NASCAR HotPass Feedback...we hear you and appreciate the feedback

[Satelliteracer]

We hear you and appreciate all of the great and constructive input folks have made here regarding the first HotPass race.

There are many talented people working hard to deliver the best production possible to NASCAR fans and DIRECTV customers. This is a giant undertaking in terms of the number of producers, cameras, announcers, graphics, tech people, etc involved to produce these 5 parallel channels simultaneously.

Sunday was a great first day ... a revolutionary television day in terms of sports broadcast history...but, like anything, we will also continue to tweak things and refine them as it is an evolving process. Anyone that has had NFL Sunday Ticket for a number of years knows the product continues to grow and refine and improve. In a sense, it is never a finished product and never will be. With the introduction of new technologies and increased access, we will always look to refine and improve.

A couple of things that were expressed consistently here that I would like to address specifically that may help in explaining why things are the way they are.

1) Why the Commercials? The commercials are here to stay, it is not commercial free but we also don't go 100% on screen to commercials either. All of our sports packages have commercials in them. In order to broadcast any type of sports package whether it is MLB, NHL, NASCAR, NFL, etc, we need to take those source broadcasts from the networks producing them and redistribute to our customers....including the commercials. As you can imagine, those networks have advertisers that pay them to have their ads seen by consumers. In order for us to deliver various content like this (or NFL, NHL, etc) those commercials are also broadcast. Starting this week we will tell the viewer we are going to a commercial break with a bit more notice.

Important to note, however, when we cut to a commercial we are also still showing the broadcast on the screen in the lower left corner. This allows you to continue to watch the race which is a beneficial feature not provided anywhere on tv in US for NASCAR races that I'm aware of.

2) Announcers talking over radio transmissions We hear you (no pun intended). There is a bit of a learning curve on this with the announcers and the team communications going on at the same time. Each race is also very different. A race like Daytona has constant team communications due to the drafting aspects and the need for the spotters to relay that information consistently. Whereas a race in California and other tracks may be relatively quiet in comparison.

We never know exactly when a driver is going to be speaking so some of it will be a bit of hit or miss, but we can get a "sense" or "feel" during a race when we expect more conversation at certain critical junctures. On some of the channels our announcers did a terrific job of laying back during most of those key communications, but sometimes there was some talking over. A valid point expressed by many of you. It is an area we are working to improve on and will continue to do so.

We appreciate all of the responses, good, bad or ugly. We are listening and we are passing your ideas and thoughts on to the talented people that can actually deliver the pictures, sounds and wizardry to all of you. It does not mean we can implement all ideas, but some of them we may be able to. Some are possible improvements even for the next race, some for later this year or years beyond.

Keep the comments coming and enjoy the racing. See you in Fontana.

By the way, I am not a HotPass production guy, but I do work for the company and have been a NASCAR fan for about 20 years. My first race was at the old Riverside track in California which closed in the late 1980's if I recall. There are many NASCAR diehards here at the company and years of NASCAR broadcasting experience in the production group from Speed, Fox, etc. We're very excited about HotPass and where it is going. You help make it better.

Thank you all. :)

[wmschultz]

Can you please shrink down the size of the commercial and give us the option to listen to it like we have with the Network's race?

I mean there was so much conversation that was missed during the first commercial break when the caution came out because of the commercial noise.

Yellow flags tend to produce the most conversation on the radio and yet they are the perfect time for the commercial. So, please give us the yellow button toggle option.

[wmschultz]

One other comment. NASCAR is different than most sports as in the event continues
during commercials.

You can show commercials during the NFL, MLB, and NHL because nothing else is going on.
There is a TV timeout at the event.

I was happy to pay for the NASCAR HotPass because I would get to watch the
race during commercials. If it weren't for that, I would have just stayed with
NASCAR.com PITCOMMAND. So come on, please shrink down the size of the
commercial and let us have the yellow toggle button.

[jamieh1]

Add a 3rd audio channel with just team audio.

also keep the cars engine sound playing the entire time like DALE JRS ch did Sunday.
Also keep one of the 3 screens as a in car shot.

[TigersFanJJ]

You can show commercials during the NFL, MLB, and NHL because nothing else is going on.
There is a TV timeout at the event.

Thank you for that. I've seen several posts about the other sports packages having commercials too. My thought is the same in that I don't mind nfl sunday ticket commercials because I'm not missing any action when the commercials are on.

Another thing, I'd have to argue that HotPass isn't the same other premium sports packages such as sunday ticket. It's not something you have to have to see an out of market team. I can understand having to watch the commercials if it is coming from a station that I don't normally get. However, we shouldn't have to watch commercials on HotPass because it is only something that "compliments" the television broadcast. This is the only reason why I, and many others, are not subscribing to HotPass.

[Satelliteracer]

Thank you for that. I've seen several posts about the other sports packages having commercials too. My thought is the same in that I don't mind nfl sunday ticket commercials because I'm not missing any action when the commercials are on.

Another thing, I'd have to argue that HotPass isn't the same other premium sports packages such as sunday ticket. It's not something you have to have to see an out of market team. I can understand having to watch the commercials if it is coming from a station that I don't normally get. However, we shouldn't have to watch commercials on HotPass because it is only something that "compliments" the television broadcast. This is the only reason why I, and many others, are not subscribing to HotPass.



Understand your concerns. The issue is that FOX, ESPN, ABC and TNT own the broadcast rights to those NASCAR races which they have paid for. To cover their costs, they sell advertising. In order for DIRECTV to present this type of package by taking some of their coverage and combining it with our camera coverage, we take their inventory of advertisers as well. As a result, it allows the rights holders to still deliver value to their advertisers without losing ratings (which is how ad spots are valued) and allows DIRECTV to follow five drivers per week on HotPass.

This is also why the audio during commercial breaks is tied to the commercial that is running, but we are still able to show the race live in that lower left hand corner while the advertisement is going on.

[Earl Bonovich]

By the way, I am not a HotPass production guy, but I do work for the company and have been a NASCAR fan for about 20 years.

Just an FYI; I have confirmed that this user who he says he is.

So If you want a direct route for comment on Hotpass.
You've got it

[Satelliteracer]

Add a 3rd audio channel with just team audio.

also keep the cars engine sound playing the entire time like DALE JRS ch did Sunday.
Also keep one of the 3 screens as a in car shot.


We're on the same wavelength. That idea was presented internally as well for a 3rd audio channel. Not sure if we have the bandwidth, etc to pull that off (let alone NASCAR / drivers permission). If I hear anything on that and can share, I will do so.

Great idea.

[wmschultz]

Well I appreciate that we are being heard. But is there anyway to make the commerical a little smaller??

Oh yeah, on the Broadcast feed that is in the upper right corner most of the time, what type of ZOOM or pan & scan is being done on that , cuz it is ugly.

[jkimrey]

Satelliteracer,

Could you please give us some idea how the drivers for each week are chosen?

Jeff Gordon was listed as one of the driver channels for Sunday, but as a couple days ago it was switched to Jeff Burton. Any idea why?

Insite into how these decisions have been/will be made would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

We hear you and appreciate all of the great and constructive input folks have made here regarding the first HotPass race.

There are many talented people working hard to deliver the best production possible to NASCAR fans and DIRECTV customers. This is a giant undertaking in terms of the number of producers, cameras, announcers, graphics, tech people, etc involved to produce these 5 parallel channels simultaneously.

Sunday was a great first day ... a revolutionary television day in terms of sports broadcast history...but, like anything, we will also continue to tweak things and refine them as it is an evolving process. Anyone that has had NFL Sunday Ticket for a number of years knows the product continues to grow and refine and improve. In a sense, it is never a finished product and never will be. With the introduction of new technologies and increased access, we will always look to refine and improve.

A couple of things that were expressed consistently here that I would like to address specifically that may help in explaining why things are the way they are.

1) Why the Commercials? The commercials are here to stay, it is not commercial free but we also don't go 100% on screen to commercials either. All of our sports packages have commercials in them. In order to broadcast any type of sports package whether it is MLB, NHL, NASCAR, NFL, etc, we need to take those source broadcasts from the networks producing them and redistribute to our customers....including the commercials. As you can imagine, those networks have advertisers that pay them to have their ads seen by consumers. In order for us to deliver various content like this (or NFL, NHL, etc) those commercials are also broadcast. Starting this week we will tell the viewer we are going to a commercial break with a bit more notice.

Important to note, however, when we cut to a commercial we are also still showing the broadcast on the screen in the lower left corner. This allows you to continue to watch the race which is a beneficial feature not provided anywhere on tv in US for NASCAR races that I'm aware of.

2) Announcers talking over radio transmissions We hear you (no pun intended). There is a bit of a learning curve on this with the announcers and the team communications going on at the same time. Each race is also very different. A race like Daytona has constant team communications due to the drafting aspects and the need for the spotters to relay that information consistently. Whereas a race in California and other tracks may be relatively quiet in comparison.

We never know exactly when a driver is going to be speaking so some of it will be a bit of hit or miss, but we can get a "sense" or "feel" during a race when we expect more conversation at certain critical junctures. On some of the channels our announcers did a terrific job of laying back during most of those key communications, but sometimes there was some talking over. A valid point expressed by many of you. It is an area we are working to improve on and will continue to do so.

We appreciate all of the responses, good, bad or ugly. We are listening and we are passing your ideas and thoughts on to the talented people that can actually deliver the pictures, sounds and wizardry to all of you. It does not mean we can implement all ideas, but some of them we may be able to. Some are possible improvements even for the next race, some for later this year or years beyond.

Keep the comments coming and enjoy the racing. See you in Fontana.

By the way, I am not a HotPass production guy, but I do work for the company and have been a NASCAR fan for about 20 years. My first race was at the old Riverside track in California which closed in the late 1980's if I recall. There are many NASCAR diehards here at the company and years of NASCAR broadcasting experience in the production group from Speed, Fox, etc. We're very excited about HotPass and where it is going. You help make it better.

Thank you all. :)

[jmettee]

One thing I noticed that was annoying that I don't believe I saw anyone mention: with the triple-split screen, I recall the in-car/roofcam being on the bottom & background. With the 2 smaller views located at the top, the roofcam was useless since you could only view the hood of the car & maybe 6 ft of track in front of the car. The rest of the (useful) image seemed to be under the 2 upper views.

Not sure if this was on all channels all the time, but I did notice it a few times when I switched to Hotpass. See attached image from DTV's Hotpass website.

J

[AdamL2388]

1) Why the Commercials? The commercials are here to stay, it is not commercial free but we also don't go 100% on screen to commercials either. All of our sports packages have commercials in them. In order to broadcast any type of sports package whether it is MLB, NHL, NASCAR, NFL, etc, we need to take those source broadcasts from the networks producing them and redistribute to our customers....including the commercials. As you can imagine, those networks have advertisers that pay them to have their ads seen by consumers. In order for us to deliver various content like this (or NFL, NHL, etc) those commercials are also broadcast. Starting this week we will tell the viewer we are going to a commercial break with a bit more notice.

Important to note, however, when we cut to a commercial we are also still showing the broadcast on the screen in the lower left corner. This allows you to continue to watch the race which is a beneficial feature not provided anywhere on tv in US for NASCAR races that I'm aware of.

Satelliteracer,

I am From Canada and have Rogers / Cogeco's Super Sports Pack which includes Nascar HotPass... One quick question tho I have for you, if you can answer it for me it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

I have heard many many people complain about how HotPass on Direct TV is not Commercial Free. Well I watched most of the Daytona 500 on all 5 Nascar HotPass channels on my Cogeco receiver in Burlington, Ontario Canada.

All of my HotPass Channels were COMMERCIAL FREE, when FOX went to their commercials throughout the race. Each time Fox went to the commercial break, the crew of Direct TV said they were going to a commercial break and went off the air and they only showed the driver in the full screen mode going around the track with audio between the pit-crew and driver for each channel (sorta like the old In-Car package). Once FOX came back from the commercial break, Direct TV came back also with the announcers and 3 way split screen of the race on each channel.

I'm just wondering if this has anything to do with Sim-Subbing and if so I am really happy that Canada is doing this so we do not see any of the Commercials being seen by Direct TV customers.

Thanks Adam!!!

[Supervolcano]

I don't have TrackPass on nascar.com
I've never been to a race and used a nextel scanner to view drivers.

...but I would bet my life that neither forces you to listen to commercials.

If the sports event doesn't stop the action for commercial breaks, then the users paying a "premium price" for the Hotpass Subscription should not be forced into the commercial break .... ESPECIALLY in nascar's case since the best driver/crew discussions are taking place during the yellow flag commercial breaks right before they do their pitstop.


And another topic
I was disappointed that the monday shortcuts only showed about 25 minutes of each driver.

NFL is able to do 30 minute shows because they can condense 60 minutes of action into 30 minutes since huddles waste so much time. You don't miss anything when watching a teams shortcut program.

How about doing a 4.80 hour replay for each of the 5 drivers (thus 24 hours total) and letting the DVR customers record their drivers and then fast forward through the parts they don't wish to see? Then run those shows Monday thru Friday and maybe alternate the timeslots for each driver so each one would have a chance at "prime time" (or whatever the customers "best time of day" is since everyone has a different time schedule).

If you MUST cut it down to a "true shortcut" (meaning you can't give 4.80 hours per driver and/or your thinking of going up to the previously recommended 10 or 12 different drivers showing every week), then maybe at least give 1 or 2 full hours to each driver so we can get a better feel of what that driver was going through during the race.

Bottom line, the 30 minute shortcuts were worthless IMHO for a 4+ hour race.

[Xram]

On another note... Do they have any plans next year to possibly provide some hd feeds?

[ZoSoAir]

This is also why the audio during commercial breaks is tied to the commercial that is running, but we are still able to show the race live in that lower left hand corner while the advertisement is going on.


Although I do not have a "membership" to hotpass nor did I know you could watch the Daytona 500 for free as a preview (might want to look into advertising that a little more, you may have gotten more subscribers) I want to chime in on the commercial issue.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but arent the majority of the extra packages considered "additional costs" because you received a product that is commercial free? Doesnt the cost of the package cover (at least in part) the advertising costs so there can be no advertisements?

For example, Sirius and XM. You pay a monthly price so you can enjoy not only their content but also the fact that there are no advertisements.

Now I will be the first to say I have never subscribed to any additional packaging other than HBO and CINAMAX. The real issue is "what is the additional cost buying the consumer if the consumer is still subjected to advertisements overshadowing the desired content"?

[AdamL2388]

On another note... Do they have any plans next year to possibly provide some hd feeds?

Yes, Nascar and Direct TV have announced that they will be providing HD feeds for Nascar HotPass coming in 2008

[Terry K]

Another question here that is seemingly obvious but worth asking again...

Why are they using WNYW or WNBC for the game feed vs. the raw network feed? That is questionably legal to say the least. We're not supposed to be seeing the local NYC ads on anything unless we actually sub to the NYC channels.

