Page 101 of 295 FirstFirst ... 519199100101102103111151201 ... LastLast
Results 1,001 to 1,010 of 2950

Thread: Wrc+

  1. #1001
    Senior Member AnttiL's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    Finland
    Posts
    9,625
    Like
    8,775
    Liked 10,522 Times in 4,616 Posts

    Wrc+

    Quote Originally Posted by Rally Power View Post
    Strange…no onboards (even old ones) available on WRC+.
    I was watching some Finland onboards in the afternoon and at one point it just stopped working. Maybe I jammed the servers?

  2. Likes: Rally Power (11th June 2018)
  3. #1002
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2012
    Posts
    1,835
    Like
    474
    Liked 1,472 Times in 572 Posts
    Quote Originally Posted by Rally Power View Post
    Strange…no onboards (even old ones) available on WRC+.

    Btw, the new girl seems nice, but Kiri was a much better presenter. Bring her back!
    I didn't like her at all

  4. #1003
    Senior Member EstWRC's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2014
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    13,867
    Like
    6,760
    Liked 12,153 Times in 5,211 Posts
    i agree...she just doesnt fit at all. Kiri is the best choice
    #8 Ott Tänak - Martin Järveoja #8
    - World Rally Champions 2019 -

  5. #1004
    Senior Member AnttiL's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    Finland
    Posts
    9,625
    Like
    8,775
    Liked 10,522 Times in 4,616 Posts
    I think all the presenters have been doing their job well enough

  6. Likes: pantealex (12th June 2018),the sniper (12th June 2018)
  7. #1005
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2017
    Location
    pussy
    Posts
    552
    Like
    0
    Liked 134 Times in 93 Posts
    Quote Originally Posted by AnttiL View Post
    I think all the presenters have been doing their job well enough
    It's the time provider who needs to be replaced or guys behind it...

  8. Likes: sonnybobiche (12th June 2018)
  9. #1006
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
    Posts
    249
    Like
    1,426
    Liked 290 Times in 113 Posts
    Thoughts on Rally Sardinia coverage:

    1. Abi Stephens is the one to keep as main presenter. I was really big on Kiri Bloore, because she was just so much more capable than almost everyone else, especially in those first days in Monte. In fact Abi probably had a much easier job than she would otherwise have had because Kiri had sort of whipped all the complacent WRC regulars into shape, showing them what it takes to run a proper motorsports broadcast.

    But for whatever reason Stephens doesn't get tripped up by the producer talking in her ear like Kiri did. And there's a sense of ease there that was maybe a little lacking in Kiri. Kiri would regularly just cut people off and move on to the next thing, as if she was worried that the viewers were growing bored. (To be fair, it was usually with Julian when he would start rambling, almost asking to be cut off.) Abi is more effortless. She's happy to let the conversation go where it will, but it never seems to go off the rails.

    On the other hand, Kiri seems to understand better than anyone else how important it is to keep the fans actually interested. It's more important than your stupid engineering debrief. More important than your team being able to sit in front of their laptops undisturbed. When Kiri entered the Toyota control room uninvited to show how the team work behind the scenes, it was actually exciting. It was voyeuristic.

    WRC needs a person like Kiri pushing the coverage in that direction, because if you leave it to the rest of them, they will quickly go back to doing bland, dishonest PR for the teams and promoter. You can see it every time Becs, Colin, or Julian interview someone alone. They start feeding the person PR answers with a question mark at the end of the sentence. "Elfyn, of course not the start you wanted to the rally, but there's still a long way to go and hopefully you'll be able to make up some places?" "Craig, how happy are you to be back in the car? Are you looking forward to the stages?"

    2. Surprisingly, WRC now actually has too many capable presenters. Or maybe not too many, but there are too many people playing too many different parts. People swap in and out of particular roles way too much. Heck, in the studio segment after the rally, we had Emyr Penlan take over the lead presenter role from Abi without explanation! (By the way, Penlan is surprisingly decent at it.) We have to have some stability. Paul King should ALWAYS be the voice of the highlights. Julian should ALWAYS be the co-host. Becs should ALWAYS be the play-by-play commentator on the live stage coverage, and Desborough should always be the color man, except when they bring in a special guest commentator like Gus Greensmith. Molly Pettit and Colin Clark should ALWAYS be doing the stage end and service park interviews. It's confusing and frustrating when people keep switching around seemingly at random.

    3. OK, here's the big one: on screen graphics. They are really, really, poor. They look ugly and they are more confusing than informative. My absolute biggest complaint is that despite watching every stage live, I feel like I have less of a sense of the situation at any given moment than I do when watching the highlights. This is primarily because the left-hand timing screen is so, so useless. What is the point of constantly displaying the total competitive stage time of the lead driver? That is information that literally nobody cares about, not even the lead driver. We care about the intervals between drivers at any given moment. These get displayed for a few seconds after a driver finishes a stage, and then, incomprehensibly, they are hidden again. SHOW THE INTERVAL. ALWAYS.
    Also, there is no reason to ever list the road order while a stage is running. They already highlight the 3-letter driver name as he starts the stage. That tells us all we need to know. What we need is a table showing everyone's place in the rally and interval between them. And when a driver comes to the end of a stage and it turns out he's lost or gained a position, you make a beeping sound and show the driver's name moving up or down the order, just like in MotoGP.

