wrote:Not sure but it would be an extra cost that I could do without right now. The problem with HD is there just isn't enough programmes that are worthy of being watched in HD. Besides F1 and the World Cup I can't honestly think what else I watch that I would think would be better viewed in HD.
Good point. Though I believe most TV broadcasts are still in MPEG-2. Like you, I don't know why that is. It would certainly be nice in H.264.jimbleton wrote:Not quite... Unfortunately, the powers that be at FOM have decided to use the antiquated MPEG-2 standard. I've no idea why they'd do this, it makes absolutely no sense and I can see no technical reason behind this (though there may be a financial one).Pup wrote: Now, the claimed 42Mbit rate is blu ray quality. How degraded that will be by the time it gets to your TV will be up to your individual provider. i think it could be as low as 8Mbit and still be called HD. The point being that it's likely we'll get varying reports of quality, probably even a few who claim not to be able to tell any difference.
Frankly, it's an absolute disgrace, and a waste of bandwidth. I see it as a grand, obscene gesture to everyone who's been hoping for the best possible quality HD for F1. "You want HD?! Here's your damned HD, now stop your bitching!"
The only HD channels transmitted by Durris are BBC One HD (Scotland), ITV1 HD, Channel 4 HD, BBC HD so sadly not much choice there. Msybe once there are more channels available I'll think about getting an HD TV but at the moment it is not worth it. However, I think there may be more channels available on Sky but I'm not entirely sure.jimbleton wrote:Durris has (to the best of my knowledge) supported DVB-T2 since the analogue signal was switched off last year (remember the adverts all over Marischal College?). Of course, with only 4 HD channels to choose from, I'd have to agree that there's little point in paying at least £100 for a new set top box or tv.andrew wrote:Not sure but it would be an extra cost that I could do without right now. The problem with HD is there just isn't enough programmes that are worthy of being watched in HD. Besides F1 and the World Cup I can't honestly think what else I watch that I would think would be better viewed in HD.
The main problems for them to overcome is Bandwith from car to trackside recivers, but there are other problems, size of the camera on the car due to the size of components needed to withstand the vibration from the engine and the forces that the air also gives it.Goran2812 wrote:there are small enough chips aka camera sensors that can provide 1080p video out there... something else is bugging them at the moment... probably the bandwith of the channel and how to transfer all that data from the car to the tv system...
H.264 takes more hardware power to encode and decode but it produces a more compact recording because the compression is higher. Naturally the bandwidth requirement is higher when you use MPEG-2. Most broadcasters in Europe who are using H.264 for all HD will not like the waste of bandwidth on their satellite transponders. Equipment which is capable of HD can deal with MPEG-2 but not vice versa. So I reckon that some broadcasters will transcode the signal as they did with the 2010 upscaled signal. Sky Deutschland was using H.264 encoding in 2010 AFAIK. I will go and check my race recordings.Pup wrote:Good point. Though I believe most TV broadcasts are still in MPEG-2. Like you, I don't know why that is. It would certainly be nice in H.264.
Most broadcast HD in the UK is in h264. SD content is still MPEG-2, because when the original DVB standards were being created, it was the most suitable (same with DVDs). Whilst it's true that h264 is more computationally intensive to encode and decode, broadcasters generally use hardware encoders and so this is really a moot point for them...WhiteBlue wrote:H.264 takes more hardware power to encode and decode but it produces a more compact recording because the compression is higher. Naturally the bandwidth requirement is higher when you use MPEG-2. Most broadcasters in Europe who are using H.264 for all HD will not like the waste of bandwidth on their satellite transponders. Equipment which is capable of HD can deal with MPEG-2 but not vice versa. So I reckon that some broadcasters will transcode the signal as they did with the 2010 upscaled signal. Sky Deutschland was using H.264 encoding in 2010 AFAIK. I will go and check my race recordings.Pup wrote:Good point. Though I believe most TV broadcasts are still in MPEG-2. Like you, I don't know why that is. It would certainly be nice in H.264.
