Duke's guide to watching F1 2012 on the cheap

Duke

Duke

Duke

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Hi all,

Now a bit of time has passed since the whole F1 2012 BBC/Sky coverage news broke, I've looked into the options.


Sky Sports F1 Channel

Sky will have their own F1 channel, available for Sky and Virgin Media customers. If you have Sky HD then you get it free on satellite with them, if you're on VM then you need to buy the Sky Sports package to get the channel.



RTL Channel on Satellite

For those that don't want Sky/VM, one option I've found is to watch the German RTL channel with the BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra commentary alongside. RTL is free to air and covers both the qualifying and race in full. It is only free for the SD feed and I think it is £100 a year to watch it in HD. To pick up this channel, you need a satellite dish pointed at 'Astra 19.2E'. I gather you should be able to re-align an existing Sky dish to this sat (although some parts of the UK may need a larger dish), assuming you don't use it for normal Freesat channels, or you can purchase a second dish for it. Even with a different receiver box included, the whole install can be done well within a £100 one off cost. The problem when I tried it was the sync of Radio 5 Live being out by a few seconds and also the commentary team on 5 Live isn't as good as before.

RTL tech info - http://www.satmania.com/eng/satchannels/rtl_television.html
Dishpointer - http://fr.dishpointer.com/
List of channels on Astra 19.2E - http://www.satmania.com/eng/satchannels/19_2e/astra_1h/

It is possible in some cases to add a second LNB (the receiver on the dish) to an existing dish, but not tried it myself. The second dish was so cheap I just went for that option. You can also get motorised dishes (or make an existing dish motorised), so with a compatible sat box, it will move the dish to the correct sat when you change channel. Very cool but does cost. A motor was £80 odd from a certain electrical part store.

Someone mentioned on here in the other thread about a Polish channel which shows the F1 as well, which is on a different sat, so might be another option on there (could be HD as well?). I believe this is on a sat which is much closer to the normal Freesat one, so it is much easier to hook up a second LNB to the dish to get this.



Watching Online

If you know someone with Sky, you can use Sky Go to watch via steam on your computer (ideally connected to a TV). There is no extra cost for this to the subscriber.

There are some other steams available. Sldsmkd is compiling a list of them:
RTL Germany - http://www.rtl.de/formel1/livestream/index
RAI TV Italy - http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/diretta.html
Esport3 Spain - http://www.esport3.cat/f1/html/directes/



Watching on BBC

Of course you can watch with the BBC still, however only some races are covered live. You will have to wait for the rerun later that day for the non-live ones.
 
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sldsmkd said:
I can't install satellite dishes so have been looking at alternatives, a lot of the stations do stream the content onto the Internet, but they are region locked. You can get paid for VPN's which cost around £7 a month - so I will be testing these out soon, in the meantime i'm compiling a list of livestreams.

RTL Germany - http://www.rtl.de/formel1/livestream/index
RAI TV Italy - http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/diretta.html
Esport3 Spain - http://www.esport3.cat/f1/html/directes/
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting. Any idea of the quality? The streams I've seen before have been a postage stamp size. If they did a decent SD or even HD stream, it would be a very good option.
 
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Second dish isn't an option for our house. The existing dish for sky had to be installed on the chimney to get line of sight over a set of trees behind our house. The trees aren't in our property so they can't go. I think my only option is to try and watch at friends/pubs
 
No-One said:
Second dish isn't an option for our house. The existing dish for sky had to be installed on the chimney to get line of sight over a set of trees behind our house. The trees aren't in our property so they can't go. I think my only option is to try and watch at friends/pubs
Click to expand...

Can you not just extend the pole and put the second dish on top? Or would it be a bit too high / look terrible?
 
Duke said:
Thanks for posting. Any idea of the quality? The streams I've seen before have been a postage stamp size. If they did a decent SD or even HD stream, it would be a very good option.
Click to expand...

These are from the major broadcasters for each country, and i'd expect they'd be on a par with the iplayer. They will not work outside the specific country unless you use a VPN, and as the open VPN's have awful bandwidth i'll be trialling paid for VPN's*. Apparently the Turkish station streams in HD - but it may be a mission getting a VPN into there, so i'm going to focus on major TV stations more local. If I can get a live SD quality stream reliably then I can live with a few adverts on top of it and Five Live commentary.

I can't receive either Cable or Satellite so those aren't options - but Sky Sports 1 & 2 are available on Freeview via Top Up TV. It's a bit expensive but may be the best option. If it's on Sky Sports 1 exclusively then that's £24.99 a month on Freeview (but not HD)

http://www.topuptv.com/skysports/?gclid=CJu-m-yLuasCFYUKfAodnhOyew

I'm too dependent on Live timing to follow the race to have any interest in delayed transmissions - and do get up at 5am or whatever to watch the Far Eastern races.

*Giganews offer a VPN option as an addon to their usenet access, so I may switch back to them.
 
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Thanks for the guide, certainly worth pursuing if you're not sorted by next year or don't want to shell out the surprisingly large amount to get a Sky sub.

I don't know what my circumstances will be at the start of next season, but does anyone know what the easiest way to get HD would be?
 
I would think the best way to sync up / delay the video would be to feed it through a PVR and use the pause function. This will of course depend on the fidelity of control this gives you (MediaPortal gives me pretty good control, I don't know about hardware PVRs). It would be even easier if your radio has similar functionality.
 
To answer Dukes question about sat cards, I have a media PC that is my PVR with a dual SD Freeview tuner in it (there is only SD Freeview in Southampton atm). You can get HD sat PCI or PCIe cards for anything from £40 to £100, but as I require a half height card to fit in my Media PC case they are £60+. If you already have a media PC then this might be a route to go down.

As I live in a flat and my dish is shared I can't go pointing it at other satalites. If/when I move out I may invest in a sat card and dish (that is, if I don't just go for Sky+HD anyway).
 
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