The Issue With Sky TV Coverage of F1

I have subscribed to the sky HD package to enable me to watch Formula One. So I pay an extra £10 a month or £120 per season so that I can see every race.

Sky promised us uninterrupted coverage of the races.

As everyone knows, I am a freelance journalist who covers F1, easy if I could get to go all over the world to watch the races but finances don't allow that, hence the reliance on Sky's new F1 channel. Last season was perfect from the BBC, great coverage and awards also.

Now, I understand that everything can't be perfect but let me tell you about my experiance of Sky F1 to date. I've recorded every practice session, watched qualifying and the races. Every practice session has recorded but has come up with the words 'part rec' which in Sky TV language means the program has not fully recorded. When I have watched these back there have been losses in the signal which have meant me missing parts. This hasn't been a one off either. We have had six practice sessions so far this season and all six have partially recorded with signal losses. Then there was today and the Malaysian Grand Prix, I'm sitting there with my laptop making notes on the race, early on Grosjean goes off and I wanted to make some extended notes as its a worthy part of my article in the end, so I pause my Sky using live pause, make my notes and pressed play to carry on and nothing, the box had crashed and had to be reset. Hence the gap in my Malaysian Grand Prix report.

This happened to me when the biggest event of the grand prix happened. When the box was reset Alonso was leading, Perez was 2nd and Button was heading for the pits after a crash. So I missed the best part of the grand prix because of a Sky issue.

Sky is a satellite service which means that sometimes there can be a loss of signal. This is a risk, especially if you are like me and report on Formula One. I'm not criticising the coverage, they have a good team and the coverage is good, perhaps not up to the standard we were used to with the BBC yet.

I called Sky today and spoke to a technician who said it was probably just a chance thing that it happened on the F1 channel. She said it may well have happened on any channel at that point in time. On the day I tested live pause on other channels and it was fine. So I have reset my box in a way described by the Sky technician and we tested live pause on F1 channel and it was fine.

So in conclusion, was it a box issue? Was it an issue with the Sky F1 channel itself? Was it just me? I'd love to know whether anyone else experienced similar problems.

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