In this age of advancements, the relentless march of technology should in theory make our lives better. In some cases it has but if you happen to be a Formula One fan, then I'd say that it was probably better to be living in the 1980s.
In the UK and then in Australia, F1 coverage was provided by the BBC and Channel 9. The BBC of course bought their feeds from the local broadcaster, and Channel 9 bought the BBC production.
Nice. Simple.
Now that we've reached the days of digital broadcasting, things have gone totally haywire.
One started broadcasting on Digital TV, and for early adopters of the technology who'd gone out and bought a digital TV, that was fine. Then Network Ten shifted One to HD only once they started their sister station 11.
I could very easily solve the problem buy buying a set-top box, but what is the point of buying a set-top box to watch digital television on a digital television?
I then went and made the switch to the so-called "Live Streaming" on the One HD website, but so-far in the 2011 season, the website has failed catastrophically in four from four races.
To add insult to injury, because OneHD falls under the "Multi-Channel" provisions of the AMCA guide under clause 5.10 of the regulations for commercial television, they are exempt from limits on the amount of advertising per hour.
During the Turkish GP when the OneHD server wasn't dead (for 31 of 58 laps) they then did their best to bombard you with adverts.
This means that if you were watching the 2011 Turkish GP on the OneHD website, then out of the total race time of 1hr 30mins 17sec, you would have only seen a paltry 42mins 22sec.
What I find almost unbelievable is that DSTV on their "SuperSport" channel in Sudan got the whole race with no ads and no server fails.
So how about that OneHD? Even people in Darfur, Sudan which was plagued with civil war still got a better F1 coverage than people in Australia.
So OneHD, I think that that would be rather embarrassing for you... seriously.
1 comment:
Terrible wasn't it? I remember when the coverage in the UK switched to ITV the ad breaks were deemed to be crazy, but compared with OneHD that was nothing!
I ended up watching a stream from Indian Star Sports, which whilst they did have ads, had - I think - three or four only during the whole race, and of a shorter duration than OneHD.
Let alone the fact that OneHD's streaming service is so crap - even when they got it working again they still had the cheek to jam as many ad breaks as possible in (which when watching online results in a pointless break in transmission, not even the ads!!).
Useless. The sooner the BBC get their international iPlayer out, the better!
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