Quote Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC View Post
Technology has become smaller, cheaper and more portable and I dont see cost as an excuse...

And the stages are all being filmed anyway, so its just a question of showing the pictures live not recorded.
Sorry for the massive off topic that's about to follow.

Fast Eddie, don't confuse the consumer and professional video equipment. Yes, the technology has become lighter and a bit cheaper but it still costs a fortune for the ordinary person.

So what's the cost of equipment. HD broadcast cameras cost north of 50k USD and that's the camera body only. Very cheap lenses are between 5-10k USD. ENG type lenses go up to 83k USD. Studio box lenses can cost over half the price of a WRCar. So that's camera cost. Now the outside broadcast unit. If it's a small one, then those are usually in a van. Those used vans cost more than 20k GBP and majority of them are SD only. For HD you are looking at least 40k GBP. Bigger units that support 10 or more cameras are somewhere between 500k and 1,5 million GBP. Now you can imagine that if some company has invested in such equipment, they want to earn the cost back and also profit. So it won't be cheap in the end and this is just the equipment.

Yes, you can use prosumer camcorders for broadcast but the quality is not the same and also different cabling is used.