[paulman182]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but arent the majority of the extra packages considered "additional costs" because you received a product that is commercial free? Doesnt the cost of the package cover (at least in part) the advertising costs so there can be no advertisements?

Sorry, I have subscribed to all the sports packages at one time or another and the commercials are all still there.

[Newshawk]

Satelliteracer,

I am From Canada and have Rogers / Cogeco's Super Sports Pack which includes Nascar HotPass... One quick question tho I have for you, if you can answer it for me it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

I have heard many many people complain about how HotPass on Direct TV is not Commercial Free. Well I watched most of the Daytona 500 on all 5 Nascar HotPass channels on my Cogeco receiver in Burlington, Ontario Canada.

All of my HotPass Channels were COMMERCIAL FREE, when FOX went to their commercials throughout the race. Each time Fox went to the commercial break, the crew of Direct TV said they were going to a commercial break and went off the air and they only showed the driver in the full screen mode going around the track with audio between the pit-crew and driver for each channel (sorta like the old In-Car package). Once FOX came back from the commercial break, Direct TV came back also with the announcers and 3 way split screen of the race on each channel.

I'm just wondering if this has anything to do with Sim-Subbing and if so I am really happy that Canada is doing this so we do not see any of the Commercials being seen by Direct TV customers.

Thanks Adam!!!

Adam I'll wager that the reason you are not seeing US commercials in Canada has more to do with the various restrictions on the commercials being shown in Canada than any other reason. Whether its contract limitations/union rules (not allowing certain performances to be aired outside the US or in Canada) or products not being available in Canada, I'm sure that's the reason the commercial breaks are commercial free.

[wyoungmann]

The commercials on screen (if they HAVE to be there) should be no larger than the the size of the race cam in the left corner. That box should also be larger, as it is difficult to make anything out from some of the shots that were fed.
The commercial audio should be an option (as others have said) on the remote as well.
I hope these two issues will be addressed this year, or you will have far fewer of us renewing this pkg next year.

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

Understand your concerns. The issue is that FOX, ESPN, ABC and TNT own the broadcast rights to those NASCAR races which they have paid for. To cover their costs, they sell advertising. In order for DIRECTV to present this type of package by taking some of their coverage and combining it with our camera coverage, we take their inventory of advertisers as well. As a result, it allows the rights holders to still deliver value to their advertisers without losing ratings (which is how ad spots are valued) and allows DIRECTV to follow five drivers per week on HotPass.

This is also why the audio during commercial breaks is tied to the commercial that is running, but we are still able to show the race live in that lower left hand corner while the advertisement is going on.

Satelliteracer,

Thank you for coming on here and listening. I will post my thoughts and hope some of them get taken to heart because I think the hotpass is a great idea but the current form your providing really is nothing that a Nascar fan will find worthy of buying. I know I was hooked as soon as I heard about it but luckily I called halfway through the race and was able to cancel the subscription and get a full refund. My point being, I would rather pay and enjoy a great service so that being said here are my thoughts, which pretty much were the thoughts of the 25-30 people in a nascar league I am in felt as well.

I go to 3-6 races a year and am dying for a simlar experience.

First off, I am not subscribing and paying money in order to be shown commercials!!! Direct-tv needs to do 2 things in this regard. If they can't use the TV feed without having commercials then dump the TV feed. (I am not paying to watch what I can for free.) If they need the commercials to support the program then they need to reduce the commercial to the smallest box they can. I am paying to watch the race not the commercials because as I stated if I wanted commercials I can get that for free.

Now to the suggestions on how to make the coverage tighter. First off either offer telemetry all race or dump it. To me the best advice I would have is for them to work on having a full open mic on the driver crew chief and spotter like you get at the track. Sorry but as a fan I enjoy the "front quarter, outside, outside and clear" that is the Nascar experience at the track that I thought Directtv was trying to bring the fan. I like the fact of highlighting the driver and having a crew calling the race but they need to have the in car audio be the primary feed for the fan. If they want to do a 3 second delay so that they are not talking over the communication then that would be fine.

I think Direct-tv should take the advice that less can be more and don't give me something I can watch elsewhere for free, IE my ultimate package would be 1-2 pictures with the main being the footage of the driver on track (with telemetry) and the second (smaller) being the in car footage and perhaps highlighting some of the race action. Then they would have the commentators calling the race and the open mic communication of the race team. Probably works best with 3 second delay so as communication comes on they shut up and gve it to you in its entirety.

I guess my biggest thing is if I wanted commercials and commentators talking over the driver communication I would just watch the TV broadcast but when I pay for the experience I want a Nascar experience and not the standard TV broadcast with a few new wrinkles. Plus HD broadcast is a definate need for next year.

[wmschultz]

Okay, here is my dream scenario...Which I am getting closer to hooking up.

Picture In Picture and a laptop is a must..OKAY? I have this part so far.

Main Picture, HD coverage of the race provided via OTA, or local HD channel provided via DirecTV.

Little PIP, the in car coverage provided by DirecTV Hotpass with NO COMMERCIALS.

Denon reciever providing coverage of race via NASCAR channel 128.

Laptop running slingbox of race from local broadcast network.

Laptop running NASCAR.com PitCommand so I can pick from all 43 drivers who have their radio streaming.

I almost acheived this last week, I just couldn't due to a broken H20 receiver.

So, what am I getting at, a DirecTV provided HOTPASS with NO commercials.
That is the only thing missing. And, I don't need you to provide me with the
broadcast feed, cuz it just takes up room in the PIP.

[Supervolcano]

Probably works best with 3 second delay so as communication comes on they shut up and gve it to you in its entirety.
Let me play devil's advocate for a second on this one.

If they delay the audio for 3 seconds and not the video, wouldn't the spotter get blamed by the fans for calling holes that got closed up?

When I hear the spotter say "small hole" and watch Michael Waltrip crash into Dale Jr. because the hole was "way too small", like during Thursday's dual race, I want to be an educated consumer and be able to blame that spotter when I talk to my friends.

If there was a 3 second audio delay, I wouldn't have known the precise moment that the spotter had said such a stupid thing.

Maybe the answer is to delay the audio AND video by 3 seconds?
I dunno, cause then it doesn't jive with my 2nd tv that's showing the mpeg4 local coverage.

I think the better answer is for the announcers to just shut up as soon as humanly possible ... force all the announcers to wear an earphone of the driver radio so he can't miss it ... and if he was talking, then he should repeat what was said after the communications cease again. Some of the announcers did repeat what was said, but others didn't.

[Satelliteracer]

Satelliteracer,

Could you please give us some idea how the drivers for each week are chosen?

Jeff Gordon was listed as one of the driver channels for Sunday, but as a couple days ago it was switched to Jeff Burton. Any idea why?

Insite into how these decisions have been/will be made would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!


Sorry to be tardy on the answers, it's been a wild couple of days. The drivers are chosen each week with a combination of NASCAR and DIRECTV choosing. Typically we choose 4 drivers and NASCAR picks a 5th.

There was a last minute change this week from Gordon to Burton, that may happen at times (not sure why it happened this week). Basically the final selections are typically done Tuesday the week of the race which is what happened this time with the late change.

The criteria is varied for selection with many considerations taken into account. Story line, how the driver is performing, his success at a specific track, his willingness to be showcased, etc, etc. Some drivers are more open to in-car cameras then others for example. Or sometimes they are ok win in-car cameras at some speedways but not at others so that comes into the equation as well.

There was an article recently that quoted Chris Long and Eric Shanks of our company about how the selections are done.

Good read. http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=118548&ran=216490

[Satelliteracer]

Yes, Nascar and Direct TV have announced that they will be providing HD feeds for Nascar HotPass coming in 2008


I don't think anything official has been announced yet on this, but is under consideration. We will launch two more satellites later this year which should position us as the market leader for HD capacity and delivery in the USA.

First things first, those two birds have to launch and work properly. After that, our flexibility and options for more HD content become more favorable.

[Satelliteracer]

Satelliteracer,

I am From Canada and have Rogers / Cogeco's Super Sports Pack which includes Nascar HotPass... One quick question tho I have for you, if you can answer it for me it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

I have heard many many people complain about how HotPass on Direct TV is not Commercial Free. Well I watched most of the Daytona 500 on all 5 Nascar HotPass channels on my Cogeco receiver in Burlington, Ontario Canada.

All of my HotPass Channels were COMMERCIAL FREE, when FOX went to their commercials throughout the race. Each time Fox went to the commercial break, the crew of Direct TV said they were going to a commercial break and went off the air and they only showed the driver in the full screen mode going around the track with audio between the pit-crew and driver for each channel (sorta like the old In-Car package). Once FOX came back from the commercial break, Direct TV came back also with the announcers and 3 way split screen of the race on each channel.

I'm just wondering if this has anything to do with Sim-Subbing and if so I am really happy that Canada is doing this so we do not see any of the Commercials being seen by Direct TV customers.

Thanks Adam!!!

Adam, how's the weather up there? Beautiful country.


I honestly don't know the answer to your question and how those pass through rites work for NASCAR's international distribution. Obviously each deal is different and the one we adhere to in the States requires us to carry those commercials from the networks. Wish I had a better answer for you, but I do not.

Stay warm.

[Satelliteracer]

I don't have TrackPass on nascar.com
I've never been to a race and used a nextel scanner to view drivers.

...but I would bet my life that neither forces you to listen to commercials.

If the sports event doesn't stop the action for commercial breaks, then the users paying a "premium price" for the Hotpass Subscription should not be forced into the commercial break .... ESPECIALLY in nascar's case since the best driver/crew discussions are taking place during the yellow flag commercial breaks right before they do their pitstop.


And another topic
I was disappointed that the monday shortcuts only showed about 25 minutes of each driver.

NFL is able to do 30 minute shows because they can condense 60 minutes of action into 30 minutes since huddles waste so much time. You don't miss anything when watching a teams shortcut program.

How about doing a 4.80 hour replay for each of the 5 drivers (thus 24 hours total) and letting the DVR customers record their drivers and then fast forward through the parts they don't wish to see? Then run those shows Monday thru Friday and maybe alternate the timeslots for each driver so each one would have a chance at "prime time" (or whatever the customers "best time of day" is since everyone has a different time schedule).

If you MUST cut it down to a "true shortcut" (meaning you can't give 4.80 hours per driver and/or your thinking of going up to the previously recommended 10 or 12 different drivers showing every week), then maybe at least give 1 or 2 full hours to each driver so we can get a better feel of what that driver was going through during the race.

Bottom line, the 30 minute shortcuts were worthless IMHO for a 4+ hour race.


Good idea, but we are only allowed to do the 30 minute blocks only per our agreement is my understanding. Honestly, I got a lot out of them on Monday. I'm less of a fan of some drivers then others so watching that 30 minutes gave me a "taste" for their race.

[Satelliteracer]

Although I do not have a "membership" to hotpass nor did I know you could watch the Daytona 500 for free as a preview (might want to look into advertising that a little more, you may have gotten more subscribers) I want to chime in on the commercial issue.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but arent the majority of the extra packages considered "additional costs" because you received a product that is commercial free? Doesnt the cost of the package cover (at least in part) the advertising costs so there can be no advertisements?

For example, Sirius and XM. You pay a monthly price so you can enjoy not only their content but also the fact that there are no advertisements.

Now I will be the first to say I have never subscribed to any additional packaging other than HBO and CINAMAX. The real issue is "what is the additional cost buying the consumer if the consumer is still subjected to advertisements overshadowing the desired content"?


We actually advertised the heck out of it with televisions spots, emails, even had Dale Jr. phone calls as a reminder to some customers. :)

I'm a subscriber of XM and DIRECTV used to own a good chunk of them years ago. Even XM only has 15 commercial free channels now, when at the beginning they had 70+.

It's not an easy answer but I do understand your question. Much of it relies on the original rights holders.

Let me put it in this context. If you were broadcast company XYZ and you paid a league say $500 million to broadcast their league for a season. Obviously XYZ needs to recoup that money through advertisers to pay for it. Now comes along a pay service (say cable or a satellite company) that wishes to deliver this league to fans across the country in a special way (i.e. every out of market game or whatever)...they, too, enter into an agreement with said league to do this.

However, XYZ is going to make sure that before cable or satellite company is allowed to do this, they must carry their advertisers commercials before they give cable or the sattelite company access to those feeds. If they didn't, and sattelite or cable offered it for free, then millions of eyeballs would miss those commercials and thus XYZ could never recoup their costs.

So since XYZ is the rights holder, they are going to protect that investment and not allow any other party to utilize their programming feeds without requiring those advertisements to be passed through.

It's not exactly that simple, but the general idea is there. Each deal is different obviously, but that is how many of these work out.

In reality you are seeing this on the radio and regular television as well. National spots play on all broadcasts and then the local stations can insert local advertisements without trumping the national ones. Similar arrangement.

[ZoSoAir]

Good idea, but we are only allowed to do the 30 minute blocks only per our agreement is my understanding. Honestly, I got a lot out of them on Monday. I'm less of a fan of some drivers then others so watching that 30 minutes gave me a "taste" for their race.


This guy must really be who he says he is because he's dancing around our true concerns just like a corporate black suit.

Your not understanding the "underlying fundamentals" of our concerns.

[Satelliteracer]

Satelliteracer,

Thank you for coming on here and listening. I will post my thoughts and hope some of them get taken to heart because I think the hotpass is a great idea but the current form your providing really is nothing that a Nascar fan will find worthy of buying. I know I was hooked as soon as I heard about it but luckily I called halfway through the race and was able to cancel the subscription and get a full refund. My point being, I would rather pay and enjoy a great service so that being said here are my thoughts, which pretty much were the thoughts of the 25-30 people in a nascar league I am in felt as well.

I go to 3-6 races a year and am dying for a simlar experience.

First off, I am not subscribing and paying money in order to be shown commercials!!! Direct-tv needs to do 2 things in this regard. If they can't use the TV feed without having commercials then dump the TV feed. (I am not paying to watch what I can for free.) If they need the commercials to support the program then they need to reduce the commercial to the smallest box they can. I am paying to watch the race not the commercials because as I stated if I wanted commercials I can get that for free.

Now to the suggestions on how to make the coverage tighter. First off either offer telemetry all race or dump it. To me the best advice I would have is for them to work on having a full open mic on the driver crew chief and spotter like you get at the track. Sorry but as a fan I enjoy the "front quarter, outside, outside and clear" that is the Nascar experience at the track that I thought Directtv was trying to bring the fan. I like the fact of highlighting the driver and having a crew calling the race but they need to have the in car audio be the primary feed for the fan. If they want to do a 3 second delay so that they are not talking over the communication then that would be fine.

