Indycar-like cameras being introduced

[Mr Palaces]

I noticed in the last couple races that they introduced in the cars rotating cameras similar to those used on Indycar. They were installed in the nose between the suspension and the wing, and in that spot above/behind the helmet. It looks cool and I hope they stay, but I wonder why they don't just use the same camera as in indycar.

[Fro]

That's one thing :tgwas way ahead of Bernie on. Wasn't F1 not even in HD until the last couple years or so?

[Baulz]

I didn't like them. Maybe they just need more time playing around with the new cameras, but I felt like they were being used at times when they were not required.

To be honest I would rather Indycar get rid of them and find a way to have more cars with fixed onboard cameras.

[ForzaFerrari]

That's one thing :tgwas way ahead of Bernie on. Wasn't F1 not even in HD until the last couple years or so?

That had less to do with technology, but rather Bernie wanting more money.

People forget this but F1 was WAY ahead of everyone when digital television's (pre-HD) first came out in the 90's. In fact, they were too far in front for their own good. Back then, there were two completely seperate telecasts for each race. The normal 'world feed' which was produced by the host broadcaster for each race, and then all other networks did their own commentary over that but had no control over cameras or directing. It wasn't uncommon to hear Murray Walker or Martin Brundle say things (sarcastically) like "Please Mr Local Director, can we see some of the action up front for a change" if they were spending too much time showing a particular local driver down the back.

But then there was "BernieVision" which was a massive traveling production studio (two full 747's) at each race which had far more exclusive onboard camera's than the regular feed. It was pay-per-view, and you could use your control to choose between camera feeds (main race, onboards, frontrunner, midfield, pitlane, etc). He pulled the plug after a couple of years because it was never popular enough except in Germany and Italy. The trouble was, most people didn't even have access to it, and it as before HD was available to not much reason to upgrade. The only thing it had was that Bernie made it so all the good onboard camera's where exclusive to his feed. You would NEVER see an onboard from a Ferrari or McLaren on the world feed, which only had about 2 midfield cars per race (and only the standard front facing above the helmet shot). The Digital F1 feed had multiple camera's in different direction on every single car, all the closer trackside cams, rail cams, camera's in the kerbs, the super-slow mo. I remember once during a race they jumped to Schumacher's onboard for about 2 seconds and the ITV commentators (Murray and Martin, doing the world feed) joked how someone obviously pressed the wrong button and hopefully (for their sake) fixed it before Bernie noticed.

Most of the things from that era are just part of the standard broadcast. The reason HD took so long was that Bernie wanted to sell it separately, and have a standard and a premium HD feed. Same reason it took years for the annual review video to be available on DVD (it was still VHS only until about 2002), he only sold the rights for tape and a whole separate set of rights for the DVD.

[ForzaFerrari]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_Digital%2B