HD channel to show F1 in Australia

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Australians are to get a new dedicated sports channel that could show Formula 1 in HD.

ONE, a new channel launched by Network Ten, promises “live and extended coverage of the Formula 1 ING Australian Grand Prix over the launch weekend with more than 22 hours of action across Friday, Saturday and Sunday.” Few other Grands Prix broadcast at anything like normal hours for Australian fans.

The channel will broadcast both in high definition and standard definition, but has not annuounced that F1 will be broadcast in HD.

Earlier this year director of BBC Sport Roger Mosey confirmed the BBC would not be screening F1 in HD. He said: “F1 won’t be available in HD though we’d very much like it to be.” As BBC has HD broadcasting capabilities, this seems to suggest the obstacle to F1 appearing in HD is FOM.

Australia’s readiness to broadcast F1 in HD could be good news for F1 fans in other countries, as it gives Bernie Ecclestone a greater incentive to offer high definition footage.

Rival motor racing series such as NASCAR and A1 Grand Prix are already broadcast in HD, NASCAR having adopted the technology in 2005.

Are you an F1 fan in Australia? What does this new channel mean for you?

Thanks to Terry Fabulous for the tip

More on F1 in HD

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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34 comments on “HD channel to show F1 in Australia”

  1. So the list of countries that upconvert F1 and show it on HD channels: USA (Speed HD), Australia (ONE), Japan (FujiTV CSHD), Austria (ORF), Canada (TSN HD?) and the BBC should have access to BBC HD if they had an HD source.

    So get with it Bernie!

  2. Does anyone know if there would be any live feed for outside uk online viewers, I remember an old article of you Keith suggesting that restrict measures will be taken by BBC in order to prevent this, is this the route that the others channels will follow??

  3. I have to be honest and say I personally don’t give a flying damn about HD, although I do understand that other people might feel differently, and why that might be.

    If I can watch sport on the telly, fine. If not the radio does me very well – the masterful Test Match Special being the obvious example of TV coverage simply being rendered obsolete – or even the BBC’s live text services. A lot of our racing coverage we watch on streaming feeds over the net.

    For me the glory of sport (and I’m a follower of a lot of different sport apart from motor racing) is the drama and the narrative it generates. And you don’t need HD to enjoy that.

    Any boxing fan listening to the Kessler-Calzaghe fight b back in 2007, broadcast in the middle of the night, and experiencing the incredible tension of wondering whether our man could keep upright and prevail against an incredibly tough opponent will know exactly what I mean.

  4. Channel 10 showed most of, if not all the races on upscaled HD in 2008. The good thing with the HD broadcast was the races were shown live, F1 race starts in Europe are usually 10pm Sydney time and the delayed coverage would often start after 11 – 11.30pm after the Sunday night movie/news. Hopefully, that won’t change on ONE.

    It’s a pity the broadcast isn’t HD yet, but I guess ONE is F1 HD ‘ready’

    I hope the extended coverage doesn’t equate to ad’s and useless commentators talking about 2009 rule changes etc. There’s plenty of support events on in Melbourne, be nice to see some of that.

    1. Most of this discussion has been about F1 coverage in HD on OneHD. I applause OneHD for their generally good coverage of motor racing, whichever genre. Which is is also good because of no local input by their useless commentators. On the Aust F1GP broadcast why didn’t they show more of the the supporting races like the Mini-challenge and the GT cars instead of that stupid bird doing those stupid interviews with those stupid wannabe celebs – absolute waste of time.

  5. ONE is just a rebranding of TEN HD which showed almost all the F1 GPs live in 2008. As an F1 fan living in Australia I’m not complaining, this is simply continuing a very good thing they started in 2008.

    I for one DO care about HD vs. SD. It’s ridiculous that we are still having to put up with SD upscaled to HD rather than watching a native HD broadcast of F1 races.

    1. Australia has had rubbish coverage. Either timeshifted to like 2am or delayed telecasts.

      Last year Ch10HD save us and started broadcasting GP live. But as others said it was upscaled. Sometime the Ten reporters did stories and interviews onsite and they where in HD, as was the goons in the studio. BTW we only get the ITV feed from the formation lap.

      I want qualifying live – bugger HD don’t care if it’s in black and white. With the BBC and it’s iplayer; No way we get a sensible feed over the Internet.

      My Mrs watches all her crappy soaps on 10HD, which will all be cut for “ONE” so she won’t be happy.

  6. All I want out of this channel is live Qualy, I was happy with the live races on 10HD last year.

    1. Hear hear

      Having the races live last year was great (cos then I used to switch over to the normal digi channel and watch it AGAIN…yes, I have a disease.

