ESPN / Sky coverage (spoilers)

First race coverage by ESPN / SKY was an absolute mess.

Pre-Race coverage was images w/o commentary,... resart,... again with images with out commentary,... then they give up. 10 minutes of another program, and finally resume mid program.

Race coverage was OK, but commercial breaks in live race coverage without commercial interruptions is awful. When coverage returns,... there is no welcome back,... here is what you missed (Alonso's radio for example / Hamilton exiting his car after the race).

NBC was better.

 

There's no adverts on the Sky feed so that's the reason why they don't give you a welcome back or what you have missed etc.

 

Let's hope they work this out. From the onset "Not Broading Casting Show Now" was better.

I kept switching to UniMas during the commercial breaks and did'nt skip a beat....they are commercial free but in spanish.

 

I know. That's the problem in the US. When ESPN uses it,... they put in commercials. It's awful.

(I tried to make this clear with: Race coverage was OK, but commercial breaks in live race coverage without commercial interruptions is awful. When coverage returns,... there is no welcome back,... here is what you missed (Alonso's radio for example / Hamilton exiting his car after the race).

 

Statement from @ESPN on Formula 1 @F1 technical issues during @ausgrandprix pre-race show:

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I actually thought it was much better than NBCS AND there was half the commercials the entire time. Well improved from my point of view.

 

While ESPN didn't do the best job, I still enjoyed it much more than watching NBCSN. With NBCSN there were way more ads. They were either full screen or picture in picture (but the race feed was so small you couldn't make anything out) and then when they did come back from commercial break, they would just show b-roll of the track while the race was going on. It was infuriating. Not to mention their web player was absolute garbage. Constantly buffering and crashing, forcing the user to reload the page and then because the page was reloaded you would have to watch another full screen ad before you could resume.

ESPN was just a Skyy stream with their own commercials over top, which I can live with. They do have to do a better job of helping the viewers catch up on what they missed during the commercial breaks though. As for the 20 minute technical difficulties before the race, that wasn't a big deal at all. That stuff is usually not that exciting anyways. The troubling thing is that the commercials were the thing that was the big issue with ESPN's coverage, yet in their apology they seem to only be apologizing for the technical issues before the race starts. Lets hope they are able to do better next race or it looks like I'll just have to subscribe to F1TV.

 

How much of the Sky pre-race show does ESPN show? It is 1.5hrs in the Sky feed.

 

I suspect that is Liberty's grand plan, make the accessible coverage annoying driving the fans to PPV.

 

They tried to show the last 1/2 hour, but only managed 10 minutes.

Edit: OK, as cranky as I was about it, it was their first time trying. Let's give them a race or two to work the bugs out. That said, I still doubt they'll give us the full pre-race, and they did cut out immediately after the podium interviews.

 

First try yes...but the pre-race incompetence would embarrass a high school freshman AV intern. Really inexcusable.

 

Exactly. Does anyone think this is the first time ESPN has broadcast someone else's feed??

It's clear that quality of the product presented is not a top priority.

 

Did they show a post-race interview? The live broadcast block schedule was 2 hours and I think the race ended with only 15 minutes to go in that time...not sure if they had time after weigh in and trophy presentation.

 

This was appallingly bad. The mix of announcers over the race sounds was unintelligible over Comcast at least. Couldn't hardly hear them at all. When I could hear them, they were unintelligible. And we thought the NBC crew was bad. The Sky crew was horrid. Paul de Resta was incomprehensible.

Not to mention the problems others have noted as the split screen commercials with no recap on return. I really don't give a crap if Sky doesn't recap, that is on ESPN to provide a comprehensible broadcast of the event. And on Liberty for ensuring that the coverage of their sport is at least merely adequate.

I love F1. I have for years. This was the most abominable broadcast ever. Hey, Liberty, we've all been tolerant and patient. Just some valuable feedback from a fan here on the best site of owners/aficionados of one of your marquee teams.....THIS SUCKED!!

 

Nothing wrong with the Sky feed, everything was clear and normal.

ESPN is a big outfit, I'd expect them to be on top of this by the next race.

 

How about 'ESPN is a big outfit. Three months+ to prepare and they failed mightily.

 

Hi Al. Hope all is well.

First, let me point out I DVR'd and watched on delay. My DVR ended right after Webber's podium interviews. I don't know if coverage extended beyond the allotted time though.

 

Agreed. I haven't watched a US F1 broadcast in 10 years and still don't. Liberty should focus on this first if they want to increase viewership here.

 

I watched the race on replay. Rolled out of bed at 8:00, made coffee, logged onto ESPN, hit replay F1 GP Austrailia at about 8:15. No need to DVR. The program picked up at the top of the hour, so there were 10 minutes of lead-in, which seemed quite enough. I pushed pause when I needed to go to the kitchen for a second cup and a bit of toast with jam. There were only a few commercials and they were singles, not the typical string of 4-6 ads. I was thrilled to not have to listen to Diffey and Madshit, and only a few seconds of Buxton.

What I missed was being able to follow the "Live Timing" race data on the F1 website. That made me pay more attention to the race as covered by Sky.

If I had stayed up until 2:00 AM to watch, I would have been PO'd too. As it is, I like the replay feature. It will make all of the far east races far, far more enjoyable.

 

Sorry, dude. There was something wrong with the Sky feed. If they provided that as multi-track to allow open re-mix, then ESPN failed on my ComCast signal. Sky announcers could not be heard over the cars....Glad yours was better but mine was intolerable.

 

The Sky feed from Sky was fine. Your troubles are with whatever ESPN and/or Comcast did with it. I watched 1.5hrs of pre-race and the entire race from Sky, and there was maybe one 3 second skip during race with no audio issues.

 

I have Comcast. I don't know if it was their problems or ESPNs but they screwed up the pre-race big time. They even switched to some different show for ten minutes!

 

Correct. The thread is about ESPN's broadcast of the Sky product (referred to as ESPN / Sky). Most, if not all the complaints, fall in ESPN's lap.

 

That would be great if we had no commercials on the ESPN version. But they DO have commercials. So, this problem needs to be addressed.

 

How do you suggest this get fixed? ESPN has commercials, and they didn't break from the action to show them. They just stopped the Audio so they could play the audio for the commercials.

You all complained about the amount of track time that y'all were missing with the NBC broadcast and now that you really don't miss a single lap you're still complaining? Had you paid attention to the race you would've seen the two things that you missed (audio wise) during the commercial break when they reviewed the two HAAS breakdowns.