Forgot how bad cable was

[lee635]

Due to the very slow economy, we've been under some serious austerity measures that limit overnight travel, so I haven't stayed in a hotel in a couple months. Well, I stayed at a hotel last week and they had full basic cable. What really sucked was that all the shopping and infomercial channels were interspersed with the network and news channels. And all the locally produced cable-commercials were horrible. The picture was clear on some channels and almost nonexistant on others.

No electronic program guide -- how third world!!???!!

[music_beans]

The local commercials were horrible? The ones i see around here are not bad.

[TerryC]

That's sarcasm, right beans?

[music_beans]

No. Local commercials here are just for car dealerships, Touchstone Energy, etc. They are made really well. (with the exception for some of them.) :)

[raj2001]

Yeah, that sure sounds like hotel cable all right. I hate hotel TV's.

[music_beans]

They can be crappy sometimes. Motel 6 has their own channel lineup, which is ONLY about 20 channels, all basic. No premium channels like you get at Ramada or Super 8.

[waydwolf]

    Satellite sucks just as bad if the work is not done well and the package is low-end. Most hotels are wired cut-rate by electricians who learned coax from reading a box at Home Depot.

    I've been in real nice hotels which had cable provided premiums as part of my room rate and prefectly clear pictures and good cabling. I've also been to one in rural PA where Adelphia's signal was so low I could point out the issues without a meter(signal reflection, power interference, FM ingress, etc.).

 

[TimL]

If I'm in a hotel I would like nothing more than what the average cable viewer in that area gets on a Cable Ready TV (about 50-60 channels) HBO, Cinemax, etc are ok, but not necessary for me. Also all full power OTA channels. A lot of hotels/motels I stay in have maybe 15-25 channels, Usually the big 4 OTA plus a few of the most popular basic cable networks and a Home shopping or two. which really is not enough. And some of the TV's they have are ancient..some with really old cable boxes. I like taking a portable TV on trips just to see what is out there OTA.

Tim Lones

[Steve Mehs]

Some of the hotels I've stayed at have a decent channel line up but picture quality is generally awful. Two summers ago when I was in Detroit, I forget which hotel, but there was a 80 channel analog cable lineup but some channels were 70-80 % snow. In terms of best PQ, that would be at Comfort Inn with Comcast Cable of Philly. The local commercials are annoying, here we have some GM dealership whose tag line is the word 'Huge', with some guy screaming it, too bad local commercials are still shown on local channels :) On cable nearly all local insert commercials are from the Rochester area.

[raj2001]

The worst I've seen is at a best western I stayed at in Toronto. They only had about 25-30 channels, most of them were complete crap :lol:

[Ontarian]

There are various reasons why Hotel Cable Service is really crappy. I've been in many Hotels and Motels, some Five Star and the majority have crappy feeds. The hotel managements dont seem to care either. The local cable company may provide them with a decent feed but the equipment used in the hotel to redistribute the signal is probably inadequate. Old Low Bandwidth amplifiers, Poorly shielded cable, some channels maybe re-modulated in the hotel and placed on a different numbering scheme using lousy modulators, etc. The cable company likely sells the feed to the hotel with a bulk rate and the hotel then does what they want with the signal, ususally degrading it. They dont care either. So dont assume its the fault of the cable company, because its likely the hotel/motel causing bad PQ.

[Wedgecon]

Motel 6 Does have HBO, but thas it..

[Brett]

Most hotels will only give 1 channel of HBO. They dont want to give more feeds of premium channels since they'd rather you order movies.

[TerryC]

Originally posted by music_beans
No. Local commercials here are just for car dealerships, Touchstone Energy, etc. They are made really well. (with the exception for some of them.) :)
The car commercials I've seen usually feature a middle aged man with a pot belly shouting at me about how his prices are INSANE!!!!

Those are the kinds of local commercials I remember, before I was introduced to the wonderful world of PVRs, of course.

God bless 'em.

[Richssat]

While waiting for my house to be finished I had to spend the last month at the local "Extended Stay" hotel. 12 Channel headend sysetem, two of them were shopping channels and two were CNN. Thank God I had a south facing window, dug a dish and receiver out of storage and managed to get it to work pointing out the window (had to take the screen out). Signal strength was low (about 40) but it worked. That and an RF mod for my PS2 and I had almost all the comforts of home (except interntet access).

Glad to be in my house now, enjoying my overkill structured wiring system.

RR

[DarrellP]

I stayed at a Hilton in Florida last year and they had really good looking "cable". I thought, "Wow, this is the best Hotel cable I have ever seen". Then it started raining very hard and my TV displayed "Acquiring Satellite Signal" for a few seconds. No wonder it was so good. LOL.