"HDTV" in hotels, hospitals, etc? - Page 2

Another lost niche market for cablecards... would be perfect for individual sets mounted on walls in bars/restaurants. In that setting you have absolutely no need for OnDemand.

LOL... she's quite used to it! While we were out all day and early evenings, it was niced to see Leno/Letterman almost like home.

Back in the good old days I always took my "greenie" (that's the xcelite smallest straight balde screwdriver for those of you who don't work on your own sets...) so I could touch up some of the awful sets we'd encounted.

As suggested above henceforth I'm adding a universal remote to my "go bag".

I just had my 1st HD in a hotel experience, a small 14 unit hotel in Berkeley Ca. It had a 42" flatscreen and a D* H20 in the room. The silly part was they gave you two remotes as they did not set up the H20's remote for the TV. It looked very good.

Stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Tempe that Had D* and 42 inch plasmas. Locals and sports looked great - so much so I finally took the HDTV plunge when I got home....

Hilton Hotels to Offer Hi-Def Suites

Don't miss your favorite HD programing while on the road. Hilton rolls out their new Sight+Sound program at select locations.

Product News | August 02, 2007 | by EH Staff

You can't take your home theater with you when you travel, but one hotel chain is trying to make you feel like you're back in front of your big screen when you check in. As part of an initiative to add luxurious in-room amenitiesincluding flat-panel TVs and alarm clocks that can connect to MP3 playersin all guest rooms by year's end, Hilton Hotels recently debuted its Sight+Sound rooms at two locations. Thirty guest rooms at the Hilton San Francisco and 25 guest rooms at the Hilton Chicago O'Hare International Airport feature a 42-inch plasma from LG, a Yamaha YSP-800 digital sound projector, Monster Cable connectivity, and 14 high-definition stations among 40 network and cable channels from DirecTV. On-demand sports packages will also be available. Whether you're there for business or pleasure, that's a suite deal.

http://www.electronichouse.com/artic...ls_offer_hdtv/

But how will it sound in the next room? Might make getting an early start on the snoozing a little hard.

Ken,

My community (see my info) opens up a $100 million new hospital replacing the old, definitely inferior one on 10/8/07. I got a chance to tour.

High def TV's in every room. In-house programs feeding it...you better believe that's stretch-o-vision---and "a few more channels than the old hospital". I bet it's all SD.

That said, and otherwise, it's a state-of-the-art place I never hope I have to visit, but am thrilled it's there.

The W in Chicago had HD locals and HD PPV when I was there recently, it was enjoyable to watch NBC Sunday night football in HD.

I stayed at a suite at the Wynn in LV. Two 50" Gateway (cheap bastards!) plasmas in the living area. They had a large conference table with PC hookup to the plasmas for presentation. You can also set the plasmas to display slideshows of scenery and artwork. Small LCD mounted on a swing arm in each bedroom. Ditto in the bathrooms. All had Comcast feed, with HD channels.

So, I got put up at the Conrad Chicago this summer for a speaker training conference for a major pharmaceutical company. By far the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. Very large plasma on the wall, with a 3.1 Bose system for audio. Had an HD feed for some of the channels. I was only there 1 night, so didn't spend a lot of time watching TV.

In our hospitals, there are flat screen LCDs in all the pt rooms and plasmas scattered all over in public areas displaying a rolling loop of info. No HD. In the call room at the hospital that I do nights at, there is an LCD mounted into a closet. No HD, but you can lay in bed and watch. Whole lot better than the call rooms I had when I was a resident (no tv, no computer...just a "bed").

I was pleasantly surprised at the Flamingo in Las Vegas last week. I paid an extra $25 a night to upgrade to one of their new hipster "Go" rooms which come equipped with a Philips 42" plasma TV.

They had a handful of HD channels in the 100's. MHD, a couple local HD's like NBC, ESPN2HD. I was able to watch NBC Sunday Night Football in HD, which was great.

When I called down to the front desk to ask about getting ESPNHD for Monday Night Football, she said "that's on channel 4" which of course was the analog. I tried to explain no, you have HD channels on 101, 103, etc, that are HIGH DEFINITION. She insisted "channel 4". Blah.

So I asked for the engineering department and they sent up a maintenance guy. He said they had no formal training on the new plasma / HD setup and that he learns more from the guests than the company. He said sorry, they didn't get ESPNHD.

Well lo and behold I get back to the room Tuesday night and something has changed in the channel programming, and there's ESPNHD alongside ESPN2HD !

PQ was decent, but a bit pixelated, sort of like a D* MPEG2 feed.

The "Go" rooms also have a Denon DVD/MP3/CD player attached to the plasma via component cables. I do a lot of business travel, and this is by far the most advanced (and correctly connected) AV setup I've seen in a hotel room to date.

Things may have changed in the last few months, but the Omni Chicago has rooms equipped with 37" Panny ED plasmas. Unfortunately they had them connected to the composite video output of your standard hotel room set top box. No HD at all. Blah.

Fortunately I was able to connect the VGA input of the plasma to my laptop equipped with an OnAir USBGT HDTV tuner and was able to watch local OTA programming in HD.

Hyatt Place is expanding their brand. I just stayed at a newly converted Hyatt Place in Pittsburgh (formerly an Amerisuites). They have 42" LG plasmas in every room. I have stayed at many hotels with widescreen displays but never one with true HD. Hyatt Place's HD is supplied by DirecTV and has an impressive HD lineup.

ABCHD
NBCHD
CBSHD
FOXHD
PBSHD
ESPNHD
ESPN2HD
HBOHD
HDNet
Discovery HD Theater
Universal HD

I was also impressed that the movies on Demand also featured a wide selection of HD titles (included Bourne Ultimatum, Shrek 3, and Transformers). NFL Sunday ticket was also available but I could not tell if it was available in HD or not. Most impressive was an input panel below the TV allowing connection of any source. HDMI, component, composite, and VGA were selectable (PS3 or XBOX anyone?). The optical out on the LG was also accessible for those that travel with a HT in a box.

However, while the lobby LG 42" had an incredible picture the LG in the room (exact same model) needed tweaking. Colors were oversaturated and skin tones way off. Naturally, I was locked out from accessing any video adjustments.

I'll admit, the HD will make me look for Hyatt Place when I travel over my usual Marriott brands. Hopefully, more brands will follow suit and provide true HD programming over just a widescreen display upconverting standard definition programming.

Edit: Rate was $159/night for standard room

Uh Oh, now you have done it, talking about prices on AVS Forum will get you booted fer sure!!!!!!!
Read the posting policy, "no hotel rates are allowed"

I tried out a couple for Pocket PC, but it wasn't worth it to me to pay the $20 full versions. They worked fine, I just didn't need them that bad.

If you're using Pocket PC, pocketgear.com has several listings for such software: http://www.pocketgear.com/en_US/html...yId=cat4500168

Hotel Zaza in Houston opened during the summer and they are IMO the best hotel in Houston. They also have the best HDTV set up I have seen in any hotel. They have 42 inch plasmas in every room and have locals, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, and a few others in full HD. Even better, they have cabanas by the pool with Sammy plasmas with full HD as well. You can hang outside by the pool and watch football. I highly recommend it.

The sports bar thing has always killed me. In the last couple of months I have been to two bars here in Maine which were heavily advertising the fact that they had HDTV. Both bars did in fact have HDTV's as well as the proper STB to view it but neither was playing it. In one case, they had Direct TV and instead of the box being tuned to 73 for ESPNHD they had it on SD version at 206. I talked to the owner and asked him why and he was puzzled and said that it was on. I asked for the remote and showed him the proper channel and needless to say he was shocked I have seen this particular problem a few times and it should be better now that D* has remapped its HD channels to match the SD. The other time was even more aggravating. I ask the same question of the manager and he became irate and insisted that Comcast had told him that what we were watching was HD. I checked his setup and found that while TV was connected to a Comcast STB with component cables it was also still hooked to the cable on the wall and didn't have a QAM. I switched inputs to component and the manager was still irate but with now with Comcast Of course, when I went in a week later the TV was back in SD mode What really amazes me is that no one else seems to notice. In the case of the first bar the owner said that he had been open a couple of months and I was the first one who had said something to him and that they had been on the wrong channels the whole time