    4. Overall, the video quality needs to seriously improve. Bandwidth is not expensive, guys. Heavily compressed 720p 25fps with more artifacts than detail just doesn't cut it these days. It looks fine on my TV from 10 feet away, but on my 4k monitor at my desk, it is nearly unwatchable in fullscreen.

    5. All Live does not work at all in Chrome. I have to use Microsoft Edge on my PC. That sucks. Also, it does not work on my Amazon FireTV, except for true 'live' playback, i.e., there is no way to click on segments and watch them after they air, like you can on the computer. In fact the FireTV app is generally pretty broken. And speaking of clicking on segments and watching them after they air, that Electronic Programming Guide interface sucks ass. If you're watching the rally on your own schedule, maybe an hour or even a day behind the true live schedule, you have to use the EPG. But the start and end times of each segment in the EPG have little correlation to the true start and end times of segments in the broadcast. The "Studio" segment abruptly stops, and then you click the next segment, e.g. "Stage 10", and you get the remaining 5 minutes of studio segment before the actual stage starts.
    Also, the EPG start/end times are not exactly contiguous, so a handful of seconds of the broadcast is just gone forever between the end of one segment and the start of the next. Most annoyingly, it doesn't automatically start playing the next segment. You have to manually click it, and it's impossible to tell what segment is currently playing and what segment you have to play next. You have to remember which segment you just watched and what it was called on the EPG, which is surprisingly hard to do.

    6. The really should show classic rallies during the 1hr+ breaks. The one time they did it (during Argentina), it was great. But maybe that was a freebie from Motorsport.com, who now own the entire Duke Archive. Regardless, you can't just have supercut footage and two bars of music on loop for an hour.


    That may seem like a whole lot of complaints and not much praise, but actually I think All Live is a good product. They just need to iron out a few minor wrinkles and it will be great.

    Your thoughts? I'm especially interested to hear who people like more as lead presenter and why.
    Last edited by sonnybobiche; 12th June 2018 at 11:10.

  10. Likes: AnttiL (12th June 2018),b3637853 (12th June 2018),dnb (14th June 2018),eddy707 (12th June 2018),Jajá (12th June 2018),leighton323 (13th June 2018),Micke_VOC (13th June 2018),NickRally (12th June 2018),the sniper (12th June 2018)
  11. #1007
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    1,858
    Like
    140
    Liked 1,090 Times in 488 Posts
    Presenters. I have to admit that I wasn't really liking Abi at her first event but that might had been mostly due to the fact I only managed to check All Live very briefly. But after following the entire Italian round, I think she's the best option. Second would be Kiri and third the brunette, who felt really lost. Even the Mexican sun didn't help. The reason why I prefer Abi over Kiri is the more laid back approach. Kiri is very active and at time feels too much. But I think they need a makeup artist or someone who keeps an eye on people's faces.

    I agree that they should fix the roles of presenters. It would also make the transitions from studio to stage a bit smoother. No moving from studio to the commenting desk.

    WRC All Live. Sadly after half a season I still think the product is not ready. And when remembering their initial advertising for it, I think they said "all the action, all the drama". Yet they have a wonderful tendency to miss all the action and drama. Yes, the repeater plane is a limiting factor. But you need to work on your limiting factors.

    The whole WRC.com website is awful and the WRC Plus one is no better. And with All Live I've got quite often the feeling that they've really got no idea what they are really doing. It's television, a channel that works on 13 weekends a year. And with every channel you need to keep the eye balls and not let them switch to something else. On Saturday they had one of the highlights on repeat. As we just had All Live running in the living room and everyone minding their own business, I got fed up when I heard the damn thing start for the third time.

    But I'll start with negative and finish with some ideas.

    Graphics. I've got no idea what they are thinking. They've been doing it for years and how can they f.. it up like that. It's not like circuit racing where the overall standings are the most important thing and lap times quite trivial.

    Stage times and split times are the kings, yet we get very little of them.

    The left side graphics (overall standings) should be replaced with stage results and only show finished drivers and driver in stage. So the list gets longer as the stage progresses.

    Right side should be reserved for splits and create a rolling lower third graphics bar for overall standings and gaps.

    I suspect the commentators see the clean feed without onscreen graphics. That should change because in Italy commentators were talking about one split and onscreen the next split was displayed.

    Or if they don't want to have splits onscreen, then the commentators must give the information. As yeah, at the moment watching All Live has you more in the dark than just following splits/stage times and radio before.

    Action. I understand that it's impossible to get all the action from the stage at the same time but why didn't they go live where Latvala was trying to resurrect the car on the side of the road.