I think Direct-tv should take the advice that less can be more and don't give me something I can watch elsewhere for free, IE my ultimate package would be 1-2 pictures with the main being the footage of the driver on track (with telemetry) and the second (smaller) being the in car footage and perhaps highlighting some of the race action. Then they would have the commentators calling the race and the open mic communication of the race team. Probably works best with 3 second delay so as communication comes on they shut up and gve it to you in its entirety.

I guess my biggest thing is if I wanted commercials and commentators talking over the driver communication I would just watch the TV broadcast but when I pay for the experience I want a Nascar experience and not the standard TV broadcast with a few new wrinkles. Plus HD broadcast is a definate need for next year.

Good input on your comments.

I would only counter that many, many, many NASCAR fans have signed up for this package and it continues to go well. We have received a lot of positive feedback so far which has been great. And yes, we have received some constructive feedback as well which is why we want to improve and continue to make this product a better one.

I'm sorry you cancelled, perhaps you will give us another try down the road. There will be a half season price offer in a few months and perhaps another free preview. Give it a shot. The best value is still now, of course, with the cost per race about $3 per.

[AdamL2388]

Satelliteracer,

The weather up here is great, had a snowstorm a couple weeks ago, but that has since melted and it feels like summer now.

Anyways I feel really sorry for Direct TV customers getting those commercials on HotPass. One guy on this thread stated that it might be a sim-sub so we do not receive the commercials up here in Canada. I am very happy to have a Commercial Free Package, and I would like to know tho what happens when they go to commercial on Direct TV? Mine it just goes to full screen mode showing the driver going around the track until Direct TV return from break, like the old In-Car Package.

Oh and another thing, It has been mentioned on here that Jeff Gordon will be replaced by Jeff Burton as one of the HotPass drivers. Well on my Cogeco guide as of today at 11pm on my Sports Schedules it still states that Jeff Gordon will be one of the drivers for the race on Sunday, and has no mention about Jeff Burton as one of the 5 drivers. I really hope that Gordon is on HotPass, because he has grabbed the pole for sunday's race, and that will be an awesome channel to watch.

Thanks,

BTW, Here is the statement made earlier in this thread about the commercials not being broadcast hear in Canada.

Adam I'll wager that the reason you are not seeing US commercials in Canada has more to do with the various restrictions on the commercials being shown in Canada than any other reason. Whether its contract limitations/union rules (not allowing certain performances to be aired outside the US or in Canada) or products not being available in Canada, I'm sure that's the reason the commercial breaks are commercial free.

[jkimrey]

I don't think that's very fair - he's simply trying to state his take on DirecTV's position.

While I agree with everyone that it would be much better without commericals, the simple fact is that the agreement DTV made with Nascar is that the commercials will be shown.

It's up to each individual to decide whether it's worth it to them. While I certainly understand people here expressing their disappointment in having commercials, it's not really very fair to label satelliteracer a 'corporate black suit'.

Shesh. People complain there isn't much direct representation here, and when someone does participate they're labeled a 'corporate black suit'. :(

This guy must really be who he says he is because he's dancing around our true concerns just like a corporate black suit.

Your not understanding the "underlying fundamentals" of our concerns.

[Thunder7]

This guy must really be who he says he is because he's dancing around our true concerns just like a corporate black suit.

Your not understanding the "underlying fundamentals" of our concerns.

Nice attitude, acting like this is always the best way to work with people. :nono2:

Anyway.....I understand the commercials, and frankly understood why from the beginning, so I guess some folks just need to move on as I am shocked quite frankly at this being the #1 concern. Obviously, they won't be able to be made happy.

As others have said, I too hope the announcers get more comfortable with being able to listen for in car communications to not talk over them and/or see if they can put the incar on another audio channel. The announcers were OK on most channels (although the Dale Jr guys annoyed me with their "our car", "our driver" junk...a little too rah rah for me).

Otherwise, I thought it was great. I do subscribe, and glad I did. I look forward to the evoluion of it, and think as with anything it will only get better.

[Tony1097]

oops double post, delete this one if you want. thought I was editing, sorry.

[Tony1097]

Understand your concerns. The issue is that FOX, ESPN, ABC and TNT own the broadcast rights to those NASCAR races which they have paid for. To cover their costs, they sell advertising. In order for DIRECTV to present this type of package by taking some of their coverage and combining it with our camera coverage, we take their inventory of advertisers as well. As a result, it allows the rights holders to still deliver value to their advertisers without losing ratings (which is how ad spots are valued) and allows DIRECTV to follow five drivers per week on HotPass.

This is also why the audio during commercial breaks is tied to the commercial that is running, but we are still able to show the race live in that lower left hand corner while the advertisement is going on.

hi SatelliteRacer, I do not mean this in a rude way, but, how exactly is this different from when Digital Cable did their IN-CAR package which was always commercial free?

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

Good input on your comments.

I would only counter that many, many, many NASCAR fans have signed up for this package and it continues to go well. We have received a lot of positive feedback so far which has been great. And yes, we have received some constructive feedback as well which is why we want to improve and continue to make this product a better one.

I'm sorry you cancelled, perhaps you will give us another try down the road. There will be a half season price offer in a few months and perhaps another free preview. Give it a shot. The best value is still now, of course, with the cost per race about $3 per.


I am sure some people like it but let me just tell you that at Jayski and Nascar.com (2 sites that are true Nascar fans) the overall disapproval rating was in the 80-90%ile. So I am assuming you would want to reverse that and would be open to suggestions on what people want.

I understand your comment on carrying XYZ but I think the big thing here is if you can't carry XYZ without bringing along their commercials then DUMP XYZ because if I wanted XYZ I can watch it for free. People are paying for a true Nascar experience and not XYZ.

If you really want to make strides and get the money and support of true Nascar fans I think you need to drop the TV broadcasts, since the viewer can turn to them at any time and watch for free, and focus more on the things that the Nascar fan loves to see and hear when at a race in person. I thought that is what the hotpass wanted to bring the customer and instead we get the Fox broadcast with a few extra wrinkles. Give me exclusive camera work, commentating and the direct feed of the driver that I get from the scanner at the race track. To me that is the Nascar experience I want and something your not offering the fan as of yet. Good luck and hopefully things will change and i eventually will become a happy subscriber!

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

There was a last minute change this week from Gordon to Burton, that may happen at times (not sure why it happened this week). Basically the final selections are typically done Tuesday the week of the race which is what happened this time with the late change.

url]http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=118548&ran=216490[/url]


Meaning Gordon did not want an in car camera so he was dropped.

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

Let me play devil's advocate for a second on this one.

If they delay the audio for 3 seconds and not the video, wouldn't the spotter get blamed by the fans for calling holes that got closed up?

When I hear the spotter say "small hole" and watch Michael Waltrip crash into Dale Jr. because the hole was "way too small", like during Thursday's dual race, I want to be an educated consumer and be able to blame that spotter when I talk to my friends.

If there was a 3 second audio delay, I wouldn't have known the precise moment that the spotter had said such a stupid thing.

Maybe the answer is to delay the audio AND video by 3 seconds?
I dunno, cause then it doesn't jive with my 2nd tv that's showing the mpeg4 local coverage.

I think the better answer is for the announcers to just shut up as soon as humanly possible ... force all the announcers to wear an earphone of the driver radio so he can't miss it ... and if he was talking, then he should repeat what was said after the communications cease again. Some of the announcers did repeat what was said, but others didn't.


Yes I was meaning to dump the broadcast version of it and run it all with a 3 second delay. Now I am told that they have a sensor that would put the emphasis on the driver communication so that as soon as it came on they would dump the commentators and switch to the communication. That would be great if they could hook this device up to the production trucks running the program.

[ZoSoAir]

I don't think that's very fair - he's simply trying to state his take on DirecTV's position.

While I agree with everyone that it would be much better without commericals, the simple fact is that the agreement DTV made with Nascar is that the commercials will be shown.

It's up to each individual to decide whether it's worth it to them. While I certainly understand people here expressing their disappointment in having commercials, it's not really very fair to label satelliteracer a 'corporate black suit'.

Shesh. People complain there isn't much direct representation here, and when someone does participate they're labeled a 'corporate black suit'. :(

I dont think "corporate black suit" is a very bad label. Hope to be there myself one day!

[ZoSoAir]

Nice attitude, acting like this is always the best way to work with people.

This is corporate America business forum discussion. That was in no way a flame of any kind. The fact that he hasnt responded to my comment is proof enough that he isnt high enough in the food chain to make any real changes.

He is simply a mouth piece.

[ZoSoAir]

Anyway.....I understand the commercials, and frankly understood why from the beginning, so I guess some folks just need to move on as I am shocked quite frankly at this being the #1 concern. Obviously, they won't be able to be made happy.


I guess you are really into paying twice for commercials huh?

[Phil D]

The Daytona 500 ran 239 minutes from green flag to checkered flag. Of those 239 minutes, 52 were commercials. That is 21.7 percent. Subscribers are paying $2.83 for only $2.21 worth of product. Would anyone let their local grocery store and/or gas station get away with that? :nono2:

In the Hotpass commercial featuring Dale Earnhardt Jr., he says the subscriber will hear all the communication between him and Eury Jr. Nowhere in the commercial was one of those sneaky little disclaimers that said team communications would not be available during broadcast provider commercials. That appears to be deceptive advertising.

[keithtd]

I would like to see a weekly vote sent out by DTV to HP subscribers on who to see each week. Forcing a racer on use who is low in popularity and points is a waste of our subscription. I would excpect subsciber numbers to shrink otherwise.

Less commentator talk over the team radio. If this continues, make the team radio VOX over the commentators so it cuts them out.

More camera angles from the car. Watching a wall/hood is not exactly entertaining.

Fix the telemetry. Was not available on all driver channels.

Thanks.

[jselinger24]

I would like to see a weekly vote sent out by DTV to HP subscribers on who to see each week. Forcing a racer on use who is low in popularity and points is a waste of our subscription. I would excpect subsciber numbers to shrink otherwise.
.

Couldn't agree with you more - Keith.

[Badger]

Couldn't agree with you more - Keith.


It would be nice to have HP subs have a say in who the 5 drivers picked are. But some drivers/teams don't seem to want to be on (ie:Gordon). Then you have Rousch which has E* as a part time sponsor and I don't think any car with E* on it will ever be on HP. What would probably happen is that Jr., Stewart, Johnson, Gordon (if he accepts in car camera), and a very few others would be the only ones ever on. I like the Hot Pass concept and am willing to give them time to work it into a top notch package. I subscribed as soon as it was announced and don't know why I wouldn't re-up next season. :)

[NFLnut]

1) Why the Commercials? The commercials are here to stay,

Then, it's NOT worth the money! $50.00 or $200.00. I can watch commercials for "free" on FOX (actually, I'm paying DirecTV to watch them on FOX, too!)


All of our sports packages have commercials in them.

Yes. But unlike racing, all of the other sports pause the game play during commercials. Racing goes on, and thus the main reason someone would want to pay for HP!

[AdamL2388]

Then, it's NOT worth the money! $50.00 or $200.00. I can watch commercials for "free" on FOX (actually, I'm paying DirecTV to watch them on FOX, too!)

Yes. But unlike racing, all of the other sports pause the game play during commercials. Racing goes on, and thus the main reason someone would want to pay for HP!

I live in Canada and over here HotPass IS COMMERCIAL FREE, and we don't get any of those commercials you guys see on Direc TV. We Get the Race from start to finish with no commercials and only get the announcers, camera angles, etc... from Direc TV. (Kinda like the old Digital Cable Pack "In-Car") only it has been revamped for us.

Also we don't get the interactive feature you guys get, but I don't care much about that.

[jkimrey]

Great idea Keith.

Even if we could vote two weeks in advance (if decisions were required ahead of time for logistical reasons) would be better than no input.

And I preface this with the fact that I am a Jeff Gordon fan, and would like to have the option of watching the car each week (as I feel many others would). Having said that, there are also other drivers that aren't as popular that I'd like to occasionally see as well.

DirecTV is targeting hotpass to 'hard core' fans who want the ability to follow specific cars, both in video and audio. Who would know better as to which drivers appeal the most at any specific time than those fans?

I would like to see a weekly vote sent out by DTV to HP subscribers on who to see each week. Forcing a racer on use who is low in popularity and points is a waste of our subscription. I would excpect subsciber numbers to shrink otherwise.

Less commentator talk over the team radio. If this continues, make the team radio VOX over the commentators so it cuts them out.

More camera angles from the car. Watching a wall/hood is not exactly entertaining.

Fix the telemetry. Was not available on all driver channels.

Thanks.

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

I would like to see a weekly vote sent out by DTV to HP subscribers on who to see each week. Forcing a racer on use who is low in popularity and points is a waste of our subscription. I would excpect subsciber numbers to shrink otherwise.

Less commentator talk over the team radio. If this continues, make the team radio VOX over the commentators so it cuts them out.

More camera angles from the car. Watching a wall/hood is not exactly entertaining.

Fix the telemetry. Was not available on all driver channels.

Thanks.

Sorry but 36 weeks of Jr., Gordon, Johnson, Stewart and fill in the 5th would make me puke!

I am glad it is not a popularity poll as I hate to get stuck with over-hyped drivers. I feel one is bad enough and to have a definate second and probably a third plus stewart would be a crock for fans of the sport.

I would admit then the package would get more the casual fan of the sport and D* would not have to do as much to satisfy their subscribers since I think those fans would just be happy to see their driver all race and are not the true fans of the sport who go to races and get the total nascar experience (Scanners). (Don't get me wrong here, as yes there are fans of the sport who cheer for these drivers but the overwhelming majority are more driver driven then sport driven.)

That is what I am getting at, I am in love with the sport and that at the track experience. DTV was selling this package as just that but in reality it is merely a rebroadcast of the free feed of the race with some added bells and whistles at this point. The true track experience lets me here all of my driver's communication and does not include commercials.

[BattleScott]

In the original HotPass thread, I told you that being NASCAR, it would be more flash than substance.

If you want the 'real' experience, put the $3 a week towards the gate fee at your local Saturday night short track.

[tucker301]

Doesn't look like they're going to be making much effort to change the core issues that bothered most of us about the service. A good deal of lip service is all I'm seeing.

If the service format was so great, why wasn't it previewed on the commericals promoting it?

Go back and review the screenshots and promo video on this page (http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/global/contentPage.jsp?assetId=P3980112).
Is that what we saw last week?
Where are the commericals?
Where are the announcers?

I regret deeply that I bought in with the early discount, rather than waiting for the free preview.

Free or not, the preview was enough for me.
PQ sucks.
Commercials suck.
Announcers yammering suck.

Refund would be nice, and I'l ask for one, since technically the part I paid for hasn't started yet. But with or without a refund, I'm out.

It's a shame. It could've been a great thing.

