I have no vendetta against TS or BRIS. I just expect more for the services that I pay for.

I'm surprised that as a developer that you are willing to forgive the obvious problems that plague ADW sites that chuck untested code and features on us. In my commercial endeavors where I have been in charge of major websites, I would never accept such compacency from my development team. I won't accept it from my HOS project, which is much more of a hobby than a business.

Each and every big racing day, most of the ADW's grind to a halt because their platforms are poorly coded, and their management lack the proper skill or resources to properly manage the capacity planning issues that go into running a transactional website that has peak traffic concerns.

With the exception of PTC, it seems that nearly every ADW out there has had missteps with new feature releases. I'd ask them kindly to test them better on all of the major browser configurations on all of the major operating systems before they release something. Calling it BETA is just an excuse to have us more easily forgive their sloppiness and have us as customers participate in QA work for them. I for one, am not amused at that.Last time I checked TwinSpires was FREE, unless of course you need to make a credit card deposit. Yes, I have a higher tolerance level for free services than I do for services I pay for, and would certainly stop using something that I felt wasn't living up to my standards of use. Not the case here, at least for me.

I don't assume that the code is untested. In fact I suspect it's tested quite extensively before it's released. In my experience, no matter how well code is written or tested, sometimes something unexpected happens, especially under loads which often can't be tested properly until you are in a live environment.

Since I have had my account with WinTicket and now TwinSpires there has been one big day outage/slowdown that I have encountered, this year's Derby Day. I've played every Triple Crown and Breeders' Cup Day that I could (damn exclusives) with the account since BC 2001. I'd argue that they are at least doing well on big days. I can't speak for the other services because I haven't had to use them on big days. I've had my Yahoo, Gmail and eBay accounts crash on normal days. Do they have bad management too?

Every major purveyor of software does "beta" releases specifically to allow customers to provide feedback. According to your post, you are using one now (Mozilla 3). It's not done to get customers to forgive sloppiness, it's to get feedback, or as you put it to "have customers participate in QA work". In my experience, end users are usually not shy about telling me how to improve my products or if there is a problem. Beta testing is an important part of development. I don't like software blowing up any more than you do, especially when I'm trying to do something when it does. I don't condone throwing code out there that is known to fail, even if it's under "beta" status. I didn't see that being the case here, since on my three PC's under IE7 and Mozilla 2 everything was working fine.

I think I know why it wasn't working.

I made a deposit tonight. I haven't wagered materially at TS since PTC opened. Once I deposited and made a wager, video worked.

BETA - BUG REPORT. I never received an error message saying that I didn't have privileges to access video when I logged in at ()

My initial observations are that this looks nice, and an improvement. Side by side, this is no different than the Roberts Stream offered at other websites, albeit at this highest bandwidth rate. The Flash interface makes receipt of the video easy and speedy.

This is NOT the IPTV video streaming that the NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL have, and that we as horseplayers deserve. In my opinion, this is a minor upgrade on what we had before, and nothing to go ga-ga about.Although I will agree with you that there should have been some appropriate error message telling you that your wagering hadn't reached the level to receive video, that appears to be the only issue with the QA of the release. Hopefully you will be a little slower on the draw to bash in the future, whether it be TwinSpires, PTC or anyone else.

And I would argue that yes it is a significant improvement over the feeds available at other websites, specifically because no one is showing the video at the same bandwidth. And since it's free at TwinSpires (with a minor level of wagering), I see it as a major step forward. The other ADWs that provide video are going to have to step up their services (if they can), which will end up benefitting everyone. It will be hard for YouBet customers to justify paying a monthly video feed unless the quality improves.

As for IPTV, IMO it's still too expensive from a bandwidth perspective to broadcast live on an open network like the interent. Closed networks (like through cable lines) is another story. Given there has been a couple of presentations on IPTV at the recent racing conferences, I suspect we'll be seeing it soon from someone. I just don't know if any end users will want to pay for it if the quality is this good with regular streaming.