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I have been recording the WRC Event Highlights off HDTV and while I'm sure the events are exciting themselves the show are filmed horribly and there is very little actual footage of the cars running. Just short excerpts and they're not all that terribly exciting.
Is there a better version I'm somehow missing?
Online, since i'm not special enough to have Speedvison 2, that's my only hope.
I think WRC has lost it's appeal, too corporate and no competition, still the best skill and talent but not what it should be. IRC is I think the best. So is RallyAmerica actually.
I've been enjoying them. I've been to enough spectator stages to know that watching the highlights is a heck of a lot better way to enjoy the racing than being at the event itself. Getting to be around the service area (in person), however, is much better in person.
Having not had WRC on tv for a while, it's a welcome change of pace, IMO! Since returning from the $2009, it's been nice to take a break from wrenching and catch up on DVR'd shows from HD Theater like the WRC stuff, Isle of Man, GT Racer, Wheeler Dealer, etc. Even the worst WRC coverage is better than any NASCAR coverage I've seen on Speed. Speaking of Speed, the other day while I was on a plane I got to watch some actual road racing on Speed (via satellite to the plane)...it was refreshing to see something on that channel besides NASCAR.
Bryce
speedvision 2? or are you talking about Discovery HD Theater
the ones you find on the internet are the same as the ones they are showing on HDT.
not the best, but better than none at all.
The only thing I wish they would change is to put in more in-car/on-car footage. Every single one of those cars has like three cameras, please show me more.
Other than that I love it, those guys are amazing.
It's unfortunate that once we finally have decent WRC coverage again, it's just after the FIA neutered the series by moving to a spec gearbox (among other things.)
I agree with NickF40, the best Rally competition is likely Rally America these days. That said, HD Theatre is probably going to be the single reason I finally upgrade to HD service at the house.
Remember when SPEED used to have awesome WRC coverage every Tuesday night? Virtual spectator was awesome, and there were usually 4 or more manufacturers that could win at any event.
Is the HD Theatre coverage the same as the Eurovision feed - 30 minutes per day of racing? I'm not cool enough to get HD, but I've been watching the Eurovision coverage for a few years. They use Virtual Spectator.
Personally, I don't get into the manufacturer battles as much as the driver battles. Since there are still just as many drivers as before, it's just as exciting as it's ever been to me. I cannot wait until Wales starts this weekend - Mikko and Seb going head to head, the fastest of the pair wins the championship.
I want to see Ford finally ditch Matthew Wilson and hire Petter Solberg instead.
Is all real High end racing doomed to become a spec series? Have we reached the point that the technology of moving man from point A back to Point B or back to Point A in as fast of a time as possible gotten to the point that we must limit technology/innovation to keep Drivers alive? All the time people talk about how such and such series has no competition and is just a spec series and yet no reasonable alternatives that keep the "glory day's" alive seem to have surfaced.
It's just the "good old days" syndrome 
The reason for moving to spec items in WRC has been an attempt to control costs, to get more manufacturers in the game. The good thing is that the spec 'box seems to be a tough little chunk, I can't think of the last time a front-runner had a gearbox failure. WRC cars have proven to be amazingly reliable recently, other than the previous Subaru WRX.
Lack of WRX's and EVO's is a bit of bummer, are the Peugeot and Focus even offered in 4WD !?!?
If you want to see good racing watch the speedway flat track racing they are showing, that is some good racing! The race is over by the first lap, but it is pretty exciting up to that point!
The HD Theater is a one hour production, I think it's a work-over of the 3 half-hour days of Eurovision's feed. It does use VS but not as much as I'd like. I just watched Rally Cyprus last night and they skipped over some of the stages entirely and had extremely limited (like 1-2 minutes) for some others, including the 44k long stage that's the longest of the year. I'm not too happy with all that, but even so it's better than the nothing I've been seeing since Speed became Nascrap and game and 'reality' shows.
Ford's never going to ditch Matthew Wilson in favor of Petter so long as daddy is running the team, even if he is sloooooooow. Same with Khalid al-Qassimi, who drives for the BP Ford Abu Dhabi Team because, well, he brings the Abu Dhabi money with him.
Any news of Seb Loeb possibly doing the F1 finale in a Toro Rosso at Abu Dhabi in 2 weeks? I read somewhere that his test in a GP2 car didn't go too well and he was several seconds off the pace.
Wow, you guys are impossible. I'm just happy to see WRC on TV here in the States.
Per Schroeder wrote:Wow, you guys are impossible. I'm just happy to see WRC on TV here in the States.