[racemanva]

tucker301: Call them before the start of today's race and cancel, somewhere in one of the Hotpass threads another sub did this. His rationale; the first week was a FREE preview for all, therefore, paid subs don't start until the start of today's race! It's worth a shot! Good Luck and tighten those belts, let's get ready to race boys!!:)

[TheRatPatrol]

I live in Canada and over here HotPass IS COMMERCIAL FREE, and we don't get any of those commercials you guys see on Direc TV. We Get the Race from start to finish with no commercials and only get the announcers, camera angles, etc... from Direc TV. (Kinda like the old Digital Cable Pack "In-Car") only it has been revamped for us.

Also we don't get the interactive feature you guys get, but I don't care much about that.
Seems like you guys in Canada have much better TV up there then we do down here in the states. :(

[jselinger24]

Sorry but 36 weeks of Jr., Gordon, Johnson, Stewart and fill in the 5th would make me puke!
.


I think you are probably in the minority - there. You have just mentioned 4 drivers who are amongst NASCAR's 10 most popular. Those guys are who the fans/ subs are paying to see. Who do you recommend - David Ragan, Jeff Green, Robby Gordon? Come on dtv!

Just more reason to use this year as a springboard and make it 10 cars - next year.

[AdamL2388]

Seems like you guys up in Canada have much better TV up there then we do down here in the states. :(

You can say that again ... Im just so glad that our version of HotPass IS COMMERCIAL FREE!!! Sucks that you guys get them tho on DTV. Other than that I absolutly love HotPass and I believe it will get better and better with each week, and with HD coming to HotPass next year, this pack will be a "Must Buy" for any Nascar Fan.

The only bad news about the TV up here in Canada is that we don't get nearly the HD channels you guys get up there, but we still have a lot to choose from. As well the Sports package we get up here I think is the best in North America. We get NFL ST, MLB EI, NBA LP, NHL CI, OHL Action Pak, Nascar HotPass, and NCAA F and B for only 26.99 a month, which that is incredible, considering you guys pay like 200 for one of those packages.

Anyways, Im looking forward to today's Nascar race and to see if Direc TV have made any improvements.

[tucker301]

I called and they refused to issue the refund.
I reasoned that I had only watched the free preview and therefore had not really received anything for which I had paid.
Still a no.

Now that I know Gordon doesn't want to participate, it does make the package slightly more appealing :p

Any coverage without him is worth a few dollars.

[racemanva]

Why 10 drivers and not 12??? 12 Drivers make the chase this year, who you gonna leave out of the mix during the final 10 races of the year???? Let me guess, any driver that has sponsorship from E*.....................guess we won't be seeing any in-car cams with Roush sponsorship.............Oh well, the ESPN HD in-car cams looked good in Matt's E* car last night! :hurah:

[AdamL2388]

Here in Canada, we will see Jeff Gordon race on HotPass, as it still says that he will be one of the 5 drivers on HotPass with 2 hours to go before Green flag!

[TheRatPatrol]

As well the Sports package we get up here I think is the best in North America. We get NFL ST, MLB EI, NBA LP, NHL CI, OHL Action Pak, Nascar HotPass, and NCAA F and B for only 26.99 a month, which that is incredible, considering you guys pay like 200 for one of those packages.

Anyways, Im looking forward to today's Nascar race and to see if Direc TV have made any improvements.
Thats what I'm talking about, there's no reason that we can't have a package like that down here. And if you can get all of our sports packages up there, why can't we OHL action down here?

[tucker301]

Here's an idea on teaching the announcers when to shut up.

Wire them up with one of those dog shock collars.

When over half the viewers enter 7838 (STFU) on their remotes, they get zapped :D

Just trying to expedite the learning process.

/can I set up a 7838 macro?

[AdamL2388]

Thats what I'm talking about, there's no reason that we can't have a package like that down here. And if you can get all of our sports packages up there, why can't we OHL action down here?

Well for one thing OHL is Ontario Hockey League, but to replace that you could get ECHL or AHL Hockey. I know I wouldn't pay 200 for only 1 league so that's why the super sports pack on cogeco in burlngton, ontario suits just fine.

[Tom Robertson]

I think you are probably in the minority - there. You have just mentioned 4 drivers who are amongst NASCAR's 10 most popular. Those guys are who the fans/ subs are paying to see. Who do you recommend - David Ragan, Jeff Green, Robby Gordon? Come on dtv!

Just more reason to use this year as a springboard and make it 10 cars - next year.

How 43 cars? Unless both satellite launches go horribly wrong, I'm bettin' you'll see every car in every race next season.

Cheers,
Tom

[toad57]

I'll also cast my vote for a 3rd audio channel with driver/crew chatter (non-edited, non-delayed) only. Audio bandwidth is very tiny compared to video bandwidth and shouldn't be a problem to accomplish.

In the Hotpass commercial featuring Dale Earnhardt Jr., he says the subscriber will hear all the communication between him and Eury Jr. Nowhere in the commercial was one of those sneaky little disclaimers that said team communications would not be available during broadcast provider commercials. That appears to be deceptive advertising.Yea, I thought the same thing too... bzzzt, wrong, you have been FOOLED.

[toph]

I missed last weeks hotpass free view because I was in the stands. So far, this week, I agree with those requesting a 3rd audio track for driver/crew without commentary. The commercials are a pain, I can get the uninterrupted audio from nascar.com, and so hotpass isn't buying me anything there.

For an SD product, the video is about what I expected, but I look forward to HD next year, I hope. Without changes to improve the HotPass product, I will not be back next year.

[bdowell]

If we're gonna be forced to have the commercials then please make more use of the "dead space" in the screen (typically left side of the screen) to show race status, drivers that are out of the race, reason for caution or break, or somet other useful information there. Wasting that space is just stupid. We get the commercials forced upon us (along with the typical raise in the volume level so that the deaf folks out there can hear the commercials :( ) during the breaks and wind up losing about 1/3 (or more) of the screen to emptiness.

Use the space to put something useful there.

[Badger]

I think you are probably in the minority - there. You have just mentioned 4 drivers who are amongst NASCAR's 10 most popular. Those guys are who the fans/ subs are paying to see. Who do you recommend - David Ragan, Jeff Green, Robby Gordon? Come on dtv!

Just more reason to use this year as a springboard and make it 10 cars - next year.

Hey I agree it would be nice to have 10 cars on Hot Pass each race! Have the top fan favorites and a few also rans. :)

[Badger]

Why 10 drivers and not 12??? 12 Drivers make the chase this year, who you gonna leave out of the mix during the final 10 races of the year???? Let me guess, any driver that has sponsorship from E*.....................guess we won't be seeing any in-car cams with Roush sponsorship.............Oh well, the ESPN HD in-car cams looked good in Matt's E* car last night! :hurah:

Good idea on the 12 chase drivers the last 10 races. We had a roush car on Hot Pass today. Matt something! Oh ya Kenseth. I guess he's from Wisconsin but not real popular here.

[Tony1097]

I just thought of an idea that I HOPE would make advertisers AND fans happy! Show us the race during the commercial breaks.... THEN, show all of the commercials that that Fox was showing on their telecast after the race on hotpass. . You have over 6 days to show all the ads you want on the Hotpass channels, show them then! We will even give you the full screen to show them!

[Herdfan]

Matt something! Oh ya Kenseth. I guess he's from Wisconsin but not real popular here.
I guess Wisconsin is still hooked on Dick Trickle.:lol:

[jfalkingham]

Ok - I have my share of concerns, but I wanted to say first off:

THANK YOU!

What I witnessed today with the 17's camera was outstanding. You really gave me and my friends a perspective that we never have seen before. The in camera stuff on cable did not even come close, so, please keep working at it, refine the tv crews, the techniques and you'll be pretty darn perfect soon. I'm a bit happy today and a few beers deep, so might be the reason of all the upbeat comments, go 17!! :D

Things I like:

1. Talking to other hotpass driver crews. Having the 17 team talk to the 8 and 31 at the right times really enhanced the experience for me

2. Having the pit reporter on the pit box, OUTSTANDING!

3. Interviewing Jack Roush under the red flag, impromptu, cool stuff

4. Showing the track position of the driver on the channel, plus who is immediately in front and in back of him, plus who is first. Nice layout, graphics are not distracting yet relay a lot of information.

I will echo a few concerns:

1. Commercials - understand it, nature of the beast, however. Can't we get a 50/50 split or at least a 60/40? I think the complaints will cease at a 50/50 split and will drop a lot on a 60/40 deal!

2. Intra-team communication. Maybe have the pit reporter run over to a teammates pit to get a report - like for the 17, give a "roush" or "ford" update, what are the other teammates up to

3. A bit more in car. On one restart we saw Matt getting into gear, but as soon as green came out, it went to full external camera. I'd love to see the shifting on the restart.

Again, I think your doing a great thing, keep up what is going good, and please see if you can do something about increasing the size of the race window :-)

Can't wait to see what the season brings.... from a diehard Kenseth fan, THANK YOU!

[cariera]

Answer me this:

Throughout the entire race when Fox went to commercial the upper right hand window of the HP channel showed that commercial and the audio from that commercial was heard. Nothing new here, this is what about a zillion previous posts seem upset with.

But near the end of the race, while it was red flagged, when Fox went to commercial, the Fox HP feed stayed with a picture at the track and Chris Meyers and those other yahoos were talking in the background.

Why no video/audio switch? Was it because the race ran over the alloted time and there were no more obligations to air commercials? If it could be done at the end of the race like it was how come the need to switch earlier?:confused:

[Ext 721]

[QUOTE=Supervolcano;845168]Let me play devil's advocate for a second on this one.

If there was a 3 second audio delay, I wouldn't have known the precise moment that the spotter had said such a stupid thing.

[QUOTE]

Delay nessecary to avoid hearing "that ####ing ###er just ###ing bumped me!"

Blame justin timberlake.

[TigersFanJJ]

Doesn't look like they're going to be making much effort to change the core issues that bothered most of us about the service. A good deal of lip service is all I'm seeing....It's a shame. It could've been a great thing.

I agree. It could have been a great thing, but not until Dtv decides to do something about everyone's number one concern, which is the commercials. Dtv is double dipping to make as much money as they can from this complimentary feature. There's nothing wrong with trying to make as much money as you can, but not at the expense of your customers. I refuse to pay extra for this so-called service. I just feel sorry for those of you that Dtv refused to credit your account when you tried to cancel after the free preview.

[Bluto17]

I think you are probably in the minority - there. You have just mentioned 4 drivers who are amongst NASCAR's 10 most popular. Those guys are who the fans/ subs are paying to see. Who do you recommend - David Ragan, Jeff Green, Robby Gordon? Come on dtv!

Just more reason to use this year as a springboard and make it 10 cars - next year.

*L* I'm guessing Robby Gordon's in-car audio would be VERY interesting.

[jamieh1]

I just called to cancel and they said we cant cancel your Hotpass service but we cant give you the money back to your acct.

She said I can give you some compensation however and you can keep the hot pass service.

She gave me 3 months of STARZ and 6 months of $5 credits.
Thats $66 and I only paid $79 for HP and they means Im getting HP for $13.

I can live with HP for that.

Call them up and try to cancel and see what they will give you.

Me and 2 other freinds have tried to cancel but were told no.

[Badger]

I guess Wisconsin is still hooked on Dick Trickle.:lol:

Some of us oldtimers remember Dick Trickle well. I raced aganst him in the late sixties here in Wisconsin. He didn't have a great record in NASCAR but did finish second in the Daytona 500 once. I think he ran close to 300 NASCAR CUP races. Matt is not really a fan favorite here. There are some fans for him but the vast majority are Jr. and Stewart and some Gordon fans.

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

Some of us oldtimers remember Dick Trickle well. I raced aganst him in the late sixties here in Wisconsin. He didn't have a great record in NASCAR but did finish second in the Daytona 500 once. I think he ran close to 300 NASCAR CUP races. Matt is not really a fan favorite here. There are some fans for him but the vast majority are Jr. and Stewart and some Gordon fans.

I would argue that as almost every night and every race coverage in the news at my uncle (Baraboo) has at least 20-60 dedicated to Matt and how he did or what he is up to. I know that type of coverage is no given to that other popular but less talented driver you mentioned in mr. earnhardt.

[marknga]

I agree with the commerical concerns that everyone has already posted. I wish we could switch between the Fox Feed and HP feed during the commercials. But I do like being able to at least watch some race footage for the whole race.
I really like the interactive buttons, being able to hit the yellow button switch between FOX and the HOT PASS audio. I also really liked being able to hit the blue button to get the current running order at any time and being able to scroll up and down at my convience.
I signed up early to get the discounted price and while it may not be everything I expected it is a heck of lot better than not having any other options at all. Like everything else I have experienced with Diretv it is probably a work in progress and they will make changes as it goes along. Changes for the good or for the worse we will have to see! LOL

If we have to watch the commerical at least give me the option to switch and listen to the audio of the Hot Pass broadcast during commericial breaks.

Mark

[Badger]

I would argue that as almost every night and every race coverage in the news at my uncle (Baraboo) has at least 20-60 dedicated to Matt and how he did or what he is up to. I know that type of coverage is no given to that other popular but less talented driver you mentioned in mr. earnhardt.

If I understand your post then I disagree. I watch sports on the Madison stations OTA and live 60 miles north of Madison. Very rarely hear more than the occasional blurb on Sunday night sports on the Madison stations regarding "Matt the Brat". Hey every NASCAR fan has a favorite and some drivers have a lot more fans than others. That's the way it is but we all love NASCAR cup racing!

[Bluto17]

Bah. There are a TON of Kenseth fans in Wisconsin. And, there are still some that refer to him as 'Matt the Brat'. :)

I still miss Trickle, though. Luckily, he still runs the Slinger Nationals every year.

[Satelliteracer]

I'll also cast my vote for a 3rd audio channel with driver/crew chatter (non-edited, non-delayed) only. Audio bandwidth is very tiny compared to video bandwidth and shouldn't be a problem to accomplish.

Yea, I thought the same thing too... bzzzt, wrong, you have been FOOLED.


Gentlemen.....your comments have been heard. I believe you will see a third audio channel on March 11th for Vegas. It is in the process of being created as we speak.

:)

[Satelliteracer]

[QUOTE=Supervolcano;845168]Let me play devil's advocate for a second on this one.

If there was a 3 second audio delay, I wouldn't have known the precise moment that the spotter had said such a stupid thing.

[QUOTE]

Delay nessecary to avoid hearing "that ####ing ###er just ###ing bumped me!"

Blame justin timberlake.

For clarity, DTV is not double dipping. Those commercials are sold by FOX and the other national broadcasters. As I explained earlier, we could not carry the five independent driver channels without agreeing to carry their commercials also. Otherwise the national broadcaster would lose eyeballs watching their race.

If we could show it commercial free, we would. We cannot per the contractual terms of the deal. No different than MLB, NFL, MLS, NHL, NBA, ESPN Gameplan, ESPN Fullcourt. We have to pass those commercials through.

