HD F1

Most of us that watch the bbc in the UK , watch it on sky anyway. Besides the bbc has the F1 so why would they not show it in HD.

 

HD would be nice, but I will say I am plenty happy with Speed's widescreen format, and the picture looks quite clear to me.

 

How do you watch it in your country? Speed?

 

Are we Canadians the only lucky ones ?

We've had Formula 1 HD broadcast for at least 3 years now.....Speed HD was recently added 2 years ago.

 

We too have "Speed HD" here in the US but I don't believe the F1 coverage is true HD. Surely looks better than years past though!

 

That's not HD, it's just upscaled standard def.

 

Are you sure? I could swear it is broadcast in 1080 P. I'm not a tech-nerd, so I assume that is HD quality?

We also have "TSN" (Canadian sports channel)...they also broadcast F1 in HD as well as SPEED HD in Canada.

 

100% sure.

There is no high definition broadcast that even leaves the track (other than at a couple of tracks, and then very strictly for local consumption). Anything you see on any broadcast of F1 is not HD, unless you live in Japan and are watching the Japanese GP (and one other... forget which race, but it is HD only to the local area).

If a 480 signal is upscaled to 1080, your box/TV will tell you it is 1080... and it is. But that doesn't mean anything in regards to what the source was, it just means it's 1080 now. TSN and Speed both don't show F1 in HD. They just take the low resolution signal, "zoom in" to HD size and send it out to you. And, like zooming in on a picture, when you upsize something, you can't add detail that wasn't there so you get something a little better than 480, but not as good as real 1080.

 

How much actual broadcast TV (including cable and satellite) is actually in 1080p? My understanding (and this might be a couple of years old) is that most of it is 720p due to bandwidth limitations, and that the only way you can be sure of 1080p native resolution is with a Blu-ray player. 720 is of course far superior to 480. I don't claim to be an expert.

 

Thanks for clearing that up. Hopefully there will be full HD Formula 1 broadcast soon enough.....or 3D eventually!

 

That's why you'll see shows from the pre-HD era on HD cable channels labeled HD.
We aren't even offered SPEED HD on my cable.

 

Okay. Comcast carries Speed on an HD channel and a regular channel. If I tune my HDTV to the regular channel and blow it up to full screen, it doesn't look nearly as good as the HD Speed channel displayed at the same size. This would indicate to me that what you say above is incorrect (in other words, the source for the HD channel has a higher than 480p definition), or is there another reason? Just asking.

 

Yeap, up till 2010 all races broadcast were upscaled. The only people that had access to the HD feeds were teams/FIA/etc.

The last interview Bernie had on the subject he said the BBC wouldn't get it till 2012.

It's nice to see Sky getting this deal maybe Bernie has changed his mind with the BBC... I guess we will find out in the coming days.


dinodan: The resolution for the BBC feeds(or in general PAL SD feeds) is 576i which is then upscaled.

 

That explains it. Thank you.

 

Almost none of it.

Even with Blu-ray, if the source material isn't 1080p+ the disc might still be 1080p.

Also there are huge differences between one 1080p and another. There's more going on with bitrate than with the resolution. Digital video is all compressed for transmission, it's a question of how much compression there is. DirecTV adds compression on top of the compressed source, due to bandwidth limitations. You can really see it in certain types of shows.

Even if SPEED HD gets an HD feed of F1 and broadcasts it that way, your DirecTV 1080p isn't going to be the same as your buddy's Dish TV 1080p or your other friend's Comcast 1080p.

What I don't quite understand is why, even for DVDs, they over-compress the source when there is plenty of space remaining on the DVD. I guess it's because they have to remaster it for DVD and it takes more time to go over the flaws and whatnot when the final image is better. Consider you can get multiple versions of many movies on DVD, the first release, the new remastered, the criterion, etc. They are ALL 480p but they are also all different.

 

With today's pre-amps and receivers that can up-convert is this really an issue? I understand it is not quite as crisp but it looks great on a 50" TV. Am I displaying personal ignorance or is this really a non issue blown up? I guess I am also making an assumption that most of us are running HDMI though some sort of processor before it hits out TV.

 

Most people don't even know that they are watching regular TV and they think it's HDTV. Until they see a real HDTV picture of course. You can interpolate a lot but you simply can't get an HDTV picture from a non-HDTV source.

There is also the factor of screen size. At 50" the upscaled image is probably just fine and the typical person won't get too much benefit from a true HDTV picture. There's a chart somewhere (you could google it) that describes the required resolution for a given screen size and seating distance, based on the detail a human eye can actually make out. Of course it doesn't take into account bitrate/compression issues.

 

Supposedly Bernie says there isn't enough demand for F1 in HD. Remember too that HD is big here but not so much in many other places. He originally wanted to charge extra for it, but realized that wouldn't fly.

The last I heard (in November) was that the final decision was up to Bernie on whether F1 would be in HD in 2011. Supposedly, he has agreed (because German TV has said F1 will be HD in 2011), so it does appear to be coming.

Whether SpeedTV will show that feed to US customers remains to be seen, AFAIK. I imagine they would carry the HD feed, but I haven't seen them say that for sure, yet.

 

When they upscale, they are taking the "pure" digital feed (but it still isn't HD) and they are upscaling that to 1080 (or 720, whatever HD format they are running it at). It will look better than SD, because they took a pretty clean source and converted it to a pretty clean display format (1080), but it won't look nearly as good as HD.

It's sort of like the difference between taking an old Beatles vinyl record and playing it on a period turntable, or taking that same old vinyl record and taking to a studio that has a really high-end turntable and recording equipment, who then transfer it to DVD-Audio for you. They started with the same source, but the DVD audio will let that record sound as good as it can be, whereas if you just play the original record, you'll get less than it's best because of the additional losses involved in using it directly.

 

The F1 feed leaving the track in 2011 will be HD for the first time ever: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/88873

 

I hope Bernie keeps his promise that everything will be HD.
He said that, that was the aim when switching over to HD.
Meaning onboard cameras etc.

Even though it wont be blu-ray quality everything will be much much clearer.