Hey guys,

Since coming to Finland to study, watching F1 has become a bit... well impossible really. However, today I got an old TV from somewhere, and it works.. to some extent. I was just wondering which channels are the most important to get on, so far we've found SubTV, Eurosport, some channel which shows poker explained by a guy in a hat, and MTV.

Which channel is F1 on? and are there any other channels which are any good? My Finnish isn't exactly amazing, so I can't find my way around the Finnish part of the World Wide Web.

I'd appreciate any help, Kiitos ;>

Quote from Jertje :

Hey guys,

Since coming to Finland to study, watching F1 has become a bit... well impossible really. However, today I got an old TV from somewhere, and it works.. to some extent. I was just wondering which channels are the most important to get on, so far we've found SubTV, Eurosport, some channel which shows poker explained by a guy in a hat, and MTV.

Which channel is F1 on? and are there any other channels which are any good? My Finnish isn't exactly amazing, so I can't find my way around the Finnish part of the World Wide Web.

I'd appreciate any help, Kiitos ;>

There is only the MTV3 channel which shows short versions of the races and qualis on their free channel. These come about 2 or 4 hours behind the real thing so you need to be able to avoid all F1 info for a while. Another option is the Plussa digital tv card. You need a digibox for that too and the card isn't free. I actually bought and had the card for few months and imho it really isn't worth it. It was a bit cheaper, now the card is something like 20€ per month . The addon stuff for F1 is very limited, basically it is just all the practise sessions and the porsche supercup plus GP2.

Too bad you don't understand finnish well (?) so having Mika Salo (/Keke/JJ) commentating the races. The only reason I could imagine continuing my card order... They know what they are talking and generally say things pretty straight, specially Keke and JJ . "Like toyota has a shit car" or "Peter Sauber is an idiot" .

I haven't even looked elsewhere because the races have been quite boring this year. If I manage to find time to see the MTV3 version I'll watch that. So I don't even know where to look for any streams in internets either, basically http://www.racing-underground.com/index.ru is the only other choise but downloading torrents is kinda slow option .

Here's a link where you can check the times for the next F1 event in tv: http://www.mtv3.fi/urheilu/f12007/mtv3-mtv3max.shtml

Some translations:
vapaat harjoitukset = free practise
aika-ajot = qualify
Viikonlopun avaus = weekend opening
osakilpailu or GP = the race
(u) in the name usually means rerun from earlier, short for uusinta.
MAX is the paid service and you need to have the card+box to see those shows, those that have MTV3 are free.

Also www.telkku.com can be useful

Any other questions, just shoot

EDIT: you have cable tv? Not using antenna I guess...

Well you are going to need a digital receiver anyway. But like Hyper said, the Plus TV is the only option to see them live I guess, I'm not sure if Canal+ does them anymore? But yes, because they are MTV3 I don't know if it's really worth it. It really feels they've used all their money to get F1 but then ran out of budget and everything else on the channel is rather old and has a cheap feeling. And they've totally ruined WRC coverage too, it used to be on the Finnish equivalent of BBC, the YLE, and it was much better, they have such horrible main commentator&host (especially on the free channel) in both F1 and WRC that it makes me rather sick, visiting starts are usually more sensible though.

Hmmm, sounds a bit lame
Since I'll only be here until mid/end-December, it's definitely not worth getting into any kind of pay-per-view system or getting an additional receiver - I doubt the TV has any support for anything which was introduced after the 1960's anyway

To answer an earlier question: we do get cable TV here, but apparently that's also going to be cancelled from student appartments from January onwards. Ah well, guess I'll find my way around in some way or another - does anyone know of a pub in Jyväskylä where they show it on a screen or something? With 2 great drivers I'm sure F1 is at least somewhat popular over here - so do they show any races on-screen in public venues? :P

Well lucky you are on cable. You see, they stopped sending the analog signal in the beginning of this month, cable will move to digital signal next year, January or February I think. If you were not on cable, you couldn't see a thing with the old TV you have.

Never visited Jyväskylä, so..no idea. You might ask your fellow students who know the town and probably every place there is alcohol.
What are you studying btw?

No idea of Jyväskylä either. If there is a pub that shows the races in big screen they probably advertise it on the local newspapers. You could also look for pubs that show the finnish ice hockey league games (JYP, the local ice hockey team may have some contract with some local pub), there is a chance that those same pubs show F1 too. Although I don't know if they show the races on big screen anywhere...

Do you have computer and internet available all time?

Then http://www.tvunetworks.com is the answer.

Download & install the player, find a channel called "Wheels", it is actually live stream from SpeedTV and it should show most of the ramaining F1 races live...

I'll give that a go, deggis. Thanks :>

To Blackout: I study International Communication, but my home institution allows me to pick more or less anything I want. I picked mostly business studies here, and of course I'm also studying Finnish, but that's not going too hot, as it's quite difficult... but the language itself is absolutely beautiful, I love it!

Overall I'm quite happy here. The people are nice, but not intrusive or overly social; everyone keeps a bit to him/herself and I love that since it matches my personality. The girls are also quite nice here, but the alcohol is just stupidly expensive

Anyhoo, thanks for the suggestions everyone!

Hahahaha, first time I've heard someone describing Finnish as a beautiful language, you hear that with French usually.

Yeah, alcohol. I had an old friend visiting us from Netherlands this summer, he moved there years ago when we were kids, and the first thing he noticed and complained was how expensive the beer was. I think it's 170% over the European average. They are trying to control and hold down the drinking with taxes, because it's rather true that many Fins can't drink sensibly. Doesn't really work for them who can.

Anyway, nice to hear you are enjoying your stay!

It's not what I would call interesting but I can understand why one would call it beautiful.. If you compare Finnish with Estonian or Hungarian, I would choose Finnish everytime

I would like to be other languaged for a moment, so I could hear how estonian language sounds hehe, that question has bothered me since I was shorter than grass

estonian language sounds very silly to me

Finnish sounds silly to me.

Actually I think they sound a lot like each other. I would imagine someone from France or Spain or England couldn´t tell the languages apart just by sound if they couldn´t understand the words. Finns use ö, ä and ü more than we do though.

And the Finns come here to buy booze. In some survey it was revealed that the Estonians consume the largest amount of alcohol per citizen in the world. Now Estonians are big drinkers but I still think Finns are bigger. The Finns give their contribution to that statistic. You should see the surrounding of Tallinn harbour... full of Finns(or mooses, that´s how we call them here, no offence ) with truckloads of alcohol going for the ferry to Helsinki.

actually i think you have to pay tv tax,i dont know for sure but i think so