I think I may be the only F1 fan in the UK who thinks the ITV coverage is pretty good. I didn't sign up for digital last year because I like the ITV commentary, and couldn't find any info at all on who would be commentating for Sky.

Trust me Rob, if you had seen the F1 Digital+ coverage you would understand why people think the ITV coverage is so lousy.

The basic footage was so much better than the normal feed, because they had many times the number of cameras than the local broadcasters that supply the feed for ITV. I was very funny to have Martin and James going on about how brilliant the in car shots were. On the digital service last year one of the 8 sub channels was dedicated to showing in car shots throughout the race and all those fancy cameras were available on all the cars.

I watched a few races on ITV as well last year to compare. So often some major event would occur where the host broadcaster didn't have a camera, or while ITV were on an ad break. When you were hearing Martin/James say "we hope will get to see x in a minute..." we on the digital service saw the event from three camera angles 30 seconds ago. It really was that bad.

I'm really not looking forward to those races where the host broadcaster is not up to much. At Brazil it tends to be particularly hopless and the Italian races the screen is filled with red cars all the time, even if something else is happening...

The commentry was also far better on the digital service. Martin Brundle is excellent and Tony Jardine can be quite interesting, but the rest of the team are so awful (though I suspect Louise could be decent given half a chance).

On the digital service you could effectively chose between two commentry teams throughout the race. You had the pundits in the studio, there were normally three of them, but who it was tended to vary race by race (though Damon Hill popped up fairly regularly). The studio team spent didn't comment on each and every event in the race, but tended to go off on more wide ranging discussions about F1 and the world in general.

The other commentary team focus on commenting on the detailed events in the race. One of the commentators was John Watson, I'm not sure who the other one was (Ben someone or other I think). The difference between their commentary and Martin/James is that they assumed that you were already a fan of F1 and knew what was going on.

The actual main supposed selling point of the digital service of being able to switch cameras wasn't actually that important to me. To be honest I spent most of the time on the same camera anyway. I would quite happily pay 6 quid a race for a digital service that consisted simply of a single channel, with the footage of the quality I had last year and the ability to switch the audio between the studio and John Watson, oh and no adverts.

If the rumours are correct and something like the digital service returns next year then make sure you see at least one race on it...