Daily Blog - Ross Jones- July 31, 2008: HI-DEF HOTEL?
I don’t travel much, but in the last two months have stayed at three different hotels in major metropolitan areas (Los Angeles and Silicon Valley). While they weren’t five-star resorts, they were upscale hotels of major chains that cater to business travelers. I had nicely appointed rooms, complete with flat-screen HDTV’s.
Not only could I not find any hi-def programming, but the picture quality was terrible! It reminded me of watching over-the-air signals through a set of rabbit ears, or basic analog cable. All of the displays were hooked up to a special box for purchasing services (such as on-demand movies and internet through the TV). I don’t know whether the box is to blame, or something else in the signal chain. But it seemed such a waste to spend money on HD displays, when they produced such poor images. Kind of like buying a filet mignon and then boiling it.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:02 am
I had a job where I would travel a lot the past two years (I spend 120 nights on the road or something last year) and it would amaze me that I would often get hotels with HDTV’s and no clue about how to provide an HD signal for them. I think my last trip was at a Sheraton where I had a lovely 40″ LG LCD but everything was stretched and there was no HD feeds at all. I think 3-4 hotels that I stayed in actually had HD signals, though the best was a Marriott in Toronto that had a massive LG LCD and HD signals to boot (very nice since it was February and there was a blizzard out). Hopefully this problem becomes less common in the future, though.