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My favorite "the world is terrible" curmudgeon observation is how awful hotel TVs (and hotel TV remotes) are. Every single hotel room TV I've had the displeasur

My favorite "the world is terrible" curmudgeon observation is how awful hotel TVs (and hotel TV remotes) are. Every single hotel room TV I've had the displeasure of using in the last N years takes more than 20 seconds to turn on after multiple button-presses, starts out on a terrible in-house channel at high volume regardless of the last-watched channel+volume, takes multiple seconds to change channels, and has no real TV guide option to let you see what's on. This plus HDMI ports are regularly inaccessible and it's nearly impossible to use streaming sticks (roku) due to web-based wifi portals that only work half the time if you have an ad-blocker enabled.

arethuza 7y ago
Careful what you wish for - many years ago I worked for an interactive TV company that focused on the hospitality market. One large chain of hotels seriously asked if we could do a remote control with three additional large buttons at the top for "Beer", "Burger" and "Porn". Turns out getting like that manufactured in the quantities we were looking at is a nightmare - so it didn't happen. Edit: Clearly it would have been easier to have one button for "Beer, burger and porn" - but that has only occurred to me now.
- javajosh 7y ago
  Sounds like a legit app, though.
logfromblammo 7y ago
The usual problem I have is that I need to switch to DHCP based DNS to register my MAC address to the room number, then switch back so the hotel can't screw with my DNS lookups. It might not be your ad-blocker or script-blocker; it might be your DNS settings.
papito 7y ago
Hotel remotes. You all triple-sanitize them, right? And then burn them....
- basscomm 7y ago
  I don't generally bother. I like to challenge my immune system once in a while to keep it in fighting condition.
  - papito 7y ago
    Uhhh. "In fact, we found semen on 30% of the remote controls we tested." http://m.cnn.com/en/article/h_990ff64f90f909f55b916692ee340d2c http://m.cnn.com/en/article/h_990ff64f90f909f55b916692ee340d...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
eloisant 7y ago
Yes, pleease, just provide Miracast or Chromecast so I can watch content from my phone on the big screen. Or just let me use an HDMI port. I don't watch channels anymore, and I don't want to pay for your pay-per-view content.
ehnto 7y ago
While in Japan, the TVs would often turn on the moment you entered the room. This was fine, as I would mute them or turn them off. At one hotel, I managed to bug one out such that volume didn't work anymore. No worries, I'll just turn it off. Except when I went to turn it off, it crashed the TV app and it automatically restarted. All the wires were integrated so they couldn't be tampered with and the unit had no real buttons. I thought I was going to have to sleep with the same four very excitable adverts on rotation blasting into my ears! Mercifully, pressing the TV Source button triggered a different app that didn't crash when I pressed the off button, and in what must be the software engineering achievement of the decade, the off button turned off the screen.
ajmurmann 7y ago
I'm in a room right now that has an HDMI cable on a little pug infront the TV. Unfortunately I never remember to bring my USB-C to HDMI adapter when I stay here.
Nextgrid 7y ago
In the hotels I stayed at in Europe it's usually a standard non-smart TV plus a custom board that connects to it over HDMI. Sometimes the whole thing is enclosed in some kind of plastic shroud that clips over the TV but nothing a bit of "percussive maintenance" can't fix. From there, the HDMI port is accessible. However, in most cases, at least in mid-range rooms, the TV is barely bigger than my laptop so it just doesn't make sense to use it.

arethuza 7y ago

Careful what you wish for - many years ago I worked for an interactive TV company that focused on the hospitality market. One large chain of hotels seriously asked if we could do a remote control with three additional large buttons at the top for "Beer", "Burger" and "Porn". Turns out getting like that manufactured in the quantities we were looking at is a nightmare - so it didn't happen. Edit: Clearly it would have been easier to have one button for "Beer, burger and porn" - but that has only occurred to me now.

javajosh 7y ago
Sounds like a legit app, though.

logfromblammo 7y ago

The usual problem I have is that I need to switch to DHCP based DNS to register my MAC address to the room number, then switch back so the hotel can't screw with my DNS lookups. It might not be your ad-blocker or script-blocker; it might be your DNS settings.

papito 7y ago

Hotel remotes. You all triple-sanitize them, right? And then burn them....

basscomm 7y ago
I don't generally bother. I like to challenge my immune system once in a while to keep it in fighting condition.
- papito 7y ago
  Uhhh. "In fact, we found semen on 30% of the remote controls we tested." http://m.cnn.com/en/article/h_990ff64f90f909f55b916692ee340d2c http://m.cnn.com/en/article/h_990ff64f90f909f55b916692ee340d...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

eloisant 7y ago

Yes, pleease, just provide Miracast or Chromecast so I can watch content from my phone on the big screen. Or just let me use an HDMI port. I don't watch channels anymore, and I don't want to pay for your pay-per-view content.

ehnto 7y ago

While in Japan, the TVs would often turn on the moment you entered the room. This was fine, as I would mute them or turn them off. At one hotel, I managed to bug one out such that volume didn't work anymore. No worries, I'll just turn it off. Except when I went to turn it off, it crashed the TV app and it automatically restarted. All the wires were integrated so they couldn't be tampered with and the unit had no real buttons. I thought I was going to have to sleep with the same four very excitable adverts on rotation blasting into my ears! Mercifully, pressing the TV Source button triggered a different app that didn't crash when I pressed the off button, and in what must be the software engineering achievement of the decade, the off button turned off the screen.

ajmurmann 7y ago

I'm in a room right now that has an HDMI cable on a little pug infront the TV. Unfortunately I never remember to bring my USB-C to HDMI adapter when I stay here.

Nextgrid 7y ago

In the hotels I stayed at in Europe it's usually a standard non-smart TV plus a custom board that connects to it over HDMI. Sometimes the whole thing is enclosed in some kind of plastic shroud that clips over the TV but nothing a bit of "percussive maintenance" can't fix. From there, the HDMI port is accessible. However, in most cases, at least in mid-range rooms, the TV is barely bigger than my laptop so it just doesn't make sense to use it.