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TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People!
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I guess it'd be totally out of the question to just run a news hour?
1. Barely any hotel or motel has any kind of understanding of aspect rations. They all have widescreen TVs, but mostly they're somehow stretching the picture wrongly even though it too is widescreen. And this has very little bearing on how expensive or not the room is. The best adjusted TV I came across was in a dirt cheap motel. (I'd have a moan about HD downgraded to analogue SD before it gets delivered to the room's HD TV, but that'd be too easy).
2, For the entire 29 days of my trip, I don't think I've seen CNN cover anything apart from that Malaysian plane. Right now, Anderson Cooper is probably bored to tears as he conducts yet another feature on it. They were showing how they found the Titanic earlier because that's relevant... Sometimes, they just make it easy for Fox to make fun of the "Plane Channel",
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 11:33 PM, Adam Bowie <ad...@adambowie.co.uk> wrote:
I guess it'd be totally out of the question to just run a news hour?There's no money in straight news. I may have my chronology wrong, but I think the last prime time cable news show that wasn't personality-driven was the one Brian Williams anchored before switching to NBC.
1. Barely any hotel or motel has any kind of understanding of aspect rations. They all have widescreen TVs, but mostly they're somehow stretching the picture wrongly even though it too is widescreen. And this has very little bearing on how expensive or not the room is. The best adjusted TV I came across was in a dirt cheap motel. (I'd have a moan about HD downgraded to analogue SD before it gets delivered to the room's HD TV, but that'd be too easy).This has to do with the type of feed the cable companies sell to hotels and motels. Because they have to run through internal distribution amplifiers, they aren't typically sent the latest and greatest signals because hotel systems have to rescramble them to send to individual rooms. In all likelihood, the cheap motel where you experienced decent TV was probably due to them being too cheap to have their own dist. amps. so they just paid for standard cable for each room.
2, For the entire 29 days of my trip, I don't think I've seen CNN cover anything apart from that Malaysian plane. Right now, Anderson Cooper is probably bored to tears as he conducts yet another feature on it. They were showing how they found the Titanic earlier because that's relevant... Sometimes, they just make it easy for Fox to make fun of the "Plane Channel",Best Tweet I saw today was something along the lines of, "CNN has renewed the search for Flight 370 for a second season."
"The seamless integration of original series and live news coverage, which has been on display the last two months, is the foundation of our new prime-time lineup," said Jeff Zucker, CNN Worldwide president.
CNN had been seeing some historically low ratings earlier this year until the Malaysian airliner went missing several weeks ago. Coverage of that story has since dominated the network, dramatically improving the ratings.
1. Barely any hotel or motel has any kind of understanding of aspect rations. They all have widescreen TVs, but mostly they're somehow stretching the picture wrongly even though it too is widescreen. And this has very little bearing on how expensive or not the room is. The best adjusted TV I came across was in a dirt cheap motel. (I'd have a moan about HD downgraded to analogue SD before it gets delivered to the room's HD TV, but that'd be too easy).This has to do with the type of feed the cable companies sell to hotels and motels. Because they have to run through internal distribution amplifiers, they aren't typically sent the latest and greatest signals because hotel systems have to rescramble them to send to individual rooms. In all likelihood, the cheap motel where you experienced decent TV was probably due to them being too cheap to have their own dist. amps. so they just paid for standard cable for each room.I pretty much thought that was the case. Most hotels are too cheap to put new systems in that handle things like aspect ratio correctly. Even quite big ones.
Funnily enough, it seems like places that have DirecTV do the best job. It might be that DirecTV just do most of the work themselves when they sign up a hotel. Needless to say, everyone has remote that mean you can't really fiddle with settings or change aspect ratios.
Kev, the cablers, at least big guys like Comcast and TW, have to be working on updating this sitch if they haven't already. They can't value the travelers any less than any other viewer.
From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kevin M.
>There's no need and no incentive to fix it. Hotel guests are a captive audience to whatever TV service is provided, and as Adam discovered there's no predicting it in advance. Hotels in big cities like New York and Las Vegas exist to make their rooms just nice enough to sleep in, but they really want you out of the room spending money in local businesses. It's like fast-food restaurant chairs... they could be made more comfortable, but then the people who only bought a cheap cup of coffee will linger longer and take up space for some other customer.
Besides, if your laptop is Web-capable and the hotel’s WiFi is up to the task, your TV viewing shouldn’t be restricted. (But then as Dad would say, “You don’t go on vacation to watch TV.”)
_ _
|_>|_> Brad Beam- Belle WV
There's no need and no incentive to fix it. Hotel guests are a captive audience to whatever TV service is provided, and as Adam discovered there's no predicting it in advance. Hotels in big cities like New York and Las Vegas exist to make their rooms just nice enough to sleep in, but they really want you out of the room spending money in local businesses. It's like fast-food restaurant chairs... they could be made more comfortable, but then the people who only bought a cheap cup of coffee will linger longer and take up space for some other customer.
I didn't just throw Comcast and TW out there as placeholders. (links to their hospitality-industry offerings) Kev only wants to look at the dumpwaters; I want to look only at the places (f'rinstance) the effin' District Court suggested to me in the process of harassing me into jury duty last year in the Philly-dilly.
It's absolutely true that in places like Vegas, they want you out of the room spending money.
And once upon a time I did find it very exciting to see what America was getting months or even years before the UK. Now we get series the same week. Game of Thrones actually simulcast with the Eastern US broadcast (in the small hours).
But a couple of points worth noting:
- Little things like TVs working properly are as important to some guests as a working shower or comfortable mattresses. Why would you get those right and screw up the TV?
- It's a great free trial of a rival service. Thinking about ditching cable for DirecTV? Well you might want to be satisfied with a trial at a Best Western. "I tried DirecTV at a hotel and it was garbage..."
Oh for any kind of EPG on any of these sets. What's on now? What's on next? A TV Guide channel was about the best I got.
Incidentally, it's pretty much as bad in the UK, although the domestic over the air digital service (Freeview) does have an EPG and/or Now/Next service built in.
And if you're not going to offer a PVR facility, fine, but don't supply a remote with buttons that suggest there is one!
Anyway, I must now hope that my PVR which was 33% empty when I left it isn't completely stuffed on my return!
Adam
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From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ed Dravecky
>Which reminds me... We mini-binged on the last four "The Crazy Ones" episodes last night and in one episode Brad Garrett's character notes a couple of times that "it's 7:55, NCIS is about to start". Sorry, LA-based writers, but Chicago is in the Central time zone. Thanks for playing.
Check your local listings: Next Saturday (4/26) CBS' Crimetime Saturday will have "NCIS" on at 9, 8 Central/Mountain... and a half-hour later in Newfoundland.
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