BBC F1 to go HDposted in F112 | 01 | 2011

FORMULA ONE will go HD this year with the BBC poised to become one of the first broadcasters to transmit the upgraded coverage. The sports' broadcast chiefs today confirmed F1 would be broadcast in HD from the start of the 2011 season in Bahrain on March 13.

Formula One Management (FOM) today confirmed all channels that have a deal to show the sport will be given an HD feed: the BBC, though it has yet to confirm its plans, is expected to take the feed for its HD channel, then downscale the signal so it is suitable for its terrestrial channels.

FOM has invested in equipment that is good enough to ensure that it can download the data to broadcasters at a high quality rate of 42MB of data per second; and the broadcast will be in 1080i resolution.

Full HD coverage will be transmitted by trackside cameras, but due to the technical complexity of on-board cameras these will remain upscaled standard definition cameras for now.

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Jim McGill