NHRA All access sucks

[Pinballer]

Originally Posted by charlie westcott

So ok, you had an outage for 3 hrs. Why does it keep stopping, starting, cant rewind, etc. I know for a fact I am not the only one with the problem. If you could just turn the quality down so I could watch. The way it is now, it wont even work at my house, and here at the shop it is a real struggle. I wasted 30 mins yesterday at least trying to get PS to work. explorer will feed it pretty good, but you cant rewind. Chrome will rewind, but stops literally every 5 seconds. If I need to do something, tell me what it is. Otherwise, I want a refund.
cw

Knowing Warren as I do, I'd beg you not to shoot the messenger, at least he cared enough to go find out what was going on.
He doesn't wear a suit and have an office in Glendora, and he doesn't do what he does for big pay either. It's actually very little. He's an IT guy who does it because he genuinely cares about sportsman racing.
If it was up to him, you'd not only have D3TV which is fabulous for the lucky ones who have friends racing in D3, you'd have D1 thru 7 TV every weekend.

[CMcAllister]

Originally Posted by ecamp7

Loved it when all they had was just the audio cast. Free, and worked all 4 days. Instead we pay $15 for half *** **** all weekend.

I loved it too. Was a valuable benefit of being a member. I really don't have time to sit and watch, but would have the audio on all weekend while in the shop. Not happy about them taking that away. Not going to pay $100 just to listen, when it works.

[jmcarter]

Originally Posted by Pinballer

Knowing Warren as I do, I'd beg you not to shoot the messenger, at least he cared enough to go find out what was going on.
He doesn't wear a suit and have an office in Glendora, and he doesn't do what he does for big pay either. It's actually very little. He's an IT guy who does it because he genuinely cares about sportsman racing.
If it was up to him, you'd not only have D3TV which is fabulous for the lucky ones who have friends racing in D3, you'd have D1 thru 7 TV every weekend.

Thanks for sharing that, I had researched Warren a bit after he responded and saw that he is instrumental in providing D3TV so figured he might be "guilty by association" only. Reminds me of the guff DRC got after they lost a major sponsor and had to cut back on their coverage. Thank you Warren and others who seek to provide support to Sportsman racers in spite of the overarching hierarchy who seemingly are much more focused on selling seats and tee shirts to the the nitro and noise crowd and who will soon migrate to the next big thrill to spend their entertainment dollar on.

[Gary Merrick]

Let me start out by saying that I am not a computer expert, nor an IT expert. I know how turn the computer on and off and move around a little bit, so take what I say as a matter of my experience and not my knowledge.

When I got "ALL ACCESS" last season, I experienced a lot of the frustration that many folks have experienced the first couple of races this year. Some of the races last year were absolutely horrible as far as what you could see, especially after the PRO's were done for the day. With respect to the outage on Saturday for three hours, I hope that episode will be exception rather than the norm. Before and after the outage, my reception was very good and I really don't have any complaints for the rest of the day or Sunday.

What I would suggest, based on what I did last year, check with your internet provider to find out if your service supports what you are trying to receive. I have Spectrum (old Time Warner) for my provider and on their website they have a "Support" tab and under that they have a "Speed Test", which after running it you can find out how good your connection is and how fast it downloads and uploads. What I found out, and I use a Netgear modem and a Netgear router that on different computers in the house, some will download a lot faster than other computers using that speed test. I would suggest that if you are having problems, then you should talk to your internet provider, ask what speed you are paying for, find out if they have a speed test, run the speed test, and then talk to them what you need to have a positive experience. I am paying for the medium speed and it works fine, when I talked to Spectrum rep (who was very informative and helpful), I asked about upgrading to the fastest speed that they offer and he told me that unless you are a "serious" gamer, that what I have is more than acceptable for what I want to do. The other big question is your computer, when I went from an older Windows 7 machine, to a state of the art HP with Windows 10, it was like going from a 6 second car to a 18 second car (no offense meant to the 18 second cars), but there was no comparison.

In closing, I would say, before you start throwing a bunch of rocks at "All Access", make sure your ducks are in a row with your own equipment. Hopefully, "ALL ACESS" will continue to improve, no-one, including me likes paying for something that does not work.