Instead of focusing on that aspect, I think we are losing site of the fact that even during a commercial you can still see the race...something you cannot do on the national broadcast. Tony Stewart fans saw #20 wreck in Daytona on NASCAR HotPass that everyone else missed because FOX was in the middle of a commercial break. Just one example.

[Satelliteracer]

If I understand your post then I disagree. I watch sports on the Madison stations OTA and live 60 miles north of Madison. Very rarely hear more than the occasional blurb on Sunday night sports on the Madison stations regarding "Matt the Brat". Hey every NASCAR fan has a favorite and some drivers have a lot more fans than others. That's the way it is but we all love NASCAR cup racing!

Don't forget Kulwicki as well...I think he was from Wisconsin. RIP.


And on the Indy side there was the long haired Indy 500 winner who lived in Brookfield, WI. His name escapes me right now.

[Satelliteracer]

Bah. There are a TON of Kenseth fans in Wisconsin. And, there are still some that refer to him as 'Matt the Brat'. :)

I still miss Trickle, though. Luckily, he still runs the Slinger Nationals every year.


I got my only Hole-In-One at a golf course in Slinger about 15 years ago. I miss Wisconsin, just not the winters.

[Badger]

Gentlemen.....your comments have been heard. I believe you will see a third audio channel on March 11th for Vegas. It is in the process of being created as we speak.

:)


Thanks for keeping us updated Satelliteracer. I couldn't watch Daytona but did read many comments of others after the race. I did watch using HP last Sunday and I was impressed. The announcers on Hotpass did a very good job of not stepping on the driver communications. As far a commercials I used that time to check the current position of all the drivers or go get a soda etc. I didn't expect HP to be without some bugs the first race but the second race showed good improvement and I feel confident that it will keep getting better. I watch HP on one of our 2 SD sets with D10 boxes but will have a AT9 dish and HR20 installed as soon as the ground thaws so I can watch on our bigger HDTV and before somebody else says it I know the network feed will be HD but HP won't. Somebody has posted that D* will have the whole works in HD next year. Any confirmation on that Satelliteracer? We're happy with HP and will be long time subs I'm sure.:D

[luckydob]

So I purchased Talladega Nights: The ballad of Ricky Bobby Movie on D* PPV and I get this advertisement for HP which shows the following:

J Gordon
Stewart
Earnhardt, Jr.
Yeley
Menard
Newman
Kahne
Busch
J. Johnson

Week 1 Had:
Earnhardt, Jr.
Harvick
J. Johnson
Tony Stewart
Michael Waltrip

Week 2 Had:
Sadler
J. Burton
Montoya
Kenseth
Earnhardt, Jr (again)

Where is J. Gordon? If you are going to promote the channel as having Gordon, the I expect to see him there. Being a Gordon fan, I don't really care for Earnhardt or Stewart...much less Montoya. What's going on? This is like advertising a golf tournament with Tiger Woods and then when you show up you find out that he really isn't going to be there...but thanks for paying for your ticket.

:bang

[Tom_Oliver]

No offense Satelliteracer, but are you even familiar with the package In-Demand had for the last three years that DirecTV replaced? There were no commercials on that package, and to perfectly honest I thought it was 1000 times better than what DirecTV is providing. You can add pretty features until you are blue in the face, but you are ignoring (by far) the number one customer issue.

I kind of even question whether or not you completely understand NASCAR when you compare them to other sports. NASCAR doesn't take breaks, so you can't compare the packages. If they did take breaks we wouldn't care about this!

Sounds like we are not going to get a resolution, so I'm just going to have give up on the DirecTV package. I was even more frustrated this week than last week, but then I haven't watched commercials for a while. How disappointing.



For clarity, DTV is not double dipping. Those commercials are sold by FOX and the other national broadcasters. As I explained earlier, we could not carry the five independent driver channels without agreeing to carry their commercials also. Otherwise the national broadcaster would lose eyeballs watching their race.

If we could show it commercial free, we would. We cannot per the contractual terms of the deal. No different than MLB, NFL, MLS, NHL, NBA, ESPN Gameplan, ESPN Fullcourt. We have to pass those commercials through.

Instead of focusing on that aspect, I think we are losing site of the fact that even during a commercial you can still see the race...something you cannot do on the national broadcast. Tony Stewart fans saw #20 wreck in Daytona on NASCAR HotPass that everyone else missed because FOX was in the middle of a commercial break. Just one example.

[Satelliteracer]

So I purchased Talladega Nights: The ballad of Ricky Bobby Movie on D* PPV and I get this advertisement for HP which shows the following:

J Gordon
Stewart
Earnhardt, Jr.
Yeley
Menard
Newman
Kahne
Busch
J. Johnson

Week 1 Had:
Earnhardt, Jr.
Harvick
J. Johnson
Tony Stewart
Michael Waltrip

Week 2 Had:
Sadler
J. Burton
Montoya
Kenseth
Earnhardt, Jr (again)

Where is J. Gordon? If you are going to promote the channel as having Gordon, the I expect to see him there. Being a Gordon fan, I don't really care for Earnhardt or Stewart...much less Montoya. What's going on? This is like advertising a golf tournament with Tiger Woods and then when you show up you find out that he really isn't going to be there...but thanks for paying for your ticket.

:bang

We've done two races so far out of 37. Patience. I understand your analogy but I think to be fair it would be like advertising an entire golf season and Tiger Woods doesn't show up. We're only about 5% into the season. :)

We have to be fair to NASCAR and the many drivers that are out there so we aren't locking in on just 2 or 3 guys every week. Just in this thread alone there are some fans saying it would be the same 4 or 5 guys each week. Well, we've already proven that isn't the case. We've also been fortunate to have the winner each time.

My 8 year old son is a die-hard Gordon fan. We would love for him to be on and hopefully that will happen soon. Don't forget, the drivers and teams have to be willing participants as well. He's a world class driver with incredible pedigree, we hope to have him on sooner rather than later. I think it would be terrific for everyone. Stay tuned.

[Satelliteracer]

No offense Satelliteracer, but are you even familiar with the package In-Demand had for the last three years that DirecTV replaced? There were no commercials on that package, and to perfectly honest I thought it was 1000 times better than what DirecTV is providing. You can add pretty features until you are blue in the face, but you are ignoring (by far) the number one customer issue.

I kind of even question whether or not you completely understand NASCAR when you compare them to other sports. NASCAR doesn't take breaks, so you can't compare the packages. If they did take breaks we wouldn't care about this!

Sounds like we are not going to get a resolution, so I'm just going to have give up on the DirecTV package. I was even more frustrated this week than last week, but then I haven't watched commercials for a while. How disappointing.

Tom, I definitely understand what you are saying. The reason I compared NASCAR HotPass to other sports packages has more to do with the agreements in place. And you are correct, NASCAR doesn't take breaks just like soccer doesn't take breaks. However, the broadcasters do take breaks. Anyone watching any race on FOX, TNT, ABC, or ESPN this year will note that there are many breaks regardless of what is happening in the action. We are fortunate enough to continue to broadcast the race even when they are at commercial (yes, with commercials playing but we still show you the race).

I'm very familiar with the former In-Demand product. The reason why they didn't have commercials is because they didn't have very many subscribers. The deals are constructed, as I mentioned previously, to protect the national broadcasters. That is in NASCAR's best interests and the broadcasters. When the volume of subscribers reaches a certain level the national broadcasters want to make sure viewers are seeing the advertisers message because those broadcasters paid so much money for those rights. If another service doesn't show those same commercials, they would lose advertising revenue. In-Demand, quite frankly, never had enough subscribers even after 4 years to require those commercials be played.

That is not the case with the agreement between NASCAR and DIRECTV. Each deal is different and each deal has different thresholds and markers. The NASCAR HotPass deal requires DIRECTV to run those broadcaster commercials (FOX, ESPN, TNT and ABC) much like the NFL deal, MLB, etc (thus the comparison to those sports packages). The reason behind it is that there are many more subscribers for this product then any previous iteration on distribution system and that protection was built in.

I hope that helps explain it a bit, if not I'm happy to respond to any further questions.

Best regards,

[Bluto17]

Don't forget Kulwicki as well...I think he was from Wisconsin. RIP.


And on the Indy side there was the long haired Indy 500 winner who lived in Brookfield, WI. His name escapes me right now.


Arie Luyendyk. Good memory.

There will never be a driver again like Alan Kulwicki - an owner/driver that wins it all. I think Robbie Gordon is the only one trying to pull it off right now, and I wish him luck.

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

Tom, I definitely understand what you are saying. The reason I compared NASCAR HotPass to other sports packages has more to do with the agreements in place. And you are correct, NASCAR doesn't take breaks just like soccer doesn't take breaks. However, the broadcasters do take breaks. Anyone watching any race on FOX, TNT, ABC, or ESPN this year will note that there are many breaks regardless of what is happening in the action. We are fortunate enough to continue to broadcast the race even when they are at commercial (yes, with commercials playing but we still show you the race).

I'm very familiar with the former In-Demand product. The reason why they didn't have commercials is because they didn't have very many subscribers. The deals are constructed, as I mentioned previously, to protect the national broadcasters. That is in NASCAR's best interests and the broadcasters. When the volume of subscribers reaches a certain level the national broadcasters want to make sure viewers are seeing the advertisers message because those broadcasters paid so much money for those rights. If another service doesn't show those same commercials, they would lose advertising revenue. In-Demand, quite frankly, never had enough subscribers even after 4 years to require those commercials be played.

That is not the case with the agreement between NASCAR and DIRECTV. Each deal is different and each deal has different thresholds and markers. The NASCAR HotPass deal requires DIRECTV to run those broadcaster commercials (FOX, ESPN, TNT and ABC) much like the NFL deal, MLB, etc (thus the comparison to those sports packages). The reason behind it is that there are many more subscribers for this product then any previous iteration on distribution system and that protection was built in.

I hope that helps explain it a bit, if not I'm happy to respond to any further questions.

Best regards,


Wow, thank you for making it painfully obvious that D* Nascar Hotpass is essentially the national feed of the race with just a few added bells and whistles.

Sorry but I can get that for free and I thought I was paying to see the race and hear the driver interactions but you now have made it obvious that we are not.

The day Nascar Hotpass takes off is the day it dumps the national feed and gives the users what it can't see for free and gives them the actual track experience that the fan is craving.

PS. If you want to at least help out your current subscribers I strongly suggest that the commercials go into a 30% screen size and the live feed be at least 50% of the screen size because people want this and not the straining to see the tiny box you give them at commercials.

[Satelliteracer]

Wow, thank you for making it painfully obvious that D* Nascar Hotpass is essentially the national feed of the race with just a few added bells and whistles.

Sorry but I can get that for free and I thought I was paying to see the race and hear the driver interactions but you now have made it obvious that we are not.

The day Nascar Hotpass takes off is the day it dumps the national feed and gives the users what it can't see for free and gives them the actual track experience that the fan is craving.

PS. If you want to at least help out your current subscribers I strongly suggest that the commercials go into a 30% screen size and the live feed be at least 50% of the screen size because people want this and not the straining to see the tiny box you give them at commercials.

You will hear all of the driver interactions with our new audio channel launching for Vegas for customers with interactive receivers. Three audio channels will be present moving forward.

We are examining all possibilities with the commercial window sizing, contracts stipulate much of this.

Nevertheless, we (and NASCAR) are very excited where we are right now with the growth of this package and the feedback thus far. More improvements to come...we're in this for the long haul.

Thank you for your continued feedback.

[ez2logon]

Glad to hear about the new audio feed. This has been one of my major complaints and a must have if I am going to re-up for Hotpass next year.

Word of caution: you can structure a deal that is so advantageous to the national broacasters that it has no value for the consumer. At this point I feel like I was duped when I subscribed to the package. I welcome the changes that you make to address the concerns that have been well documented in this thread.

[ilovehd]

Satelliteracer, If the commercials must stay (which it sounds like they are) :( would it be possible to give us the option to stay with the driver audio feed? The last 2 races there has been alot of communication between driver and crew that has been missed due to audio being out during the commercials. If that is not possible how about at least Close Captioning of either the commercial audio or the driver audio.

[ZoSoAir]

Can someone post a screen shot of one of these races so us "non-subscribers" can see what we are missing out on?

I know there was one posted a couple of threads back but it was too small to read.

Thanks

[Tom_Oliver]

It's a nice reasoned response, thanks. I think you should maybe run for office. :) You just stated something that is a complete different story than what was told last week, and what they said on the air this weekend. They claimed the reason was so they could show the FOX feed in the window. Then we suggest dropping that feed and now it's a new story.

Reading between the lines here, I get the feeling the only reason DirecTV got this package away from cable was by agreeing to air the commercials. Something cable knew wouldn't work, since they also tried it at first and they couldn't keep enough subscriptions. If DirecTV really has it in their contract that they have to air the commercials they are going to get slaughtered on the deal imho. I don't even know how they'll be able to pay the announcers.

There really is no additional benefit over simply watching the race on the national feed. The quality is much better with HD, and the announcers and production is much better as well. HotPass has some different camera feeds and some exclusive interviews with the pit crew. Nice, but no way is it enough. When I had InDemand I watched the whole race from that channel, but with HotPass I'm struggling to keep it on at all. HotPass is trying to sell following a driver, but you can't even do that without running trackpass on Nascar.com as well.

Good luck.


Tom, I definitely understand what you are saying. The reason I compared NASCAR HotPass to other sports packages has more to do with the agreements in place. And you are correct, NASCAR doesn't take breaks just like soccer doesn't take breaks. However, the broadcasters do take breaks. Anyone watching any race on FOX, TNT, ABC, or ESPN this year will note that there are many breaks regardless of what is happening in the action. We are fortunate enough to continue to broadcast the race even when they are at commercial (yes, with commercials playing but we still show you the race).

I'm very familiar with the former In-Demand product. The reason why they didn't have commercials is because they didn't have very many subscribers. The deals are constructed, as I mentioned previously, to protect the national broadcasters. That is in NASCAR's best interests and the broadcasters. When the volume of subscribers reaches a certain level the national broadcasters want to make sure viewers are seeing the advertisers message because those broadcasters paid so much money for those rights. If another service doesn't show those same commercials, they would lose advertising revenue. In-Demand, quite frankly, never had enough subscribers even after 4 years to require those commercials be played.

That is not the case with the agreement between NASCAR and DIRECTV. Each deal is different and each deal has different thresholds and markers. The NASCAR HotPass deal requires DIRECTV to run those broadcaster commercials (FOX, ESPN, TNT and ABC) much like the NFL deal, MLB, etc (thus the comparison to those sports packages). The reason behind it is that there are many more subscribers for this product then any previous iteration on distribution system and that protection was built in.

I hope that helps explain it a bit, if not I'm happy to respond to any further questions.

