Hotel rooms and HDTV

Factual Questions
1

I’ve traveled pretty extensively and stayed at most of the big hotel chains (Marriott, Hilton, etc.). The one constant I’ve noticed is that most rooms nowadays seem to have decent HDTVs in the room - with no HD programming. Even in hotels that have been recently renovated/upgraded, they put in the nice TVs and stick with standard definition programming.

Is there a reason for this? Maybe a technical barrier to distributing HD to several dozen/hundred rooms? Or is it just cost savings?

I’m dying to know the answer to this. Seeing standard def signals on nice new TVs kills my soul.

2

It will depend on their source, of course. In my experience, if they are getting it from cable, you can at least find the OTA channels with the QAM tuner with a little work. I was in a situation like that a couple weeks ago and found the HD Fox channel for the World Series.

Basically, if you look at what you’re getting, it tends to be the analog extended basic (plus HBO) tier. There’s no reason you couldn’t distribute a digital/HD signal but I doubt most places want to spend the money.

3

Sometimes they even set the TVs to stretch 4:3 content to fill the entire screen. And they give you some crappy remote that just has number buttons and the volume control so that you can’t get rid of the distortion. :rolleyes:

4

Have you been to an electronics store recently? The absolute cheapest television I can buy off of Best Buy’s website costs $100 and is 720p and 15 inches. For $200 I can get 24 inches.

You couldn’t buy a standard definition TV if you wanted to.

(Obviously you CAN, but why?)

5

This is just a bit of an informed guess, but most hotels seem to have custom video distribution networks. They deal with their own video on demand, checkout/billing, ads and distribution of local, cable and premium channels.

I’d bet tha most of these networks went into place before the HD and digital switchover and would be a massive investment to upgrade. Until they write off current systems and the economy improves, you may see little change.

Perhaps someone in the hotel biz will wander by with a more informed answer.

6

I’ve seen some decent TVs in hotel rooms lately, but the available content depends on how cheap the management is.

I have a tangential gripe: what bugs me is the absence of in-room or onscreen channel/program listings (including HBO guides with the wrong time zones). Oh, and even worse are the remotes with only UP-DOWN channel controls.

7

This is pretty much it. Going to HDTVs was no extra expense to the hotels since they are the same price of a standard def nowdays (if you can even find a standard def). Paying for HD programming however is an extra expense (an ongoing expense) that would cost the hotels more.

8

Because SD looks far worse on LCDs or Plasmas than on CRTs. Ordinarily you’d sit enough back for that not to matter, but hotel rooms are often tiny.

Now maybe there are more expensive LCD screens that compensate, but hotel TVs are often cheap.

Unfortunately, CRTs are becoming luxury items. Sure, you can find them used, but new is almost impossible unless you get really expensive.

9

I had a similar experience at a hotel I stayed at a week at a time for years while on business trips. All the channels below 100 were SD, the TV listing card they had in the room only showed the channels below 100, but if I went searching up above 100 I found dozens of HD channels. Eventually I made my own TV listing card with all the HD channels that I kept in my luggage.

The part that really amused me was each evening I’d turn on the TV and set it to “show program in native format” so the SD shows wouldn’t be stretched. Then each day the maid would come through and set it back to “stretch to fill screen.” Apparently it was on their room checklist. If it took more than two button presses for me to set it back I would have complained.

I was also amused that this hotel had two HD TVs in every room. My first world problem was figuring out how to turn on one without the other coming on as well. Had to be careful how I aimed the remote.

10

It gets worse. I’ve seen hotel TVs with widescreen format letter boxed into 4:3 and then stretched to fill the 16:9 TV, so you get stretching and letter boxing :rolleyes:.