Gary Merrick
3522 Stock

[Rich Biebel]

I bought All Access this weekend. Started watching Saturday morning and after an hour it quit. Other friends were confirming they had the same issue. I shut it off. Went back later in the day and it was fine. Watched quite a bit. Started watching Sunday morning at 8:30. Watched the Sportsman rounds. Shut it off and went back again later in the day. Watched the rest of the event to the end and it was flawless for me. Enjoyed it especially since it was snowing where I live and seeing some racing from Gainesville was a nice change from the snowy and cold March weather here. I have zero complaints and thanked Warren previously on FB.....The announcers also do a far better job on that feed. Just like when we're actually there at the race.

[Warren Evans]

Let me fill in a few of the blanks here. Yes, I do produce D3TV for NHRA Division 3, which will continue in 2017. I also had an opportunity to work at Phoenix and Gainesville on the NHRA All Access show. NHRA is in the process of filling the position for a full-time operator for All Access, which it looks like they will have starting in Las Vegas. I wanted to do what I could to clean up some things while I was running the show, because I'm a customer too, and have had similar frustrations as all of you. I hope that you all found the sound mix to be better in the last two races since that was something I was focusing on.
As far as Saturday goes, the entire facility experienced a "brownout" that messed up the internet service to the track for about three hours. This not only affected our ability to live stream but it also impacted other parts of racing operations. We were at the mercy of AT&T until they could restore service. I had a smaller cellular-based (Cradlepoint) router with me which we attempted to use to restore at least a limited stream until AT&T was back up. It did not work well enough. At that point, all I could do was to continue to produce the show and record it so it would be available for archiving. It is available on the All Access website now.
I cannot speak for everyone involved in the operation, but the ones I have met do care about the product. I definitely care about the product; it's my reputation on the line and so I take it personally when people say less than favorable things on these message boards. I'm hopeful that most of you were happy with the parts of the production that I had control over, and forgiving of the trouble that I couldn't control.
Thanks - Warren

[HR9121]

Warren I have a question that you may can answer. On the days that there is no video why is it that the announcers sound like they are using a voice synthesizer microphone? This was the case last year for me also. Thanks for your hard work especially on the D3TV and feel free to move to Division2 if you like!

[Warren Evans]

I have not had the opportunity to look at that yet in 2017, but in 2016 I saw it in the tower at Indy and St. Louis. The simple answer is they use different equipment for Thursday audio only than they do on Friday through Sunday. Thursday is pretty simple - a feed out of the PA system into a Livestream encoder box, straight to the internet. The rest of the weekend, it is much more complex and fed to the production truck where it is processed, manipulated, etc before going out. I'm pretty sure it is the same audio setup that was used before All Access, when NHRA offered audio only. Probably didn't notice it as much since there was nothing else to compare it to.

[HR9121]

Originally Posted by Warren Evans

I have not had the opportunity to look at that yet in 2017, but in 2016 I saw it in the tower at Indy and St. Louis. The simple answer is they use different equipment for Thursday audio only than they do on Friday through Sunday. Thursday is pretty simple - a feed out of the PA system into a Livestream encoder box, straight to the internet. The rest of the weekend, it is much more complex and fed to the production truck where it is processed, manipulated, etc before going out. I'm pretty sure it is the same audio setup that was used before All Access, when NHRA offered audio only. Probably didn't notice it as much since there was nothing else to compare it to.

Thanks for the reply.

[charlie westcott]

I wasnt throwing any stones at Warren. Dont know anything about him, I am sure he does a great at what he does, and I am also sure he has little to do with whoever is streaming this service. I sent a question to the provider, Cleeng or something. I can watch all types of videos on my computer, HD movies, Youtube, etc. I have 3 computers here at the shop, all of them are pretty strong since I use them for all my Cad-Cam stuff.
We have DSL with pretty fast service. I did the speed test, I called Frontier to see if my signal was weak, etc. I feel like I have covered the bases. One thing I havent tried yet is my iphone. I heard that plays it better, but I am not a teenager, and am not going to watch the race on my phone. Really all I do is leave in on my second monitor while I work, and watch the stuff I care about. SS and PS.
It would seem like they would use a player that is compatible with current operating systems, and it would be nice if you could choose a lesser quality to make sure it feeds.
That was the last question I asked the streaming place was can I turn down the quality somehow, and their response was watch it the next day.
cw