After Five Years, DirectTV Drops NASCAR Hot Pass

[ShadowKnight508]

For any of the SRD community that has DirectTV and enjoyed the use of NASCAR Hot Pass, this following news will be tough:

DirectTV Drops NASCAR Hot Pass (Credit to Jayski):

DirecTV is doing away with its NASCAR Hot Pass programming this year. The decision brings an end to the five-year-old service that gave subscribers four channels of in-car-driver video and audio. The distributor opted to discontinue the service because of its cost. DirecTV also decided to end its sponsorship of NASCAR. It had been an official partner of the sport since '07. It is looking for other ways to stay involved in the sport and plans to set up displays at some racetracks this season. DirecTV Senior VP/PR Darris Gringeri said, "We tried to charge for the (Hot Pass) product a few years ago, but the demand for it was low. We decided to switch to a free service. It's been great and we've been happy with it. It's been a differentiator. But in the end, the production cost became too much to bear." The offering was expensive because DirecTV had to sublicense the video rights to in-car-camera footage from NASCAR rightsholders Fox, Turner and ESPN.

Oh well. Such a neat service finally done in by the staggering costs of having to pay the rightsholders (FOX/ESPN/Turner) for use of the in-car cameras. It will be missed

 

[evan07]

It was a very cool service I will definitely miss it.

 

[ERodriguez96]

Man that bites. I really am gonna miss DirecTV's NASCAR service, never missed a single race til my parents switched to Dish. -_-

 

[celticfang]

Great....now what are people like Johnathan going to do during ad breaks?

All joking aside I don't like this move at all, they ought to keep it I feel

 

[Orian Thompson]

Direct TV sucks anyways in my opinion.

 

[bigrolltide1877]

Wow shocking news we are probally gonna switch back to directv and i was looking forward in getting hotpass but i guess that want happen. (have dish now)

 

[Fisha695]

I remember hearing about 2 years ago that they wanted out, however it was cheaper to honor the rest of the contract then buy-out.

 

[BlackChevy14]

Never got to use it but it seemed like it was a great service for those who did. Shame to see it go away.

Perhaps Race Buddy would make a good substitute, it was enjoyable for me when I used it which wasn't often, haha. I recall the Sonoma race where Bob Jeffrey, Tony's spotter, was trying to clear Tony and said "I'm gonna go talk to that sonofabitch." Was able to see a few seconds later on RaceBuddy that Scott Speed came off pit road and ran Tony clear off in the sand at the inside of the hill.

 

[RP Motorsports]

Race Buddy COULD be awesome, but they're totally screwing the pooch. For one thing, its never synced up. A lot of the time, its not even close. And the leaderboard is even worse. Also, theres way too many commercials. It seems like every five minutes you get interrupted by a 30 second commercial, and every time you switch cameras, its another 30 second commercial. If all of that wasnt bad enough, theres a stupid scrolling chat box that you cant disable. And its filled with a bunch of idiots saying the most ridiculous nonsense.

If they fixed those few things, it would instantly become awesome, and I'd be a huge fan of it.

 

[MattSRD28]

...and we've found DirecTV's cost off-set to carrying Time Warner Cable SportsNet.

 

[Hendrick4life]

I dont remember 30 second clips when you switched cameras. For me they just happened when I first entered the page or refreshed it. However I agree the syncing sucked. I watched RaceBuddy for the in-car while my TV showed the broadcast. Was so much behind it was ridiculous. However I did learn something about the broadcasts, they play Radio transmissions atleast 5-10 laps after it was actually said on the radio. Sometimes even longer than that, then you hear the broadcasters say "Listen to what Jeff Gordon just said on the radio" and I would be like lolwut.

All in all RaceBuddy is great. Im glad it is around for more than just the TNT and ESPN races now.

 

[celticfang]

I thought the reason for the delayed broadcasts was the FCC rules though? Okay, that's not going to take 10 laps to delay a radio transmission, but the same basic idea.

Incidentally, that's a favored tactic of teams, if they don't want a transmission on TV in any sport, F1, Indy, NASCAR or whateer, they just let a few F bombs fly, voila, no broadcast.

 

[RP Motorsports]

However I did learn something about the broadcasts, they play Radio transmissions atleast 5-10 laps after it was actually said on the radio. Sometimes even longer than that, then you hear the broadcasters say "Listen to what Jeff Gordon just said on the radio" and I would be like lolwut.

Yea, and not only that. A lot of people arent aware of how much "selective editing" the broadcasts will do with radio transmissions. They'll often take an audio sample out of context and edit it to make it appear as though it pertains to something totally different (like an on-track incident between two drivers, or something like that). Its actually a little sleazy if you ask me. I dont like it at all. And it seems like ESPN does it more so than any other network, with TNT next in line (the Menard/Slugger incident comes to mind right off the bat).

 

[BlackChevy14]

Race Buddy COULD be awesome, but they're totally screwing the pooch. For one thing, its never synced up. A lot of the time, its not even close. And the leaderboard is even worse. Also, theres way too many commercials. It seems like every five minutes you get interrupted by a 30 second commercial, and every time you switch cameras, its another 30 second commercial. If all of that wasnt bad enough, theres a stupid scrolling chat box that you cant disable. And its filled with a bunch of idiots saying the most ridiculous nonsense.

If they fixed those few things, it would instantly become awesome, and I'd be a huge fan of it.

The chat thing, I agree 100% with. For one it slows things down, for two the collective average IQ seems to match our reigning champ's car number. Agree with the commercial thing as well. I usually had RB muted and used my trackpass scanner so the ads usually didn't bother me but it was aggravating that if you changed views or accidentally clicked the wrong one, you had to wait. And as much as I love Coca-Cola, sorry, the heat is off. That ad sucked, and it seemed Tony's camera was always the Coke camera so that's what you got stuck with.

Those reasons are why I didn't watch it more often. Honestly, the syncing problem I just accepted as a case of being what it was. It was funny, scanner was always ahead of TV, TV was ahead of Race Buddy.

 

[dalejrgamer]

...and we've found DirecTV's cost off-set to carrying Time Warner Cable SportsNet.

Doing away NASCAR in favor of watching the Lakers drop more games than Kobe shoots 3s.

Seriously, TWCSN was a bad idea to begin with.