Best regards,

[Tom_Oliver]

Correction. You will hear whatever is said when they are not away on commercial, which means almost nothing under yellow and nothing said just before and after pit stops, since they always break at those times. I'd wager you are actually hearing maybe only 20-30% of what is said, and almost nothing that is meaningful. Car high, car low, clear.


You will hear all of the driver interactions with our new audio channel launching for Vegas for customers with interactive receivers.

[tucker301]

Can someone post a screen shot of one of these races so us "non-subscribers" can see what we are missing out on?

I know there was one posted a couple of threads back but it was too small to read.

Thanks

Commercial Time :mad:

http://www.hunt101.com/img/477732.jpg

[Tony1097]

Tom, I definitely understand what you are saying. The reason I compared NASCAR HotPass to other sports packages has more to do with the agreements in place. And you are correct, NASCAR doesn't take breaks just like soccer doesn't take breaks. However, the broadcasters do take breaks. Anyone watching any race on FOX, TNT, ABC, or ESPN this year will note that there are many breaks regardless of what is happening in the action. We are fortunate enough to continue to broadcast the race even when they are at commercial (yes, with commercials playing but we still show you the race).

I'm very familiar with the former In-Demand product. The reason why they didn't have commercials is because they didn't have very many subscribers. The deals are constructed, as I mentioned previously, to protect the national broadcasters. That is in NASCAR's best interests and the broadcasters. When the volume of subscribers reaches a certain level the national broadcasters want to make sure viewers are seeing the advertisers message because those broadcasters paid so much money for those rights. If another service doesn't show those same commercials, they would lose advertising revenue. In-Demand, quite frankly, never had enough subscribers even after 4 years to require those commercials be played.

That is not the case with the agreement between NASCAR and DIRECTV. Each deal is different and each deal has different thresholds and markers. The NASCAR HotPass deal requires DIRECTV to run those broadcaster commercials (FOX, ESPN, TNT and ABC) much like the NFL deal, MLB, etc (thus the comparison to those sports packages). The reason behind it is that there are many more subscribers for this product then any previous iteration on distribution system and that protection was built in.

I hope that helps explain it a bit, if not I'm happy to respond to any further questions.

Best regards,

is there any way D* to transfer the fox/espn ads that air on Hotpass to after the race is over, so we can see the feeds during the race with a full screen? just an idea :)

[BattleScott]

is there any way D* to transfer the fox/espn ads that air on Hotpass to after the race is over, so we can see the feeds during the race with a full screen? just an idea :)

Do you promise you will sit and watch them after the race is over?:rolleyes:

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

You will hear all of the driver interactions with our new audio channel launching for Vegas for customers with interactive receivers. Three audio channels will be present moving forward.

We are examining all possibilities with the commercial window sizing, contracts stipulate much of this.

Nevertheless, we (and NASCAR) are very excited where we are right now with the growth of this package and the feedback thus far. More improvements to come...we're in this for the long haul.

Thank you for your continued feedback.

Satellite racer,

I first tip my cap to you for actually coming on here and listening to the gripes. I am hoping that you continue to work on the package and get the fans happy because for the first two weeks the Jayski disapproval rating has been in 80-90%ile. So while I know you are happy with your current base of subscribers it could be a lot more if the package offered what people actually want.

[bagleyb]

I just wish if something happened to a driver on a HP channel during a commercial, that they could drop the commercial and go back full screen with race audio. Or at least move back to full screen with the commercial in the upper right where the national broadcast is. I could live with the commercials then.

[jselinger24]

You will hear all of the driver interactions with our new audio channel launching for Vegas for customers with interactive receivers. Three audio channels will be present moving forward.

We are examining all possibilities with the commercial window sizing, contracts stipulate much of this.

Nevertheless, we (and NASCAR) are very excited where we are right now with the growth of this package and the feedback thus far. More improvements to come...we're in this for the long haul.

Thank you for your continued feedback.

Satelliteracer ...

Thanks for all the updates. Personally, I am glad D* is listening to customer requests and trying to improve on the service. I look forward to Jeff Gordon appearing on HotPass, soon and to continued improvements. HotPass has so much potential - I can't wait to see where it goes.

[TigersFanJJ]

Do you promise you will sit and watch them after the race is over?:rolleyes:

I don't sit and watch them during the breaks now. Why should I have to promise to sit and watch only commercials afterward? :rolleyes:

[bonkthat]

Can you direct some of us to the content we WANT? You know, voice of the customer stuff.

I want to have a raw feed of the in-car camera and audio. No commentators, no commercials. I'll pay any amount of money.

Don't respond that it's not possible....because I had it for 4 years...when i had Cable. But *someone* pulled the rug from under something that was a great product. I'd like to know who (or what company) was responsible and why they were so "hush hush" about it (In-Demand has removed any mention they ever had it). Was it Nascar? Fox? ESPN? DirectTV?

Frankly stating, you guys are touting a piss poor product, reeking more of marketing, and less of customer features. I feel bad for the folks here who have known nothing more than Trackpass and Hotpass. To them, Hotpass must seem great, with the default acceptance of what it is.

To them I say: Nascar and their broadcasting affiliates already had exactly what you wanted. But they squashed it in favor of this commercial-ridden crap. Why? Greed....nothing more, nothing less.

It's like me selling you an I-Pod. At first I just sold you the I-Pod (and you had lots of fun with it. You really didn't need anything else). But when the new I-Pod came out, I sold advertising space on your I-Pod (to other people), added a preset playlist, and then resold it to you. Because I was nice enough to add "content" for you, I opened a forum for you so you could have a little input as to what I put on the playlist. All you ever wanted was an I-Pod, but rather than sell you what you wanted, I decided to give you a piece of what you wanted...knowing I was going to make more money on the advertisers. I don't care what you really want.

Does that sound about right?

I DARE someone to to defend Hot Pass as customer centric.

[AdamL2388]

I believe Satelliteracer has said that there adding another feed on HotPass in two weeks with the Las Vegas race. There is only going to be audio, no announcers, and maybe with no commercials I think.

[Dtv-dishlitehd]

I believe Satelliteracer has said that there adding another feed on HotPass in two weeks with the Las Vegas race. There is only going to be audio, no announcers, and maybe with no commercials I think.

Sorry but the commercials will always be there. They sold us out to get the advertising dollars.

[Tom_Oliver]

I posted this in another thread:

I think the reason a lot of people don't get our frustration is they never saw the In-Demand package. If you want to really experience what ridding along with a driver is like see the clip on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DK__OcMvCk. Warning, some bad language.

What DirecTV is providing is all fluff and no substance.

Can you direct some of us to the content we WANT? You know, voice of the customer stuff.

I want to have a raw feed of the in-car camera and audio. No commentators, no commercials. I'll pay any amount of money.

Don't respond that it's not possible....because I had it for 4 years...when i had Cable. But *someone* pulled the rug from under something that was a great product. I'd like to know who (or what company) was responsible and why they were so "hush hush" about it (In-Demand has removed any mention they ever had it). Was it Nascar? Fox? ESPN? DirectTV?

Frankly stating, you guys are touting a piss poor product, reeking more of marketing, and less of customer features. I feel bad for the folks here who have known nothing more than Trackpass and Hotpass. To them, Hotpass must seem great, with the default acceptance of what it is.

To them I say: Nascar and their broadcasting affiliates already had exactly what you wanted. But they squashed it in favor of this commercial-ridden crap. Why? Greed....nothing more, nothing less.

It's like me selling you an I-Pod. At first I just sold you the I-Pod (and you had lots of fun with it. You really didn't need anything else). But when the new I-Pod came out, I sold advertising space on your I-Pod (to other people), added a preset playlist, and then resold it to you. Because I was nice enough to add "content" for you, I opened a forum for you so you could have a little input as to what I put on the playlist. All you ever wanted was an I-Pod, but rather than sell you what you wanted, I decided to give you a piece of what you wanted...knowing I was going to make more money on the advertisers. I don't care what you really want.

Does that sound about right?

I DARE someone to to defend Hot Pass as customer centric.

[bonkthat]

Please pass this graphic to any of the big wigs involved in the decision making process. I think it accurately represents what Hot Pass is.

http://www.compsoc.com/~dave/product-lifecycle.gif

[tucker301]

Could I sell my subscription on ebay?

[Satelliteracer]

Can you direct some of us to the content we WANT? You know, voice of the customer stuff.

I want to have a raw feed of the in-car camera and audio. No commentators, no commercials. I'll pay any amount of money.

Don't respond that it's not possible....because I had it for 4 years...when i had Cable. But *someone* pulled the rug from under something that was a great product. I'd like to know who (or what company) was responsible and why they were so "hush hush" about it (In-Demand has removed any mention they ever had it). Was it Nascar? Fox? ESPN? DirectTV?

Frankly stating, you guys are touting a piss poor product, reeking more of marketing, and less of customer features. I feel bad for the folks here who have known nothing more than Trackpass and Hotpass. To them, Hotpass must seem great, with the default acceptance of what it is.

To them I say: Nascar and their broadcasting affiliates already had exactly what you wanted. But they squashed it in favor of this commercial-ridden crap. Why? Greed....nothing more, nothing less.

It's like me selling you an I-Pod. At first I just sold you the I-Pod (and you had lots of fun with it. You really didn't need anything else). But when the new I-Pod came out, I sold advertising space on your I-Pod (to other people), added a preset playlist, and then resold it to you. Because I was nice enough to add "content" for you, I opened a forum for you so you could have a little input as to what I put on the playlist. All you ever wanted was an I-Pod, but rather than sell you what you wanted, I decided to give you a piece of what you wanted...knowing I was going to make more money on the advertisers. I don't care what you really want.

Does that sound about right?

I DARE someone to to defend Hot Pass as customer centric.


Bonk, I think it is safe to say that InDemand no longer pushed to have the product on their platform. The industry trades reported they had very few subscribers for their NASCAR service.

[bonkthat]

Bonk, I think it is safe to say that InDemand no longer pushed to have the product on their platform. The industry trades reported they had very few subscribers for their NASCAR service.

So take it and add it as a super-premium service for us gurus.

I mentioned it in the two other threads...sorry to keep bouncing around like this.

[B.A.T.S]

You will hear all of the driver interactions with our new audio channel launching for Vegas for customers with interactive receivers. Three audio channels will be present moving forward.

We are examining all possibilities with the commercial window sizing, contracts stipulate much of this.

Nevertheless, we (and NASCAR) are very excited where we are right now with the growth of this package and the feedback thus far. More improvements to come...we're in this for the long haul.

Thank you for your continued feedback.

If Hotpass wants to succeed then it MUST make some major changes or else I can't see people anually reordering (which is what they want right).

FOX & ESPN HD coverage of NASCAR is the BEST coverage of any sport (or any event) and is truely amazing. They offer HD camera on everything, good commentary, graphical/satistical telemetry & ocassional driver audio, ect, ect. The only problem is WAY to many commercials.

Hotpass does have a feed during commercials but something has to be done with the ridiculous mini sized screen. It is way way to small & the PQ is terrible. On the driver I was watching I couldn't even make out the other cars around him so I went to the running order & it completely covered the screen making it unwatchable - So what is the purpose?? I understand HD is in the works for next year but that doesn't make me feel any better right now.

If Hotpass wants me back as a repeat customer then they will need to show me alot more than just commericals and poor PQ.

[tucker301]

In its current format I don't think I'd renew next year, even if it does go to HD.
Simply not worth it.

[Bill_Lang]

Props to Satellite racer for making this thread and listening to this.

That being said, I agree 100% with those who want the ability to watch strictly onboard footage. Nothing else matters to me, and it's what I thought I was paying for when I ordere Hotpass originally. I want to be able to watch onboard with a driver, full screen, with no commentators. I would pay more for it, honestly, but I doubt I will renew my subscription for what hotpass is currently, as the lack of "true" onboard coverage ruins it for me. Thanks for listening.

[michael-reilly]

...then the users paying a "premium price" for the Hotpass Subscription should not be forced into the commercial break .... ESPECIALLY in nascar's case since the best driver/crew discussions are taking place during the yellow flag commercial breaks right before they do their pitstop.You got it. Either make HotPass a part of the normal programming or give the viewers something for their Subscription price.

[michael-reilly]

Sorry, I have subscribed to all the sports packages at one time or another and the commercials are all still there.That is fine for sports where the action stops for the commercials. But not acceptable for sports where the action continues and, in fact often gets more intense during the commercials due to the yellow flag.

DirecTV advertises driver audio as a feature and then fails to provide it when the driver audio is most likely to occur and is often most critical to the event.

[michael-reilly]

You will hear all of the driver interactions with our new audio channel launching for Vegas for customers with interactive receivers. Three audio channels will be present moving forward. Certainly a new definition of the word "all". To cut the marketing BS and tell the truth what the new audio channel gives you is no announcers. It still gives full audio for the commercials and you still lose any driver audio during the crucial yellow flag pit stops. Fortunately NASCAR still provides the audio on their web site. At least NASCAR delivers what they promise.

[Racer88]

you appreciate our feedback....

i'd appreciate my money back....

i didn't pay for the right to be your guinea pig/beta tester nor the right to be seeing pretty much the same thing I can see on FOX anyway AND in HD to boot.

[jp23mc]

I think I'll just keep typing this until I hear something different...

We don't need the Fox broadcast. It's already on two other channels. Take it away and 90% of the complaints go away.

[realracer2]

I will probably never buy Hot Pass. The novelty of an in car camera wore off for me shortly after they first went into use. When I watch a race, I want to see the whole race going on. I want to be able to follow any action going on around the track. I sometimes get upset when they go to in car, because I am looking at a different part of the race.

[jp23mc]

I will probably never buy Hot Pass. The novelty of an in car camera wore off for me shortly after they first went into use. When I watch a race, I want to see the whole race going on. I want to be able to follow any action going on around the track. I sometimes get upset when they go to in car, because I am looking at a different part of the race.


On the contrary, I found that with inCar on cable I watched more of the race because it gave you a real sense of how the cars were behaving and an urgency to the race itself. With HotPass I have reverted back to watching the start of the race, taking a nap and watching the end. There's nothing in the middle that I can't rewind and watch later.

I really think the people who are praising the recent changes in HP are doing so out of the ignorance of not knowing how good we had it before.

[wmschultz]

I recorded 3 of the 30 minute segments and watch 2 of them last night.

One thing that bothers me is that they edit the drivers, resulting in a time delay
from the time of an event to the hearing of the voice.

Tony went off when JJ put him in the wall, but you didn't hear what he said until a
straightaway later and it was edited. COME ON!! It's PAY TV.

[toad57]

I just watched the InDemand sample from YouTube - it is exactly what I thought HotPass was going to be.

The nearly-continuous team audio last week was a big improvement, but the package is nowhere near what the InDemand offering was.

As it stands now, I have a "take it or leave it" attitude about signing up for the HotPass next year.

[toad57]

One thing that bothers me is that they edit the drivers, resulting in a time delay from the time of an event to the hearing of the voice.