      But having to stay until 1am+ for qual – I could never understand the logic when they’re just playing the same crap on both channels.It’s about time we see live qualifying on TEN HD/ONE as well
      (my apologies to all non-Australian residents for this rant).

  7. Terry Fabulous
    18th February 2009, 1:47

    Hooraah!!!!

    This is wonderful news.
    Please make sure that any Aussie F1 fans get on the phone the day after each telecast and tell ten what a great idea it is to show the race live.

    By my reckoning, these are out start times for 2009 (I may have stufed up daylight savings so please check your local guides.) Here’s hoping Channel 10 doesn’t wuss out.

    5pm Australia 29/3, China 19/4
    7pm Malaysia 5/4
    9pm Abu Dhabi 25/10
    10pm Bahrain 26/4, Spain 10/5, Monaco 24/5, Spain 7/6, Britain 21/6, Germany 12/7, Hungary 26/7, Valencia 23/8, Belgium 20/8, Italy 13/9, Singapore 27/9
    1am Brazil 19/10 (night of the 18th)

    I read that as being only one red eye!!!

    If they do Qually live I will be in 7th heaven.

    1. Has the start time for Brazil been brought forward? It was on live last year too but didn’t start until about 2:45am from memory…

    2. Terry Fabulous
      18th February 2009, 5:05

      I’m an idiot,

      Yes Brazil is 3am not 1am
      Also, I forgot Japan at 4pm and Abu Dhabi looks like being at 10pm as well.

      Some nice reviewing before I posted there eh.

      Still, this should be exciting if they do them all live on ONE and then fingers crossed show us the Qually to boot.

  8. i am from oz as well and think they have no excuse not to show f1 quali live!
    being that ONE is supposed to be a 24/7 sport dedicated channel, then practice should be an option also as with the new “iplayer” we wont even get that streamed online at all. as far as i can tell, they are showing sprint cup this year, last year we got nationwide live (because of marcos ambrose) but he’s in sprint cup this year and we got the daytona 500 live! mind you, there was an hour and a half pre-race show! we are lucky to get 10mins b4 10HD had f1 last yr! and half of that was about mark webber getting out of bed! well almost, i wouldnt be suprised they crap on that much about him it’s not funny, they’ll be unbearable if he gets a decent car!

  9. Ch10 do an awesome job. I love it that Ch10 HD has the races live & when Ch10 ONE starts, i would be very surprised if they dont show the qualies on live. The head honcho @ 10 must love his motorsport

  10. well 10 is self proclaimed to apparnetly be “the home of motorsport”, they must finally be realsing it’s time they acted like it

  11. GP2 wouldnt be a bad idea either

  12. HD Formula 1? Please please someone bring HD F1 to New Zealand!

  13. But, the feed still won’t be HD so what’s the point? or did i get that wrong?
    In latin america if you have cable tv you can get fox sports in HD, but again, worthless when it comes to F1 as it’s just upsampled. On the good side we always get live quali/race, but pretty much no warm up or wrap up of the show, just the racing with mediocre commentators that rarely call the events properly, ie they sometimes get all excited with ‘yet another pass’ and they’re only watching a replay, they also don’t know the tyre compounds, etc.

  14. Living in Australia, i think its great that we finally get a dedicated HD sports channel!

    I mean i have cable, and we still dont get to see F1 live or in HD!!

    Good news for Aussie F1 Fans!

    GO MASSA AND GO WEBBER!

  15. It would be sin really if the BBC given such an opportunity and having the resources and finances – which all in GB pay for let the chance to give us live qualifying and the race in HD?
    They have their excellent BBCI player – which i’m sure can be set for live events – correct me if wrong there – and if they can show ceebeebies(kids programs) in HD – then why not HD for the main races?
    That is one of the reasons we were all happy to see them get F1 – but it may be getting held back by the pc brigade after that looney j ross(dross)actions and clarkson – wouldnt have helped much lately either!!

  16. Again, if the FOM feed is not HD, then what good is the BBC upscaling it to HD?

  17. We get cable, and I’m quite happy with the quality of the race (and qualifying) pictures. But there again I haven’t seen F1 in HD, so I have nothing to compare it with.

  18. AFAIK, no one has. Possible exception being certain races where a non FOM controlled crew does the filming? can’t remember where, Monaco was it? Canada and Singapore kinda also in the back of my head…

  19. Oh isn’t it true that in some places you can go to a theater and watch it in HD?

  20. Yorricksfriend
    19th February 2009, 5:28

    I did know about ONE and it sounds great, can’t wait for it, since it’s in SD I’m assuming it will work with my standard definition set top box – so bring on the 09 season!

