I rented one of these things at Richmond, and here's my take:

A lot of race views, but I’m trying to watch the race! It would have been the next best thing to the TV if I wasn’t watching from the stands, but I was. 5 stars for ease of use. I found the perfect combination of listening to the DirecTV channel of Tony Stewart as they covered Tony-specific stuff the whole race. They did seem to hype it up a bit, saying he was charging through the field when he was habitually in 10th the entire race, but that’s DirecTV’s problem, not the FanView. The problem with that is it lost communication with the DirecTV drivers with 30 laps to go. At that point it jumped to the MRN radio with Tony on priority scan, which was the next best thing. After reporting the “glitch” to the trailer I turned the unit in to (and receiving a receipt proving I turned it in), the Gentleman gave me a voucher for one free use of the unit good for a year at any upcoming race. I’m sure I’ll get it again based on that.

It wasn’t much more that a scanner other than that. I did use the stats button to track who was a lap down a few times to see who was pitting with Tony, info I would not have had handy without the FanView unit. Given the frequency list for the DirecTV driver channels, my scanner would have sufficed. Now at larger tracks where you can’t see much more of the cars except for what’s rushing by you in a moment (Pocono and the road courses come to mind), this thing would show you quite a bit of the racing you’d miss without it, including replays. If you’re gonna try one of these things (and I would if I were you), I’d get one early in the day before lines get long just before the race. They gave me a military discount when I showed them my ID. Rumor is there is a Sprint customer discount also if you show them your phone. If you attend 5 or more races a year, purchasing one might be an option to consider. It would pay for itself in fairly short order.