Tony went off when JJ put him in the wall, but you didn't hear what he said until a
straightaway later and it was edited. COME ON!! It's PAY TV.Yea, and I don't like paying $$$ for delayed/edited audio. That is another negative factor that will go against my signing up for HotPass again.

[sgt1205]

BUT the commercials cut the team audio.....the most interesting time is in the pits.....during yellow flags.......broadcast TV always goes to commercials.....We loose ALL the pit audio. EITHER run both audios......I can pay attention to more than one thing at a time! OR when the commercial ends......do a re-cap of the pit stop audio.


We hear you and appreciate all of the great and constructive input folks have made here regarding the first HotPass race.

There are many talented people working hard to deliver the best production possible to NASCAR fans and DIRECTV customers. This is a giant undertaking in terms of the number of producers, cameras, announcers, graphics, tech people, etc involved to produce these 5 parallel channels simultaneously.

Sunday was a great first day ... a revolutionary television day in terms of sports broadcast history...but, like anything, we will also continue to tweak things and refine them as it is an evolving process. Anyone that has had NFL Sunday Ticket for a number of years knows the product continues to grow and refine and improve. In a sense, it is never a finished product and never will be. With the introduction of new technologies and increased access, we will always look to refine and improve.

A couple of things that were expressed consistently here that I would like to address specifically that may help in explaining why things are the way they are.

1) Why the Commercials? The commercials are here to stay, it is not commercial free but we also don't go 100% on screen to commercials either. All of our sports packages have commercials in them. In order to broadcast any type of sports package whether it is MLB, NHL, NASCAR, NFL, etc, we need to take those source broadcasts from the networks producing them and redistribute to our customers....including the commercials. As you can imagine, those networks have advertisers that pay them to have their ads seen by consumers. In order for us to deliver various content like this (or NFL, NHL, etc) those commercials are also broadcast. Starting this week we will tell the viewer we are going to a commercial break with a bit more notice.

Important to note, however, when we cut to a commercial we are also still showing the broadcast on the screen in the lower left corner. This allows you to continue to watch the race which is a beneficial feature not provided anywhere on tv in US for NASCAR races that I'm aware of.

2) Announcers talking over radio transmissions We hear you (no pun intended). There is a bit of a learning curve on this with the announcers and the team communications going on at the same time. Each race is also very different. A race like Daytona has constant team communications due to the drafting aspects and the need for the spotters to relay that information consistently. Whereas a race in California and other tracks may be relatively quiet in comparison.

We never know exactly when a driver is going to be speaking so some of it will be a bit of hit or miss, but we can get a "sense" or "feel" during a race when we expect more conversation at certain critical junctures. On some of the channels our announcers did a terrific job of laying back during most of those key communications, but sometimes there was some talking over. A valid point expressed by many of you. It is an area we are working to improve on and will continue to do so.

We appreciate all of the responses, good, bad or ugly. We are listening and we are passing your ideas and thoughts on to the talented people that can actually deliver the pictures, sounds and wizardry to all of you. It does not mean we can implement all ideas, but some of them we may be able to. Some are possible improvements even for the next race, some for later this year or years beyond.

Keep the comments coming and enjoy the racing. See you in Fontana.

By the way, I am not a HotPass production guy, but I do work for the company and have been a NASCAR fan for about 20 years. My first race was at the old Riverside track in California which closed in the late 1980's if I recall. There are many NASCAR diehards here at the company and years of NASCAR broadcasting experience in the production group from Speed, Fox, etc. We're very excited about HotPass and where it is going. You help make it better.

Thank you all. :)

[Satelliteracer]

BUT the commercials cut the team audio.....the most interesting time is in the pits.....during yellow flags.......broadcast TV always goes to commercials.....We loose ALL the pit audio. EITHER run both audios......I can pay attention to more than one thing at a time! OR when the commercial ends......do a re-cap of the pit stop audio.

They are looking at other solutions now, but the agreement calls for commercial audio only.

[Kenwood]

We have to be fair to NASCAR and the many drivers that are out there so we aren't locking in on just 2 or 3 guys every week.

Every week Junior is ALWAYS on.

[Badger]

Every week Junior is ALWAYS on.

That's good as Jr. is by far the most popular driver. Hopefully next year there will be a lot more than 5 drivers on each week.

[Ext 721]

So take it and add it as a super-premium service for us gurus.

I mentioned it in the two other threads...sorry to keep bouncing around like this.

how super premium? $2000 $5000...

unfortunately, bulk rates apply, so to speak...to make it commercial free costs more, which draws in fewer subscribers, which yet again raises the per-subscriber cost...which causes fewer people to.......

I'm sure this is the problem that hotpass' predecessor ran into....there's a "point break" in terms of production costs where no matter how much you charge for admission, you're not getting it back in profits. Commercials tend to solve that because charging less brings in more, which gets more advertising moo-lah.

People claim to hate commercials, but if they vanished overnight, they'd hate the (at least) 300% increase in the cost of cable TV even more!

[Ext 721]

BUT! here is a good idea for the hotpass:

Currently, the running order displayed by hotpass shows only the featured driver and the 4 leaders.

Unfortunately, the running order displayed on the fox feed, which includes all drivers is BLOCKED by the hotpass 5-driver running order.

Moving it a few dozen pixels would be most excellent.

Thanks for your continued efforts!!!!

[wmschultz]

BUT! here is a good idea for the hotpass:

Currently, the running order displayed by hotpass shows only the featured driver and the 4 leaders.

Unfortunately, the running order displayed on the fox feed, which includes all drivers is BLOCKED by the hotpass 5-driver running order.

Moving it a few dozen pixels would be most excellent.

Thanks for your continued efforts!!!!

I don't think that is correct.

If you are on the driver channel it shows the position of the driver, who is first and
then 2 or 3 other cars around the driver channel you are watching.

Also, you can press the blue button and see the running order, assuming you have an interactive receiver.

[jimbojive]

I saw Hotpass for the first time, a few weeks ago.
I thought it was lame and i'm glad i didn't pay for it.
It is not what i expected.
commercials breaking in at the wrong time,
not enough pit coverage.
who wants to watch Gordon 24 go around in circles.
he had no in car cam . no pit cam.
just a camera watching him go in circles.
DTV has a good idea but really need to make it better , a whole lot better for what they are asking $$$.
we spent more time watching network than Hotpass.
think i'll stay with network

my2

[Chesney09]

where I can agree with some of your sentiments.. I agree thatHotPass has been a disappointment and definately not been what i expected either...

But basing your opinion of Gordon is a bit skewwed as Gordon dictated what he would allow... and that did not include any in car cameras. If you looked at the others, in car cams are the usual.

Overall, the Hotpass concept is good.... But they HAVE to get rid of the commercials. Had i known I was going to pay for that, I would have NEVER NEVER paid for it. It needs to be in HD now. But.. As typical of DTV, this is a Beta and we are testing it...just at a cost.

I saw Hotpass for the first time, a few weeks ago.
I thought it was lame and i'm glad i didn't pay for it.
It is not what i expected.
commercials breaking in at the wrong time,
not enough pit coverage.
who wants to watch Gordon 24 go around in circles.
he had no in car cam . no pit cam.
just a camera watching him go in circles.
DTV has a good idea but really need to make it better , a whole lot better for what they are asking $$$.
we spent more time watching network than Hotpass.
think i'll stay with network

my2

[DMAX4FUN]

I am not a big fan of the commercials either, but, You get 5 cars for how many races with all th extra info for only $100? Go to a race 1 time and you would appreciate this more. $150 for a seat at a race and can see 2 turns, loud as Chit, and hot as hell normally. I am impressed that they are doing this much the first year and even listening to everyones input.

[NateCohen]

Everyone turn on HotPass! I don't know if there was an offical announcement, but now when the commercials come on the screen is much bigger and the commercial screen is much smaller! Also the commercials don't cut out team audio anymore!! This makes HotPass 10x better!

[Jazzy Jeff]

I hope its not a fluke but it does make it 10 x's more enjoyable to watch. No commercial audio, just hope it lasts.

[toph]

Yes, team audio during the commercials is sweet. The larger picture is a good compromise. In the past, I've pulled team audio from nascar.com, but today they don't have Tony Stewart on the freebie version. Fortunately D* had my back with the changes to Hotpass today:)

[toad57]

Huge improvement!! Keeping the team audio during the commercials!!!

THANK YOU!!

[toph]

One suggestion for the team audio track, kill the motor. I really don't need it and it stomps on the team communication.

[jamieh1]

I like the motor sounds. It would be pretty bad with out it, just a silent screen between audio.

Also anyone notice now the audio options are under one lable in the menu.
Was 2, one was for TEAM and HOTPASS ANNOUNCERS and another for FOX.
Now just CHANGE AUDIO.

also added a couple of races back at the bottom right a small audio title shows when changing audio.

[toph]

I like the motor sounds. It would be pretty bad with out it, just a silent screen between audio.



I have the national broadcast on my TV and Hotpass on a laptop via a slingbox. In my case, the silence would be filled by the national broadcast.

[Steve Mehs]

I am not a big fan of the commercials either, but, You get 5 cars for how many races with all th extra info for only $100? Go to a race 1 time and you would appreciate this more. $150 for a seat at a race and can see 2 turns, loud as Chit, and hot as hell normally. I am impressed that they are doing this much the first year and even listening to everyones input.

Seeing a NASCAR race in person is nothing compared to watching it on TV, even in high def. The experience alone is worth $150. I baked for 10 years in a row at the Watkins Glenn race, saw maybe 30 seconds of each lap, but it was incredible. Feeling all that horsepower of 42 or 43 cars running through your body is priceless. Back when NASCAR was something if I had was given the opportunity to go to one race a year, but the catch was I couldn't watch any race on TV, there is no choice to be made there.

[jselinger24]

That's good as Jr. is by far the most popular driver. Hopefully next year there will be a lot more than 5 drivers on each week.


True - he is the most popular - but he should not be on each and every week - 2/3rds of the time would be plenty fair.

[jamieh1]

I heard Jr on his radio show say that he will be on Hotpass 30 races.

Next week Michael Waltrip is scheduled, I wonder who will be on this channel if he does not make the race? He's only made 1 race so far.

[Jazzy Jeff]

I heard Jr on his radio show say that he will be on Hotpass 30 races.

Next week Michael Waltrip is scheduled, I wonder who will be on this channel if he does not make the race? He's only made 1 race so far.

If the past is any indication of what could happen, I would have to say more than likely it will be Dale Jarrett in his place. Just keep your fingers crossed he qualifies, about time for him to turn it around :)

[jselinger24]

If the past is any indication of what could happen, I would have to say more than likely it will be Dale Jarrett in his place. Just keep your fingers crossed he qualifies, about time for him to turn it around :)

It will be Jarret or Reutiman - no doubt in my mind. D* & NASCAR will substitute a team driver only - at least that is what I have been told in the past.

[Satelliteracer]

Huge improvement!! Keeping the team audio during the commercials!!!

THANK YOU!!


;)

[jamieh1]

What a bad year Michael Waltrip has been having.

The Daytona incident
Not making any races since
and the wreck he had near his home.

Whats next! NAPA dropping him.

[Jazzy Jeff]

What a bad year Michael Waltrip has been having.

The Daytona incident
Not making any races since
and the wreck he had near his home.

Whats next! NAPA dropping him.

I hope it doesn't come to that. It's horrible he hasn't made a race since Daytona but they knew coming into the year it was going to be a challenge. As far as NAPA is concerned I think they are still getting their name out there. I mean who doesn't know about Waltrip and his struggles, car wreck, cheating, etc. etc. In fact I swear I saw a commercial the other day he did for Napa with Sammy Hagar and Dale Jarret that was actually making fun of the whole unable to qualify situation. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed maybe he can turn it around this weekend, we'll see.

[toad57]

One suggestion for the team audio track, kill the motor. I really don't need it and it stomps on the team communication.I vote to keep tne engine noise too, but just adjust it properly.

Last week they really had the levels messed up on the Tony Stewart channel - the cockpit level was way too high (e.g. 80%) in relation to the team voice audio (20%). It was very difficult to hear the voices! I emailed hotpass@directiv.com about it and I got a canned apology and they said they would fix it for next week.

Other driver channels didn't seem to suffer the same fate... when there was team talking they completely understandable.

[Tom_Oliver]

I missed the race last week, so this is my first chance to check it out. Thank you!

BTW, the pre-race stuff on Jr's channel tonight was just awesome. Very nice work. Much better than just starting with the green flag.

Definitely an improved product over the beginning of the season.


Everyone turn on HotPass! I don't know if there was an offical announcement, but now when the commercials come on the screen is much bigger and the commercial screen is much smaller! Also the commercials don't cut out team audio anymore!! This makes HotPass 10x better!

[Jimv03]

I to missed last week. But a great big THANK YOU TO HOTPASS !!!!!!!

This is what I expected! Thanks again!! :D

[sgt1205]

Many thanks for giving us the driver audio during commercials. Now it's almost perfect!!!!!

[Racer88]

Interactive channel menu shows:
Stewart, Johnson, Montoya, Bowyer, and Earnhardt. Last weeks drivers IIRC.
(Edit: Possibly CE 14f related? Anyone using the national release seeing this?)
(Edit2: In addition pressing exit on the remote is deactivating the interactive features. Only changing channels will restore them to operation. Possibley CE related as well?)

The engine audio is all but non-existent on the 12, 41 and 44 cars. Race cars have engines and thusly engine noise. Watch golf if you want silence.

99 and 8 car's engine audio level is about right.

[wmschultz]

It's understandable why the engine audio is non-existent on the 44 car, but the others seem odd.

[rkjg24]

HotPass is awesome. The only compliant I have is that my driver isn't on it as much...that, and D* saying they want different drivers every week, but yet, Jr's always on it. Why not Gordon?

[Earl Bonovich]

HotPass is awesome. The only compliant I have is that my driver isn't on it as much...that, and D* saying they want different drivers every week, but yet, Jr's always on it. Why not Gordon?

In a few other threads... it has been expressed, that it is a three way agreement between: DirecTV, NASCAR, and the Driver.

IIRC... With regards to Gordon, his team is the one that is keeping his presence on HOTPASS to a minimum...

[Satelliteracer]

In a few other threads... it has been expressed, that it is a three way agreement between: DirecTV, NASCAR, and the Driver.

IIRC... With regards to Gordon, his team is the one that is keeping his presence on HOTPASS to a minimum...


Gordon will be on HotPass this week. And Earl is correct, the drivers have to agree to be on.

[BattleScott]

HotPass is awesome. The only compliant I have is that my driver isn't on it as much...that, and D* saying they want different drivers every week, but yet, Jr's always on it. Why not Gordon?


Time Warner Cable is an associate sponsor of Hendrick Motorsports. Probably has a lot to do with their less than enthusiastic support of the DirecTV HotPass program.