    The breaks. The flow of All Live is stop and go. I also liked it when they used archive to fill the gap a few events ago. Was it Argentina?

    This idea would require more production time/resources but it would be a good filler. Stage description/analysis. It should be more than just asking drivers. They've got plenty of people with knowledge who could go through the stage. Explain the challenges and dangers, sections to focus on, etc. And then the drivers' soundbites. And for the rerun they could use the same thing again, maybe a shorter recut version and show the fastest onboard from the first run before the stage start, if there's time.

    So that could fill the shorter breaks. And for the longer ones they can use in depth analysis of the loop (studio) and archive.

    Conclusion for the moment. I hope that's all that's been on my mind. If they'd improve the product, it can become a great thing. But at the moment we must make do what we get. My initial idea was to send the ideas to them, using both WRC Plus and production company e-mail addresses. But now is the first time I've got all of it in writing.
    Never stop dreaming because one day it might happen.

  12. Likes: dnb (14th June 2018),sonnybobiche (13th June 2018)
  13. #1008
    Senior Member Fast Eddie WRC's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    England
    Posts
    18,747
    Like
    3,407
    Liked 9,258 Times in 4,912 Posts
    Re WRC+ All Live on Chrome - it works fine on my PC and I'm also able to cast it perfectly to my TV via Chromecast.

    This is great and I can have it running all day like a WRCTV channel and dont have to be tied to my PC any more.

    Re Presenters - the live rally coverage is all that matters to me and not the studio girls. I would love to get rid of Dereborough from all commentating and always use the excellent Julian Porter as the co-comms.

    Re Graphics - Franky is spot on. They are awful and no substitute for watching the splits and stage times on a website as we did previously. It's like this info isnt that important when in fact its vital. A real shame and needs fixing asap.

  14. Likes: sonnybobiche (14th June 2018)
  15. #1009
    Senior Member Rally Power's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Portugal
    Posts
    3,004
    Like
    3,729
    Liked 2,937 Times in 1,338 Posts
    You guys said it all: there’s still some work to do, especially regarding the signal quality (too much cuts).

    Two more cents on the main presenter: with due respect, Abi is too calm; come on, she’s presenting the most exciting motorsport series of the world, not the afternoon show for housewives and pensioners. Besides, her diction is far from perfect and sometimes it’s hard to understand what she’s saying. Kiri was the opposite: always sharp, proactive and with no speech issues. Please, bring her back!

    Btw, if they can get a driver with Welsh accent to help in the comments (nice job from Greensmith on this one) why can’t they also take a French, a Finn or an Italian (etc.) fluently speaking English? It would be interesting to have people from other countries and break this irritating exclusive Brit line up (with Molly’s exception).

    Anyway, it’s great to have All Live available and I really hope they’ll manage to improve it.

    PS: onboards are on again; Neuville PS is really something!
    Rally addict since 1982

  16. #1010
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Posts
    5,796
    Like
    337
    Liked 3,786 Times in 1,977 Posts
    Quote Originally Posted by sonnybobiche View Post
    It's confusing and frustrating when people keep switching around seemingly at random.
    It might have to do something with the logistics. Sometimes people just have to change locations. Also some changes can be nice as it offers different "view" on same situations.


    4. Overall, the video quality needs to seriously improve. Bandwidth is not expensive, guys. Heavily compressed 720p 25fps with more artifacts than detail just doesn't cut it these days. It looks fine on my TV from 10 feet away, but on my 4k monitor at my desk, it is nearly unwatchable in fullscreen.
    If you mean video from stages then actually "bandwidth" is a serious problem. Just to name a few points:

    1. Coverage vs quality
    Sure you could get better quality basically immediately at the expense of more gaps and cuts in coverage. Dunno how it is now but just a few years ago F1 onboards would cut below bridges on the circuit... and that's a single "open" circuit with few kms length. Not like a rally stage with trees, hills and houses all around.

    2. Onboard equipment
    The transmission equipment onboard each car has very small footprint/antennas and low transmission power. Better quality might need bigger size/power supply.

    3. Available spectrum
    Again I dunno what they use but generally large frequency BW available all over the world to transmit from more cars at once is a problem. There are special short term spectral approvals for "sports events", but even for those the BW is quite limited and subject to fees.
    Also here the coverage vs quality comes into play. Lower frequencies give better coverage, but most often lower bandwidth (quality), higher frequencies have more issues with trees/buildings.

    Given a limited budget what is more important?

    - more cuts vs better quality when it works
    - more stages covered vs less with very good coverage (like we had before Alllive)
    - different places and following cars on each stage or just same sections (they can pick sections with good coverage)
    - less or more roadside cameras? (might be that a given number of road-side cameras is mandated for highlights/tv reports)
    - ability to switch between cars when something important happens (to do that "live" they need to stream from all cars in stage which again takes BW)
    Last edited by mknight; 13th June 2018 at 00:21.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •