by ·Comments Off on Hotel guests want a TV experience like home
2009 Hyatt TV interactive menu

A Hyatt TV menu from just seven years ago. Photo by Karl Baron

Remember when I mentioned that I spent a couple of weeks in Columbus OH over the summer? I thought ahead and brought the family Roku 3 receiver with me. Thank goodness Roku now has a procedure to supply the password for the hotel room to hook into the Wifi. (Although I was disappointed that Tablo never considered this scenario and wouldn’t play my home recordings on the Roku as it did on my tablet. But I digress.)

The memory of that stay popped right back to the front of my head when I read a press release from ADB of Broomfield CO, just up the street from FreeTVBlog World Headquarters. Announcing its 2016 In-Room Entertainment Preference Study, the press release promised “reveals eye-opening conclusions” that lined up with what I’ve experienced.

Hotel guests want interactive program guides. When a guest arrives, he wants to know what channels are available and what shows are on tonight. That’s so obvious to me that I once prototyped a web site to match each individual unit; subscribing hotels would maintain their channel lists on a service such as TitanTV, then provide an easy URL to guests when they arrive. That idea still might work, but it doesn’t top the immediacy of an on-screen interactive guide.

Hotel guests want to be able to stream OTT content like at home. See my Roku.

Hotel guests want to read their hotel-related messages on the screen. Like on-screen checkout? That’s been available in the big hotels for what seems like forever.

Then at the end of the press release comes the punchline. “ADB used the findings from this study to reinvent its iTV platform called vuTyme. … vuTyme also offers Searchable IPG, OTT services access like Screencasting from BYOD, direct-to-guest messaging through the TV and more.”

I have no idea whether this vuTyme is better or worse than its alternatives. But ADB is right when it reminds hoteliers what their guests really want.

by ·Comments Off on FTA Video: What to do with an old dish

Long, long ago, around the time I first started FTABlog.com, I ran an occasional series about what some folks did with old satellite dishes. There were bird baths, squirrel-proof hanging bird feeders, parabolic microphones, tiled decorations, and more that I can’t remember. This video includes the microphone but adds a few more that I hadn’t seen before.

You might argue that this isn’t about FTA, strictly speaking. But I would say that anyone who really gets into the hobby will upgrade to a wider dish one day, and that leaves the question about what to do with the old one. The way I handled one of them was to mount it pointing at one satellite so its channels are available in a snap rather than waiting for a dish motor to turn. Try what works for you!

by ·Comments Off on NCTA changes name, cancels trade show

NCTA logoThe former National Cable and Telecommunications Association (recently renamed “NCTA – The Internet & Television Association”, complete with dash)  has canceled its venerable The Cable Show trade show (renamed “INTX: the Internet and Television Expo” a couple of years ago) a few months after scheduling it in April 2017 directly opposite the NAB Show. I held my tongue when they thought INTX was supposed to wrest NAB attendees away, and I barely restrained myself when NCTA renamed itself to something without those initials but included them anyway. Now this. Just wow.

NCTA has a long history of renaming itself. A small group of community antenna companies organized in 1951 to form the National Community Television Council, then renamed it to National Community Television Association just a few months later. In 1968, the group changed to the National Cable Television Association. Trying to work “internet” into its title somehow, NCTA renamed in 2001 as the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. Then earlier this month came that hyphened mess that makes the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim sound reasonable.

There’s also a lot of good in NCTA’s history. It created the Cable Ace awards at a time when only broadcast shows were eligible for Emmys. The Cable Show ran for over 60 years, and I now wish I’d had the time to drop in on one of them. Instead, they’re just walking away. As reported in Variety, NCTA president and CEO Michael Powell said in a statement, ““We believe large trade show floors, dotted with exhibit booths and stilted schedules have become an anachronism. … Ending INTX gives us a clean slate and we are excited to explore presenting our industry in new and different ways.”

I remember when COMDEX ended its run when it announced it wouldn’t hold a show in 2004. I’ve still got the program from a few years earlier when it seemed that the computer trade show would run forever. This feels about the same. RIP, The Cable Show.

by ·Comments Off on How to build a free “On Demand” library with a DVR
Thumbnails of dozens of TV shows

The typical Tablo TV show display screen

It’s a fun perk of most pay-TV subscriptions to have access to a bunch of on-demand programming. It’s nice to flip through the listings and find something worth watching, even if it usually comes with unskippable advertising. (Ditto for Crackle and other free, ad-supported services.)

But I’ve found a way to use an over-the-air TV DVR (such as Tablo or DVR+) to build a better version of the on-demand vault. All it takes is sufficient hard drive space and about a half hour of planning every week. My secret is to record every movie, show, and sporting event that I think I might want to watch any time in the future.

With the Tablo, it’s pretty easy. After the app spends some time syncing up with the receiver, I start by checking OTA sports, typically a sad little list. Then channel by channel, I sift through available TV shows and movies. (Bonus points if a movie is on the local PBS station. On Spanish-language channels, anything but sports is out.) Along the way, I tell the DVR to record this and that, which usually adds up to more TV than I have time to watch in a month.

The DVR+ isn’t quite as friendly, though its guide data doesn’t require a subscription like Tablo’s. In this case, I fire up TitanTV and go to the custom broadcast channel grid that I created earlier. Then I click on each channel and thumb through its three-day program grid. When I see something I want to record, I search DVR+ for the title and set the recording.

Both DVRs use external USB hard drives, and it’s great that they’re coming down in price. There’s no good excuse any more for getting a portable drive that’s less than 1 terabyte, and you should probably spend a little more to get a 2 TB drive. That’ll hold a huge library of shows that your DVR recorded while you didn’t even notice. (For example, my 2 TB drive currently holds over a dozen sporting events, over 200 movies, and close to 1000 TV episodes.)

The best part is when you get a chance to sit down and watch something from the weeks’ accumulation of shows. It’s just like an on-demand library except it won’t contain anything you hate. And once you start watching, you’ll be free to jump past any commercials. Maintenance is easy; when you discover that a particular show wasn’t worth the dozen episodes you requested, just delete them to free up space for the next potential binge.

When I pull up my long list of recordings and the wife asks, “What’s all that trash?,” I don’t mind. It’s better to record a show that I’ll never watch than to wish for entertainment and not have enough. Besides, she’s used to me by now.

by ·Comments Off on FTA Video: Getting C-band on a Ku-band dish

In my occasional series of FTA questions answered by other people, here’s one of my friends at FridgeFTA explaining how to pick up C-band signals using a Ku-band dish.

There are several challenges to overcome in this project. Ku-band dishes are offset, bouncing the collected signal back to the LNB at an angle. C-band dishes typically use a prime focus LNB suspended on the center of the reflected signal. More important is the sheer signal volume. The typical minimum C-band dish is about two meters wide, which will collect four times the signal of a one-meter Ku-band dish. (A one-meter diameter is just a touch larger than the typical 90cm Ku-band dish, but it’s the largest width protected by the FCC’s Over-the-Air Reception Devices rule that overrides local laws and neighborhood associations.)

Despite these problems, I’ve been able to pick up some stronger C-band signals using a setup very similar to the video above on my 1.2-meter offset dish. Since signal strength varies widely according to geography, it’s hard to say which C-band channels you’d get, but if you don’t mind experimenting, it’s fun to try!