I travel throughout the West and Midwest almost every week and I have never have stayed in a hotel that had its flat screens hooked up to a HD source. It's a shame that the owners spend the money on the sets, but still hook them up to a single coax from the wall or through the pay movie box. It's the same for the almost all of the hotel and sports bars I have been to, flat screens hooked up to a SD source.
I've always thought that someone could do us travelers a service by providing a comprehensive list of hotels that have actual HD sets connected to an HD source, as well as a service listing the channels carried by each hotel. It's frustrating to check into a place, only to find they have less than 25 channels on their in-room sets.
I was actually floored last week when we had dinner in the Bistro Lounge at the Cliff House in San Francisco and the HD sets were connected to an HD source.

Welcome to HD Hospital. In order to prepare for your surgery,Please tune to our HD Surgery Preparation on Channel 100 where we'll explain how we do a catherization...See Operating Rooms 5,6, and 7 live in HD on channel 105 through 107..Live childbirthing can be seen on Channel 108 when available...and open heart surgery daily on channel 110 when available.
See HD video of your arrival and treatment in the emergency room on PPV channel 6+your room number. Contents may be graphic at times and unsuitable for most patients. Keepsake HD-DVD and Blu-Ray copies may be ordered on screen using your bedside remote.
Be advised that your insurance policy may not cover the cost of PPV and DVD video.

But seriously, I'd think some HD programs may NOT be desired in hospitals. based on my past stays,
FoodHD would NOT be something I'd want to see after surgery.

My parents stayed at a Hyatt Place in Medford, MA, and they had a plasma TV in the room and HD programming. The hotel had been recently renovated and was very nice.

I was in Montreal this past week for a conference, and the Hotel Le Dauphin near the convention center had small LCD HDTVs in each room, though I don't know if they had HD programming. They even provided a DVD player and a desktop computer with free Internet access in the room.

I stayed at the Disney Contemporary Resort in Orlando last week for a conference..... they had small widescreen LCD's(I'm guessing in the 30" range? I dunno) and 90 channels of stretched SD programming.

I flipped through the channels 3 times in an attempt to find anything in HD just in case I skipped through a channel in HD that was at a commercial break.

Sorry, I haven't checked this thread in a while...yes, it's Kishwaukee Hospital
in Sycamore, IL that got the new $100 million hospital. You are one smart person!

Hyatt Place in Sacramento is also doing it right. Nice large LCD with digital feeds of all locals, ESPNHD, HDNET, Discovery etc.

Very good for a room that cost $69......

http://sacramentoranchocordova.place...lace/index.jsp

Every other hotel I have stayed in recently with flat screen TV (probably 4 this year) has had horrible analog stations.

I also stayed at the Wynn early this year. I know the company that manufactured all of the flat panel displays that were installed in the Wynn. Their president told me about this when the hotel was being built so I decided to stay there when I had the opportunity just to check out the TV's (of course after gambling and shows). This same company also makes all the Vizio TV's.

Also, the upscale Marriott's have also been installing flat panel TV's and I've stayed in two (San Francisco and Washington DC). Both had HD programming.

I've stayed at a few different hotels over the summer and fall, and also am coordinating a conference in Sacramento that caused me to tour the top 3-4 hotels in town this last month or so.

While staying in Atlanta at the Hilton, I plugged the coax from the wall into my EyeTV, and was pleased to get the a few local channels in HD, that were apparently being fed by ATSC. My room did not have an HDTV, so I'm guessing that some of the higher-end rooms might have if this is sitting on the wire.

Here in Sacramento, the Sheraton Grand is getting ready to install all new LCD's in all guest rooms, but there was no mention of HD programming. The Hyatt has some, but there are no current upgrades planned. And although they are renovating about half of their rooms, the Doubletree won't be bringing in HDTVs this winter.