...And On The 11th Year Of The New Millenium...

A half score and one year after HD began to pop up in broadcasting, the most technologically advanced motor sport in the world has announced that the 2011 season will be broadcast in HD.

and the crowd goes wild

Yes, this is really great news.  This shouldn't be.   This should be old news.   We should have seen F1 in HD back in 2005.  Even 2008 would have been OK.  

Yes, 42mbs is blu-ray level.  With all the action it probably should be that high.   The problem here is that they are broadcasting in MPEG2.   We used to refer to him as Bernie H.264.  Well, not anymore.

I know you're saying, "Fred, shut up!  It's HD.  Who cares?"

You care.

Believe me.  You're cable or satellite provider switched over to H.264 for one reason only.  Bandwidth.  They already compress the hell out of their streams and that's with the 50% savings H.264 gives them.  How good do you think that fat-ass MPEG 2 stream is going to look after they make it as small as their other HD channels.

How many providers are simply going to carry the SD feed like before?

How much is F1 going to charge for the rights to rebroadcast a blocky, pixilated, F1 stream.   Alonso's going to look like a Lego figure with two rectangular blocks over his eyes floating around on a larger red rectangle.

OK.  So it probably won't that bad and may actually look awesome.   I just can't help but be disappointed in the F1, the pinnacle of technology, decision to not use technology available since 2003.


I so want to be wrong about this.  Check out the story here.