  21. Hi, having watched F1 for over 20 yrs (in Aust), I found I had to resort to all sorts of things to watch F1 at a decent hour. I was most dissapointed that I still had to wait until some ungodly hour (as late as 1.15am Sun) to watch Qualifying. I had been getting the live screen times from Formula.1.com and that helped but it wasn’t the same. A friend in Canada put me onto Sopcast which is a free internet tv service. For the most part, I got coverage of Qualy and the Race in English using the exact same pictures as Channel 10. Then In Sept last year I got myself a new computer and included a HD TV tuner card so I can now watch any and all F1 on Channel 10s new HD Channel. Looking forward to the new season to see how the new regulations come into play as far as overtaking is concerned (seems to be the main resason for the changes). Thanks.

  22. Lewis Malivanek
    19th February 2009, 9:36

    Channel 10, unlike the other FTA channel in Australia, have done an excellent job in the past at promoting sport, whatever in seems to be, and no doubt sets the benchmark in motorsports. 10HD had excellent coverage of the F1 season last year (the live feed coming directly from ITV), however I was disappointed to see that the races were not screened in HD. For this channel to live up to its hype on motorsport, they must show the F1 in HD – the way it should be shown!

    However, now that the BBC have taken over F1 rights in Britain, I hope they can form a quality commentary team like that of ITV. Its good news to hear that Martin Brundle will continue to commentate.

  23. teamorders: are you on heavy medication?

    Channel Ten are scum and treat F1 with contempt.

    They have quite good Australian GP coverage, and then the rest of the year – bumped schedules, hardly ever show the races live, 5 advert breaks in the last half hour, qualifying at 3 o’clock in the morning …

    and no, Channel Ten don’t have the same ad breaks as everywhere else. ITV learnt from their mistakes and tried to get as many contractual ad breaks in during the half to 2/3’rds of a race. Channel Ten contrived, every time without fail, to get in as many ad breaks as possible in the last half hour of a GP – the same as they do for movies.

    It’s common practice for Channel Ten to follow the majority of a safety car period live, just to cut to an add break as the race is re-starting or just a lap in!

    Why would you do this?! Unless you were a complete A*sHo*e!

  24. Bob where are you and do you have a digital HD TV or set-top box?

    In Sydney, 10HD showed all races live in 2008 since Turkey (I think it start at Turkey). The race is heavily time shifted on 10SD and I assume the analogue channel. Qualifying has always been time shifted.

    It would be totally awesome if this ONE thing has everything live and GP2 would be really cool too.

    I send 10 a nice thankyou letter if they show everything live and I buy any product advertised in their (short) ad breaks.

  25. CH 10 don’t broadcast anything on the HD channel outside the major cities. maybe neighbours or some junk but other than that it is HD “DEMO” 24hrs a day so i share BOb’s frustration with 10. even if you have the HD channel if your in a regional area at least in victoria you have to watch delayed telecast on SD or analogue tis rubbish and needs to be sorted out by 10

  26. i dont care whether we get high def broadcasting or not, i would just like to get some decent bludy coverage from channel 10 and now there is no live streaming for us aussies on the net available we are going to be stuck with 75% of the race coverage as usual due to all the editing channel ten does!

  27. As said by someone above, F1 is NOT recorded in High Definition.

    Bernie Ecclestone commented on this last year. He basically said something along the lines of that he would love F1 to be broadcast in HD, but the sticking point was the broadcasters, who as at late last year, were unwilling to pay the extra satellite bandwidth costs required to distribute F1 in HD.

    So it doesn’t matter if its broadcast in HD, it isn’t HD.

    On another note, if Ten don’t cover this live nationwide, I am going to do something very very desperate.

  28. Formula 1 in High Def??? OUTRAGEOUS!

    In Australia coverage of F1 has always been the poor cousin of any other sports (including lawn bowls). Last season the standard def broadcasts chopped off the post race inverviews. This really grinds my gears as the coverage was on so late that I would go to bed assuming I would see it the next day and bam..nothing.

    When they started showing the races live on the digital chan this was a surprising step in the right direction as it also included a chan10 produced pre race wrap.

    I have never understood that the second biggest sport in the world was so poorly covered but in reality I would watch it in black and white if i had to..its f1 for gods sake!

    I am so pumped for the full coverage, maybe we will be in for a good season of proper coverage. I’ll watch more chan10 if its good!

    1. So typhical australian business…talk a lot..means nothing.

      That so amazing new HD tv sport channel, Channel one is brilliant. Channel 10 just “forgot” tell that its not really channel for everybody in Australia. You can watch it only in capital cities, means Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra.

      So we who live out from those big cities, can enjoy watching F1 still from so called normal Channel 10, which means no live cover.

      Excample China Grand prix will show here in 11.15 PM!!!!!

      I am really planning move back to Finland :(

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