F1 TV is finally live

[Duncan]

Just signed up; $90 in the US for this season. I assume it will go up for future seasons once it's available for the complete season.

Looks really good, although I don't see all of the features originally promised (like the side-by-side onboard with world feed). I don't know if this is because I'm watching archives, or if this is something that has been moved to a future feature list.

What is there, including the ability to select between world feed and any of the onboards is pretty awesome, though, plus the ability to select from numerous audio feeds including team radio for each driver. I was just watching some of the archive footage from Australia and listening to Lewis' radio. Much more than we normally get to hear. Also, tons of great archive material.

[Duncan]

Watching the pre-recorded qualy now. There was an interesting broadcast chat message sent out:

"We’re sorry to say that we have experienced technical difficulties with F1 TV’s live broadcast this afternoon. We’re aware that this has impacted customers with an F1 TV Pro subscription.
While we are working hard to fix these issues, we wanted to let those subscribers know that we will contact them by email shortly to address this with a partial refund.
Please contact us for other issues you might experience. "

I would take that as encouraging; there are definitely some technical kinks to be worked out with the service (I was getting quite a lot of buffering and disconnects watching) but I'll take it as positive that they're paying attention and trying to get everything right. This attitude to issues is a welcome improvement over MLB TV that I also subscribe to...

I *think* you're suppose to be able to select multiple audio feeds to be overlaid on one another, but right now you can only select one at a time. Watching while listening to the "FX" channel, which is the world feed audio with no commentary. It's actually really cool - you get the "sounds from the track" including the muffled and echoing sound of the local commentators over the PA system. Gives much more of a sense of being at the track. Hope they keep that feature...

[airshifter]

At least it sounds like they are going to try to straighten things out. I ended up just changing to a fiber package that kept ESPN so I wouldn't miss the first races, but am still interested if they get it right. It sounds like the archive footage might be great for the off season, and having multiple onboards/audio feeds sounds like it has a lot of options.

Keep us posted as the season moves forward. I'll probably jump on this at some point.

[airshifter]

I decided to give this a bump since I've lost my fiber sports channels and signed up for the free trial.


I watched both qually and the race delayed, so I can't comment on the live coverage yet. But the delayed streams were great and glitch free. I'm going to play with the multiple screen modes on replays, and be ready for when my schedule allows me to watch the races live so I might play with the audio and such.

For now I signed up for the monthly thing, as if the quality sucks I can ditch it quick. If the quality is there I'll just pay the $20-30 more to get through this season and then sign up for the yearly package. They had a 7 day free trial thing going, but I'm not sure if that will carry through the year. But if might give some of you a chance to check it out if you are interested, or if you want to make a switch to your provider package during the year.

[airshifter]

Just giving this a bump with an update.

So I've watched all of this season since my above post on the F1 TV, and things are fine. I watch some stuff live, some played back. There are a few weird things, now and then they are showing footage of something else while the world feed coverage would have a drawing or replay going on, but that is usually post race stuff. I have noticed that getting two devices logged on and in sync is next to impossible though. I tried that using my phone for say onboards while watching live on the computer, but there always seems to be a delay in one or the other. It's not bad, just a split second or second, but enough that you notice.

I haven't had time to watch the older stuff, but that is available as well.

In my case I'd say it's well worth it. To upgrade to a FiOS package that would get the ESPN channels that covered all races would easily cost me 3-4 times the cost of the F1 TV Pro subscription. And with the cable/fiber packages you have to have several ESPN channels or you risk missing qually in some cases.