Setanta - abysmal F1 2013 coverage

PowRTocH

Is anyone else totally cheesed off with Setanta's coverage of this years F1 season so far? Whenever they show the practice sessions, they never seem to have the live commentary feed pulling through half the time. It seems as if someone at Setanta closes the BBC commentary when they feel like it and then forget to turn it on again.

But the real bugbear is when they have their ad breaks. They just pull the plug mid sentence. And of course if anything happens during they break, they do not repeat what happens (unless the world feed is repeating it).

But last weeks qualifying was a joke. Before the end of each session, they just pulled the plug - at the most exciting part of the session. and then come back for the final minute or so. And then when there is a 5 minute break between the sessions, we are left with no commentary at all. Whey don't wy schedule their breaks for the 5 minutes between sessions so we don't miss the excitement.

And of course at the end of the race they just chop off their feed when they feel like it, so if you are not watching live you never see anything. I even recorded the repeat this time to get what was missing, but that was worse, you saw even less at the end than you did on the live transmission due to the repeat starting late.

I wish I was able to get Sky at my apartment so I could watch a professional broadcaster show F1 - not Setanta's excuse for rebroadcasting the BBC feed, but unfortunately I am stuck with UPC and Setanta.

iDave

Do you know anyone with Sky that hasn't set up Sky Go or hasn't assigned 2 devices to it?
If yes try use their Sky Go account and watch on your Laptop or smartphone.

Agree Sellotanta is ****e.....those bloody Allianz ads on the bottom of the screen FFS.

Bugatti

Haven't watched on Setanta since early in the season but what really annoyed me about their coverage was after a race they just end the show without showing the interviews/press conference. Fair enough if there was another event that they were broadcasting just about to start but it'd usually just be something like a repeat of U-16 School Rugby or something on after the Grand Prix!

Myrddin

Setanta F1 coverage:

F1 Practice Sessions Live - Good!
F1 practice sessions replayed later in the day at late hours. This is because 15/20 year old football matches are more important to show - Bad!

F1 Quali Sessions Live - Good!
F1 Quali Sessions Live, but there's ad breaks in every session, quite often at crucial moments. Then in the space between sessions, which would be an ideal time for ads, we get five minutes of world feed silence & no commentary. This I find unforgivable - Bad!

F1 Race Live - Good!
F1 Race Live, but apart from showing ads, almost every time the podium celebrations & interviews are cut really short, sometimes mid podium, in order to show more important things...eg Liverpool v Man Utd from the 1995/6 season. Unforgivable - Bad!

To sum up, it's the least enjoyable way to watch an F1 weekend, & that includes dodgy streaming too.

Charlie-Bravo

Just to add a post to this, +1 to all of the above. Dire effort. UPC should be giving them a kick in the backside for being eegits as it will lose them customers. I mean, how many F1 followers on here who have UPC are only holding back from changing because it is there as part of the triple play bundle?

If F1 was not available on Setanta Ireland I would have gotten Sky in ages ago. Broadband would be taken as a single service from UPC.

losthorizon

I don't have Sky or Setanta but when the Beeb are not covering the race I simply watch the race on Now TV. You get 24 hours access to all Sky sports for 9.99 on your PC.


If you buy it at 3.30 on Saturday you will get all the GP 3 and GP 2 races live on the Sunday and re-runs of the Saturday races.

Charlie-Bravo

I've got the nowTV box for movies but don't see it being worth the 9.99 (£stg?) for a day pass. It's a stream of the event so there's a delay of 20 to 30 seconds - not good if you like having the live timing on too (which is a must for me). Also not good for real-time betting but I'm not so interested in that. I will say the quality of the stream would be decent and certainly much better than the dodgy streams.

afatbollix

Setanta started to hire with the job bridge a couple of months ago. They know nothing about TV and really it shows.


Heard they hired 7 for a couple of spaces of staff. Gone to the dogs.

flazio

Might I suggest you all take to Setanta's Facebook page and tell them about it. There is only one post there complaining about the F1 coverage and clearly there's way more upset about it then that. If more kick up a fuss then some action might be taken

ScumLord

PowRTocH wrote: »

But last weeks qualifying was a joke. Before the end of each session, they just pulled the plug - at the most exciting part of the session.

That takes real skill, how do they always know when the pit stops are so they can take an ad break just before they start?

Myrddin

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Its not just F1 all the sports coverage on Setanta is poor.

Vintage Premier League is their flagship coverage & gets the cream of the crop in terms of dedication. In a way we're lucky to have it there as an option, it's just infuriating because its coverage could be so much more enjoyable with a few minor improvements

PowRTocH

ScumLord wrote: »

That takes real skill, how do they always know when the pit stops are so they can take an ad break just before they start?

No - this is qualifying not the race - so no pit stops, just 20 minutes of Q1, then 15 minutes of Q2 and finally 10 minutes of Q3 - with a 5 minute break between each session. So why don't they take their ad break when there is no action?