This.
I'm hoping that if the ratings are good then next year we will get more and more coverage.
Per,
Most of us would fall under the category;
"Would complain if hung with a new rope."
So yeah, impossible is about right.
This new rope is all Itchy.
Apparently I'm not watching the wrong show and only getting snippets of the actual race. The highlights just gives too little action. I'm used to the shows that had more of the race and less of the talking faces. My god, well over half the show is talking to the drivers or someone else. I want to see the races, the cool jumps and cars rolling downhill then bursting into flames!!!
z31maniac wrote:Per Schroeder wrote:Wow, you guys are impossible. I'm just happy to see WRC on TV here in the States.
This.
I'm hoping that if the ratings are good then next year we will get more and more coverage.
HD Theatre chose the one hour summary version for "testing the waters" this year. If the ratings are good and there are enough sponsors interested the coverage will increase next year. There are a number of different coverage packages available. To get more extensive coverage they need viewers and sponsors so it is up to us (the viewers) to "talk it up".
I agree with NickF40, the best Rally competition is likely Rally America these days.
Hehehe, have you read up on what Rally America recently did (on Sunday)? 
As for competition, the only drivers who can truly hold a candle to TP/Block are Andrew Pinker (can't afford it), Antoine L'Estage (can't afford to do both RA and CRC) and Patrick Richard (will only do events he's paid to do). Ok, maybe Lagemann (can't afford it) and one or two other guys who can't afford to run the whole series, let alone compete at that level. However, with the season being shortened from 9-6 events (originally it was best of 7, I believe it will now be all 6 counted), you may actually see some more people able to run the whole season.
Edit- The Eurosport WRC coverage is barely adequate in terms of good quality shots/production, so I can only imagine what the HD theatre stuff is like.
I have to say I'm impressed with the Eurosport coverage, simply due to how quickly it's put together. Think of how many feeds there must be to integrate and it has to be assembled into a coherent story on the fly. The old "let's ride along with Colin for 5 minutes" was a bit of a cop-out, really. I've never had a complaint about the quality of the shots, although I do miss the chopper tracking shots.
I've got a bunch of older WRC coverage at home, I'll pull out the tapes and the lo-rez video and see how it compares. I do seem to recall 1 hour/day coverage instead of 30 minutes/day, but I could be wrong about that.
RIP Rally Colorado 
Keith wrote:I have to say I'm impressed with the Eurosport coverage, simply due to how quickly it's put together.
I totally agree on this point. However, is it more important the stuff is up ASAP, or the quality of the camerawork/editing is better?
I've got a bunch of older WRC coverage at home, I'll pull out the tapes and the lo-rez video and see how it compares. I do seem to recall 1 hour/day coverage instead of 30 minutes/day, but I could be wrong about that.
I've got every season review from 1979-2004, and then all of the eurosport coverage from 2005-2009 (my ISP doesn't like me much). What I am unsure of is whether the cars are less spectacular nowadays (even watching group A stuff is unreal), or the footage itself is poorly done.
RIP Rally Colorado
I really wanted to codrive in the RA series next year, with this event being one of the reasons
For most sporting events, time is of the essence. Live coverage of rally isn't really plausible although it's been tried with Super Specials, but it is a lot more fun to watch the recap on the same day it's happened. Watching it afterwards seems like more of a documentary. How many people would watch the Superbowl in mid-February, or Le Mans in July?
I've never watched a season review, but it makes sense that it should be more polished due to the ability to write a good story arc for the season, cherry-pick the best footage from the year and generally polish things up.
I don't have the season reviews, but I do have the old coverage from Speedvision. Every January 1, they used to show the complete season start to finish. I'd go through a lot of videotapes that day.
I think the difference is that the rallies are less spectacular. Of course, there was the Safari. And Loeb has brought a very tidy and precise style to tarmac events - probably one reason he's so hard to catch. All the fast drivers are smooth and look slower than they are.
It would be interesting to compare some stage times - are the current WRC cars faster than Group A? Or even, heaven forbid, Group B? I suspect they are.
I heard that a competing series has snagged a few choice events, and even a few drivers. Perhaps that is also affecting the quality of the WRC?
WRC actually has too many events. It essentially runs a two-year calendar to fit them all in. None of the big name drivers have left to run elsewhere, but a number have been left without rides when factory teams disappear.
Yeah I consider HD Theatre, Speedvision 2, untill The Racing Network comes out.
Yeah we have the best rally rally competition, alongside IRC, they'll probably broadcast that on there soon
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