In the past year, I’ve spent some time in expensive hotels. I’ve noticed that there’s something odd about the TVs and remote controls. They’re not very responsive. There’s a noticeable delay between the time I press a button on the remote and the response from the TV - whether it’s changing the channel or reducing the volume. I get a similar but somewhat faster response by pressing the buttons on the TV itself. I’m not doing anything different from what I might normally do at home, and I’m not using any of the functions to request movies on demand or anything like that. Just normal surfing. It hasn’t been only one hotel and it’s not weak batteries in the remote (I replaced them!). I assume that some sort of verification or handshake is going on in the background, but what’s the real deal? And what’s the name of the company that provides these cable/video systems for most hotels? I can’t recall.
GuestServe is the one I’ve heard of; it’s probably slow on account of centralized operation, and the minimal resources used by the hotels:
Next time, try popping in a fresh set of batteries to see if there is any improvement. I suspect that remote controls in hotels are prone to being slept on (and therefore having their buttons pressed in) for hours at a time.
Next time, try reading the post. 