Chart Downloader

[Buddha]

I know everyone is upset about the "industry" going to PDF charts. I was wondering if anyone has a program that will download a days worth of charts, even if they are the pdf version.

[bigmack]

Buddha - Are you looking for all cards or just a tracks card?

[Buddha]

Preferably being able to get a days worth at a time.

[cj]

I don't think you will find one. Everyone is using tools to prevent auto downloading. I have paid for an unlimited comma delimited charts subscription, and even those are protected. This makes absolutely no sense since only subscribers have access to the page, but what in this industry ever does?

[bigmack]

CJ's right B

It's a tough one. I have a couple of folk trying to work around it but with the PDF's it's not ez.

Can you give me a comprehensive source of the charts outside of drf and equibase.

[Buddha]

BRIS and TSN I think are the only other "major" ones that provide charts.

[bigmack]

Roger that B

From what I understand they have a 'way around' I'll pm you.

Tell me you spend more time with horse data than you do with pokr.

[tahoesid]

Its not all that hard to download all the pdf charts, with a little bit of consideration for the captchas. I don't know why they are trying to hinder people that are going to use this stuff to spend more money at the tracks. The people that are going to rip them off are going to always figure out ways to do it no matter what they do.

[Tom]

But in CJ's case he PAID for the charts and they hinder him. WOuld love to MArc's ratinal for that one (rhetoric questin - I alread KNOW it).
It's like buying your groceries and then they make you carry them out of the store one item at a time. :lol:

I can only say when it comes to customer service there is HDW and then there is no one. Ron Tiller stands alone in the industry. :jump::jump::jump:

[banacek]

I can only say when it comes to customer service there is HDW and then there is no one. Ron Tiller stands alone in the industry. :jump::jump::jump:

Speaking of HDW, I notice that they offer Layoffs and Claims reports. Does anyone know anything about those?

[tahoesid]

True enough, but there is a workaround. Always is

[BIG49010]

Layoffs and Claims they stole from Ed Bain, he has his own site now without them.

[highnote]

But in CJ's case he PAID for the charts and they hinder him. WOuld love to MArc's ratinal for that one (rhetoric questin - I alread KNOW it).
It's like buying your groceries and then they make you carry them out of the store one item at a time. :lol:


It's like buying groceries in Belarus. Anyone who has ever bought groceries in Belarus will know what I mean. It was the most ridiculous, inefficient system imaginable. No wonder capitalism... don't get me started.

The point is, the U.S. racing industry is hell bent on remaining in the dark ages. I'm suprised that any tracks in this country actually have websites. And DRF online... that's a minor miracle. What were they thinking? :D

Bulk downloading -- that will have to wait until next century, I'm afraid.

You know, if BRIS still has their old dial-up site working, it would be simple to write code to do bulk downloads from there. Of course, at 2400 baud, it might take awhile. :sleeping:

[bigmack]

It's like buying groceries in Belarus. Anyone who has ever bought groceries in Belarus will know what I mean.
Show of hands on that came up a bit light. Ahave another analogy?

[highnote]

Show of hands on that came up a bit light. Ahave another analogy?

No. Sorry. But I'll admit it could use more explanation.

So I walked into a grocery store in Minsk, Belarus. I saw some items that I wanted. There was no shopping cart, so I picked up as many as I could hold figuring I'd make a couple trips. There was no one else in the store so I assumed it would be alright to leave my items on the counter until I had everything I wanted.

Just as I started to walk to the register, my interpreter said, "No. No. No. That's not how we do it. You have to fill out this form for each item you want. Then you bring the form to the register."

So like a good guest in a foreign country, I filled out the form. I then walked the form over to the register and handed it to the cashier. The cashier studied it and then walked back over to the shelf where I just was and started to retrieve my items. After the cashier had brought all the items to the cash register, she then rang them up.

Now, it's possible I lost something in the translation, but I couldn't figure out why I couldn't just bring the items over to the cashier myself and skip the part of filling out the form.

So this is analogous to buying racing data in the U.S. because of the all the unnecessary hoops you have to jump through to download.

Think about it. You pay some data provider for unlimited downloads and they don't even have an option to download unlimited data in bulk. You have to do it one at a time.

Well, in Belarus, it may be inefficient to buy groceries, but at least they do the work for you.