Where to Watch the Races ?
 

Currently i just use the otb station, but i am getting sick of having to see replays from florida, and kentucky....... thats where most of my money goes, and all i get is replays
what are my other options ?

This is a new millenium. Isn't it time that tracks got with the program and starting streaming their races LIVE? I mean, it's a ****in joke that they don't already do this or even feel like it might be part of the package they should be offering the bettor.

Absolutely true. The same should go for basic PPs, results, replays, etc. Anything to encourage betting and an educated fan base.

All this time I went to Great Lakes Downs I might have been watching replays? I'm pretty sure that they had live streaming video, but now I'm wondering.

NYS Racing Law requires that the OTB Channel show NY TB races LIVE and out of state simulcast races on delay.
While as a viewer it is somewhat inconvenient (it's inconvenient for the technicians as well!) at least you are seeing the races. In many cases the "replay" is starting as the winner is crossing the finish line, so the delay is a matter of the length of time it takes to complete the race.
The problem is when there are alot of things going on at once, 3 races starting with in 2 minutes AND NYRA is running a race which OTB stays with. Other issues are when there is a foul claim or inquiry in NY, which we try to stick with. It gets things backed up. Also, some tracks (Tampa comes to mind) are very slow to go. At "0 minutes to post time" the horses may still be 1/4 mile from the gate. It's 3 minutes later when then run. To the viewer post time was 4 minutes ago and you want to know why we are "holding" the race. The problem is that they haven't run it yet!

I honestly think that it's an absurd and archaic sense of "protectionism" by tracks that keep them from simply putting their "in house" feed up on their own site every day. Its the same mentality that kept them from wanting racing on TV in the 50's.
I can go to a Hong Kong sire and get PP's with video clips embedded in them showing the last 10 races a horse ran. FREE! In English or Chinese (and probably some other languages) without having to bet anything o buy anything. They make info available.

The problem with the NYCOTB feed is that while NYRA racing is happening, they don't have video of the other races. Even though there's a second channel (73), this only kicks in AFTER NYRA racing is done for the day.

I'm with you about HKG. They're giving all sorts of things away for free over there. Things that parasites like EQUIBASE feel the need to charge for here. And the irony is that EQUIBASE data is NO WHERE near as ACCURATE as that disseminated by the HKG Jockey Club. Shouldn't your precious data at least be accurate?

It's a slow progression but I see myself betting HKG exclusively in the next couple of years, asssuming that things don't change for the better.

Then you have Churchill Downs run tracks (CD, FG, AP, CRC) which offer realtime odds, tape delays of their races (good luck getting these in a timely fashion) but no headon replays and they choose to save bandwith rather than keep the replays up when they're not running.

Oh, then there's SA on Calracing.com, or Meadowlands. Their idea of saving money is NOT SHOWING the backstretch or turn shots on headon replays. Why hide this info?

The track heads are buried in the '50's. They see their clientele being the typical octogenarian at your local OTB. He/She has the local paper, with the day's entries, and could care less about PPs, or even watching racing, or keeping notes or charts.

What a ****IN joke.


On the plus side, we have KEE: live web feeds, impeccable video, and the attempt to make their data as accurate as possible.

I think he means online. . . The races you watched at GLD were live. . .

Cap OTB shows replays of 3 other tracks aside from NY and airs them as soon as possible post race.
Not sure about HRTV but TVG shows almost everything delayed.

also to as far as i know watching the raceses online are all on a delay. even on the radio. its at least a seven second delay.

Not NYCTOB (channel 71). While NYRA is running you can't view other tracks. You can, SOMETIMES, gets the odds for the other tracks, however, on channel 73.

Delays 101
 

Without getting to technical: All signals today in the digital world are delayed for some length of time. Most of the time the viewer or listener doesn't realize.

Because of encoding and decoding the end result is delay. Delay times can vary. Many race track signals are sent (uplinked) to a bird downlinked and sent back up again and then sent back to the end user. With International signals this can happen several times. Example: As is sop, the Dubai signal is trans ocean fibered, uplinked to South Africa, graphics package added up;inked again, God knows what after that and the distributed to US sites who then may uplink again to other distributors. I lost count of the delay time already.

Streaming (internet) video with audio, and depending on the measure of quality (compression) intended for the presentation will further cause delay. I've seen this delay as much as 30 secs or more. I can reasonably measure delay by the number of sources at my disposal that I can monitor at the same time. For those of you at home watching 1 source the difference is not realized and It should not really matter. You're seeing the race.

Another example: assuming the track of choice simulcast coming to you is 1 to 4 secs delayed, then redistributed to digital cable (Time Warner) and you've got yourself another 8 or 10 or 15 secs more delay. Delay time depends on a lot of variables.
Why does delay time matter?
Race replays are another matter. Track agreements, state law. regulatory rule, politics, time constraints, producers call, Executive Producer's "friends" want to see something else. I've worked under all these conditions and more.

Some of us are hung up on the lack of availablity of video system wide

others

are making issues over a few seconds worth of tape delay


any wonder why the tracks could basically give a **** about providing BETTER/ADDITIONAL service

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