If on screen channel guides are the norm today for both satellite and cable providers, why do they seem to never be available at hotels?
My guess is that hotels want you to pay for content since that’s how they generate revenue. Anything they provide that doesn’t get you to rent a movie is counter-productive to them. BTW, most hotels have a printed card that tells you which channel are where… although not what’s currently playing on those channels.
Hotels typically have a custom entertainment setup. It’s not like every TV has it’s own cable receiver. Rather, there’s a room with 50 receivers and each one is tuned to a separate channel The output from those 50 receivers is combined and sent over the cable line in the hotel to your TV.
So, say there are 50 DirectTV receivers. Receiver 1 is on NBC, #2, is CBS, … 40 is ESPN, … 50 is HBO. Those 50 receivers become channels 1-50 in your room. For the hotel to provide an on-screen guide, they would need to produce a custom guide for just those subset of channels they are sending to your room. There’s not an easy way for them to do that, so all you get is the channel card in your room.
Some signals have the name of the show encoded into it. This allows you to press ‘Title’ or whatever on the remote and it will show what you’re currently watching. But there’s not information encoded for what the schedule is.
P.S. The way the hotels are setup means you can get super cheap remotes on ebay. The receivers in the hotels are typically the same residential ones you would get installed in your house. This means it comes with a remote, and the hotel doesn’t need 50 DirectTV remotes. The installers will often sell those extra remotes on ebay for just a few dollars.
I traveled for work and myself in the last 2 months.
Four of the 5 hotel/motels I was at had channel guides. Some were on their own channel, some were imposed over the current channel.
One scrolled so slow that I couldn’t use it because I got bored waiting for it.
I’ve noticed the same thing, in my various travels.
Many hotels do seem to have a dedicated channel which is “The Channel Guide.” But it’s not like the typical interactive channel guide that you can call up on your own TV at home. It scrolls along at its own pace, usually showing only maybe 4 or 5 five channels at a time, and only about an hour and a half ahead. You can’t search, you can’t scroll ahead to see what will be on later tonight, and if the guide is currently showing channel 4 and you want to know what’s on channel 55, you just have to wait.
Not especially useful, in my opinion. I never knew how dependent I had become to my onscreen guide, until I don’t have it anymore!
Usually when I stay at a hotel, I never turn the TV on at all. But the last time I did turn on the TV (December of 2013), it had an on-screen channel guide. FWIW, that was in Mexico City and the room only cost us the equivalent of 25 USD.