[Tom_Oliver]

Great work on all the changes Satelliteracer. Thank you very much!

One suggestion would be to utilize the full screen view more often if that is possible. I like the split screens too, and it's nice to watch multiple views at once, but I think it would add to the broadcast if you gave us a full screen view every now and then as well.

Hey, since you've done so well with HotPass, do you think you can do something about those debris cautions? lol


Gordon will be on HotPass this week. And Earl is correct, the drivers have to agree to be on.

[rkjg24]

Time Warner Cable is an associate sponsor of Hendricks Motorsports. Probably has a lot to do with their less than enthusiastic support of the DirecTV HotPass program.

Hendrick* Motorsports. No S.

[wmschultz]

Hendrick* Motorsports. No S.

What are you saying?

[BattleScott]

What are you saying?

Apparently, this particular Gordon Fan was very put of by my affront of calling it Hendrick(S) Motorsports instead of Hendrick(no S) motorsports.

I have since edited the original post to 'pacify'...

:)

[Satelliteracer]

Apparently, this particular Gordon Fan was very put of by my affront of calling it Hendrick(S) Motorsports instead of Hendrick(no S) motorsports.

I have since edited the original post to 'pacify'...

:)


By the way, you guys can all vote for the "5th driver" right now for the May 5th race.

http://www.directv.com/hotpass


Gordon won the vote the last time and he's a contender again this time around. :)

[Satelliteracer]

Great work on all the changes Satelliteracer. Thank you very much!

One suggestion would be to utilize the full screen view more often if that is possible. I like the split screens too, and it's nice to watch multiple views at once, but I think it would add to the broadcast if you gave us a full screen view every now and then as well.

Hey, since you've done so well with HotPass, do you think you can do something about those debris cautions? lol


Debris...debris...what debris. :D

[wmschultz]

Apparently, this particular Gordon Fan was very put of by my affront of calling it Hendrick(S) Motorsports instead of Hendrick(no S) motorsports.

I have since edited the original post to 'pacify'...

:)

Thanks for the explanation. Too bad some of the motorsports part of Hendrick can't make it to the 25 team.
I would really like to see Mears win. If he were to do it with the left over parts that gets put to that team, all the better.

[rkjg24]

Apparently, this particular Gordon Fan was very put of by my affront of calling it Hendrick(S) Motorsports instead of Hendrick(no S) motorsports.

I have since edited the original post to 'pacify'...

:)

Sorry. Wasn't meant for that to be rude. It's just a little bit aggrivating, especially when Jimmy Spencer does it all the time. It would be like me saying Dale Earnhart Jr or Dale Earnheart.

[Kenwood]

Called DTV to cancel my renewal of HotPass for next season. Having only 4 different drivers each week. I'm sick of Junior every week.

[Tom_Oliver]

They'd lose half the people if they got rid of Jr.

Called DTV to cancel my renewal of HotPass for next season. Having only 4 different drivers each week. I'm sick of Junior every week.

[wmschultz]

Called DTV to cancel my renewal of HotPass for next season. Having only 4 different drivers each week. I'm sick of Junior every week.

You showed them.

[Satelliteracer]

Called DTV to cancel my renewal of HotPass for next season. Having only 4 different drivers each week. I'm sick of Junior every week.

There are some races coming up where he won't be in the lineup, but he has won the most popular NASCAR driver 4 straight years for a reason....he's the most popular.

Furthermore, he's willing to be on HotPass and has been a terrific participant. I expect we might see him in the top 5 this week at Talladega.

[Kenwood]

There are some races coming up where he won't be in the lineup, but he has won the most popular NASCAR driver 4 straight years for a reason....he's the most popular.

Furthermore, he's willing to be on HotPass and has been a terrific participant. I expect we might see him in the top 5 this week at Talladega.

Then just go ahead and make ALL the channels Junior then and get it over with then....the media needs to just back away from Junior's Johnson :nono2: :lol:

[Tom_Oliver]

He's the most popular, and it's not even close.

"Because right now, Dale Jr., you are NASCAR's meal ticket. Its popularity
waxes and wanes with your success or failure. You drive television ratings
and attendance. When you're doing well, like from 2001-2004, everything is
bright and sunny. When you're struggling, so is the sport. Is it any
coincidence that this downtick in ratings comes after one year when you've
missed the Chase, and another when you were scarcely a factor? Is it any
coincidence that last weekend's race at Texas, where you led 96 laps before
retiring, produced NASCAR's best television number in more than a month?"

Pasted from
http://www.nascar.com/2007/news/opinion/04/21/dcaraviello.dearnhardtjr.ownership/1.html

Then just go ahead and make ALL the channels Junior then and get it over with then....the media needs to just back away from Junior's Johnson :nono2: :lol:

[jamieh1]

Jr will also be on Hotpass 5/5 at the Crown Royal JS 400 along with Jeff Burton, Jamie McMurray, Denny Hamlin, and Carl Edwards.

[jamieh1]

Does anyone know the name of the song Directv is playing during the countdown to the start of the race?

[jamieh1]

Interactive portion of Hotpass not working.

[twistedT]

I just wanna, say that every week, the hotpass team is putting on a better and better show! Keep up the good work! Just tossing out an idea, maybe just maybe, how About an hd teaser before next year?

[Racer88]

God, what is so hard about getting the levels right on the team audio? Do any of your audio engineers actually have ears?

[bdowell]

Is it ok if I complain about Jeff Gordon being on Hotpass too much? :p :D

(just kiddin' 24 fans, just kiddin')

[bdowell]

Some nice language from Jr. about the fuel situation before getting into those last few laps (plus those extra laps that were added).

[Tom_Oliver]

It would be cool they could at least use 16x9 screens for those of us with them.

I just wanna, say that every week, the hotpass team is putting on a better and better show! Keep up the good work! Just tossing out an idea, maybe just maybe, how About an hd teaser before next year?

[Kenwood]

He's the most popular, and it's not even close.
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Yeah...lets just hope all of those "classy" Junior fans threw their beers at their OWN TV's after Gordon won. At least when Bill Elliott was the most popular drivers all those years, their fans were at least respectful

[Satelliteracer]

There are some races coming up where he won't be in the lineup, but he has won the most popular NASCAR driver 4 straight years for a reason....he's the most popular.

Furthermore, he's willing to be on HotPass and has been a terrific participant. I expect we might see him in the top 5 this week at Talladega.


I believe right about now I can pat myself on the back....top 5 it was. He finished 5th

:D


EDIT: Lesson in life, don't gloat. Official results put him at 7th. Well, I was close. :(

[Satelliteracer]

Jr will also be on Hotpass 5/5 at the Crown Royal JS 400 along with Jeff Burton, Jamie McMurray, Denny Hamlin, and Carl Edwards.

Actually the May 5th race will be

Jeff Gordon (voted in by DIRECTV fans via the HotPass website)...trying for his 3rd straight win
Jeff Burton (2nd overall in the standings)
Denny Hamlin (running terrific the last two weeks but tough breaks)
Carl Edwards
Dale Jr (5th place this week)

[Satelliteracer]

Yeah...lets just hope all of those "classy" Junior fans threw their beers at their OWN TV's after Gordon won. At least when Bill Elliott was the most popular drivers all those years, their fans were at least respectful

That was an unfortunate display to say the least. My 8 yr old was watching (huge huge huge Gordon fan) and was asking why all these people were throwing stuff at him. Tough to explain to a kid that life is filled with such folks, but that is the nature of the beast. Maybe I'll take him to a Red Sox - Yankees game this year and we will go dressed up as Sox fans...that will give him an education real quick.

:hurah:

[bdowell]

That was an unfortunate display to say the least. My 8 yr old was watching (huge huge huge Gordon fan) and was asking why all these people were throwing stuff at him. Tough to explain to a kid that life is filled with such folks, but that is the nature of the beast. Maybe I'll take him to a Red Sox - Yankees game this year and we will go dressed up as Sox fans...that will give him an education real quick.

:hurah:

Try dressing as a NY Giants fan in the Eagles home stadium :D :grin:

[Satelliteracer]

Try dressing as a NY Giants fan in the Eagles home stadium :D :grin:

Better yet, dress as Santa Claus at an Eagles game. :lol:

[netraa]

hey, got a bone to pick with the hotpass....

on the leader board thingy, when someone pulls off the track you show them as 'out' not 'off'. Big difference and it needs to be corrected.

Also, when someone is 'off' or 'out' you drop them to the end of the field failing to keep them in the appropriate scoring location in relation to the rest of the field that is laps down but back/still on the track.

[flynlr]

here is an idea for who gets on hot pass....Top 4 Drivers In points + 1 who gets voted IN which means Jr Will get in every week no matter what:D

[Satelliteracer]

hey, got a bone to pick with the hotpass....

on the leader board thingy, when someone pulls off the track you show them as 'out' not 'off'. Big difference and it needs to be corrected.

Also, when someone is 'off' or 'out' you drop them to the end of the field failing to keep them in the appropriate scoring location in relation to the rest of the field that is laps down but back/still on the track.


Thank you for the input. I will forward to the guys that control that.

[Satelliteracer]

here is an idea for who gets on hot pass....Top 4 Drivers In points + 1 who gets voted IN which means Jr Will get in every week no matter what:D


If it were only that easy. :) A lot goes into picking the drivers each week, including the drivers willingness to be on that particular week plus NASCAR picks a driver as well.

It's a balancing act to be sure.

[Tom_Oliver]

I also believe that some teams actually pay for the in-car cameras, so if the team is not willing to pay for it they will not have the cameras. It may even be that all the teams pay for it. I'm not sure.

Kind of why you end up with a driver like Jarrett having a camera every week. He's got a killer sponsor.


If it were only that easy. :) A lot goes into picking the drivers each week, including the drivers willingness to be on that particular week plus NASCAR picks a driver as well.

It's a balancing act to be sure.

[wmschultz]

DJ is also turing into a sponsor killer.

[bdowell]

DJ is also turing into a sponsor killer.

Very true. At this point he'd probably be a lot better off if he was racing the truck!

[tucker301]

I watched about five minutes of HP last Sunday.
I REALLY wish I hadn't signed up for the earlybird special.

Money wasted IMO.

[Tom_Oliver]

What don't you like? You know about hitting the yellow button to get the car audio even during the commercials?


I watched about five minutes of HP last Sunday.
I REALLY wish I hadn't signed up for the earlybird special.

Money wasted IMO.

[rkjg24]

Does anyone know the name of the song Directv is playing during the countdown to the start of the race?

Moby - Beautiful

[rkjg24]

I also believe that some teams actually pay for the in-car cameras, so if the team is not willing to pay for it they will not have the cameras. It may even be that all the teams pay for it. I'm not sure.

Kind of why you end up with a driver like Jarrett having a camera every week. He's got a killer sponsor.

Yep. The sponsor's of each driver pay around $30,000 per race to have an in-car is what I heard.

[Racer88]

I watched about five minutes of HP last Sunday.
I REALLY wish I hadn't signed up for the earlybird special.

Money wasted IMO.

VERY much so...

...it literally hurts my eyes to watch this thing the picture is so bad and hurts my ears trying to listen to it since apparently the sound engineers are all deaf.

Totally painful experience in all regards. But they got my money. So I guess their jobs are done. Too bad they'll never get another penny from me after this season.

[lance30276]

I'm very pleased since they added team radio and made the picture larger
during commercials. PQ not bad considering SD. HD next year I'll definitely
re-up. :)

[Satelliteracer]

VERY much so...

...it literally hurts my eyes to watch this thing the picture is so bad and hurts my ears trying to listen to it since apparently the sound engineers are all deaf.

Totally painful experience in all regards. But they got my money. So I guess their jobs are done. Too bad they'll never get another penny from me after this season.

Out of curiosity are you still experiencing high sound levels? We watch and listen every week at home and don't experience that. I've sent your comments to the engineers on several occasions and they aren't seeing those levels either (there are safeguards built in to help control high levels automatically).

What channels are you experiencing the problems on? What "mode" are you in (HotPass audio, driver only, etc). When do you hear the spikes (coming out of or into commercials)?

Any help would be appreciated and the engineers can take a deeper dive into it and see if there is something else going on.

Also, what kind of receiver do you have that you are watching the race on.

Thanks 88.

[Tom_Oliver]

I don't think I've ever experienced sound issues on Jr's channel, although I listened to Hamlin for a little while yesterday and the team only audio was very low.


Out of curiosity are you still experiencing high sound levels? We watch and listen every week at home and don't experience that. I've sent your comments to the engineers on several occasions and they aren't seeing those levels either (there are safeguards built in to help control high levels automatically).

What channels are you experiencing the problems on? What "mode" are you in (HotPass audio, driver only, etc). When do you hear the spikes (coming out of or into commercials)?

Any help would be appreciated and the engineers can take a deeper dive into it and see if there is something else going on.

Also, what kind of receiver do you have that you are watching the race on.

Thanks 88.

[Racer88]

It's nothing to do with spikes or squeals or any kind of superfluous noise being injected into the audio streams or anything like that I'm talking about.

It's just the very basics of setting the levels properly on the team audio channels.

If you actually want to hear any decent amount of engine sound on the team audio on just about any driver, on any given weekend I've bothered to try it, you have to turn the volume up so high that when they do actually say something it blows the speakers out of the house.

OH, and god forbid you do something that makes the thing swap from team audio back to the default audio stream at these elavated volume levels as well. Which includes doing just about anything with remote while on anything but the default audio stream.

Which is not your problem, but either a HR20 design flaw or just a basic flaw in the interactive stuff in general, I have no doubt.

[Tom_Oliver]

Yeah, I'll buy that complaint. I normally only listen to the team audio, but it is annoying when I don't I guess. You are saying that you want to really hear the team audio, but that doesn't seem to be the focus. Course some of the announcers are better than others at letting you hear the team communication. Some of them really like to hear themselves talk.

It's nothing to do with spikes or squeals or any kind of superfluous noise being injected into the audio streams or anything like that I'm talking about.

It's just the very basics of setting the levels properly on the team audio channels.

If you actually want to hear any decent amount of engine sound on the team audio on just about any driver, on any given weekend I've bothered to try it, you have to turn the volume up so high that when they do actually say something it blows the speakers out of the house.

OH, and god forbid you do something that makes the thing swap from team audio back to the default audio stream at these elavated volume levels as well. Which includes doing just about anything with remote while on anything but the default audio stream.

Which is not your problem, but either a HR20 design flaw or just a basic flaw in the interactive stuff in general, I have no doubt.

[Racer88]

NO I'm saying I want to hear a proper balance of engine sound levels(which are all but not existant the majority of the time at otherwise sane volume levels) AND the radio chatter levels on the team audio stream.

On an entirely different note while we're at it. The on screen telemetry is WAY off what is actually going on in the cars as well. By a huge margin.