When will Hotel's get DVR or Tivo?

I would really only be useful as a live buffer. It's not as if you're going to be there long enough to setup (and use) a season pass.

Usually when I'm at a hotel, I'm out doing stuff the whole time and only watch the TV for a few minutes as I prepare for bed.

 

I can't watch live tv, period. When I'm traveling, I fill up my laptop with Tivo2go. However, if the hotel has free wifi, then I might catch up on shows via Hulu.

 

Considering that many hotels have regular TV shows, as well as movies, as PPV with DVR-ish features, I doubt that having a Tivo/DVR in a room will happen any time soon.

 

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I feel your pain on watching live tv, but I also agree that it will most likely not happen soon in hotel.
I agree with bringing our laptop, but the angle is not good for more than one person.

 

Due to a late change of plans I ended up staying at a hotel a couple of weeks ago that featured "Free movies in your own room"! A dusty library of dog-eared VHS boxes filled the office bookcase walls and an aging Sanyo VHS player sat there sadly blinking a pale blue 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM under a 21" RCA CRT television in my "newly upgraded" room. I didn't even bother turning it on instead opting to watch a recording on my TiVo HD via my laptop and Slingbox using the hotel's "Free Wifi". (I didn't say they weren't somewhat progressive )

BTW, their WiFi consisted of a Linksys wireless router litterly duct taped upside down under the eve over the office door. Luckily (sort of) my room was directly across from it.

I don't think they'll be jumping into the flat panel/DVR arena any time soon.

 

Count me in on wishing hotels had TiVos in the rooms. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll see widespread deployment anytime soon. There was this deal: http://www3.tivo.com/abouttivo/pressroom/pressreleases/2008/pr2008-11-12.html but I've never stayed at these hotels before.

There's just too much remote lag when accessing Slingbox from a hotel even w/control mode on. My flaky and not very fast DSL connection at home doesn't help either.

 

A DVR in a hotel room would be a waste for me. When I'm in a hotel room, the TV is only on for noise or maybe the news. It's just a place to sleep.

 

My peeve is a hotel that very blatantly advertises they have HDTVs in every room, and then throw a crap SD signal at it. Ugh.

 

Here's a thread where this was discussed before:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=410244

 

nah, I certainly wouldn't want to watch recording of those who stayed there before me.. ewww!

 

I stayed in a hotel last month that had a 50" plasma screen in it. It also had a panel on the desk adjacent to the tv with an HDMI port and a few other ports that fed to the TV. So I could have packed my TiVo (or laptop) and connected it to their tv.

 

The DSL line is probably the culprit. For the most part my Slingbox connection optimizes a reasonably good picture even at the "WiFi enabled" 802.11b hotels.

Yep...most of the places where I stay these days have flat panels now...with HDMI, etc. The trouble I run into is those darn proprietary remotes that won't let you access other features of the TV. Grrrrr.

 

Some new TVs (Vizio is the only brand I remember off hand) come with built-in media players that can play mpeg, xvid, wmv etc from USB sticks. I think that might be a decent compromise.

But mostly I think hotels are perfectly happy selling people movies and TV shows "on demand". I doubt most of them will ever get DVR instead of "On demand" viewing. All hotels I've stayed at have widescreen TVs with stretched 4:3 analog content anyway, if they can't even get that right, I doubt a DVR is anywhere close to the top of the list of improvements.

 

Never. The profit margins on hotel ppv are too high. Look at all the trouble some hotels go to in order to prevent you from hooking up a portable DVD player or your laptop to their TV, like proprietary remotes that disable inputs.