Hotel / Resort Television Systems

I have just returned from a week long holiday at Center Parcs. Each villa has a 13-channel TV service which shows certain choice channels from the Sky EPG.

The current line up is (IIRC), BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, C4, C5, ITV2, ITV3, Jetix, CBBC/BBC3, Sky News, plus (analogue - i.e. Ceefax/Teletext) subtitled versions of BBC1, 2, ITV1, C4 and the BBC radio channels.

My question is threefold : 1 - how do these systems work? And 2 - we got Scottish C4 (Scottish adverts) and Irish Sky News (Irish Republic adverts) - how was this possible? Oh and 3 - given that Nickharveyland has already gone digital, how come analogue teletext subtitles were generated rather than digital ones?

I won't grouse too much about the Sports Café showing the football on their brand new 16:9 Panasonic plasmas in glorious 4:3 stretchyvision :S

I'm pretty sure the Jetix brand has been phased out... it was replaced by 'Disney XD' in the UK around October of 2009.

Presumably they're like all internal systems in hotels/offices - the channels are all recieved on seperate tuners and then re-distributed. At their simplest it's just a case of having a stack of satellite of terrestrial receivers and then re modulating their outputs on different UHF channels that are then tuned in on normal tellies. Although the systems are normally more sophisticated now - using other forms of distribution and specialist receivers in the rooms - I was in a hotel a while back that had an IP based system, providing TV and internet.


Sky boxes tuned to wrong versions of those channels?


Aren't there still 'analogue' teletext subtitles carried alongside channels on Sky? Did you get Ceefax too?

Other than that I don't know as you haven't mentioned where this Center Parcs is

The Scottish one I can understand, but Irish? From a British based receiver? Isn't this illegal?



No.



Wiltshire.

It's accessible by manually tuning/other channels on a Sky Digibox, Sky News is free to air. They probably would have a stack of generic satellite receivers, or a multi-receiver rather than a load of Sky digiboxes so manually tuning to the wrong version of Sky News or Channel 4 is fairly likely. Of course the equipment is second hand and was originally used in Ireland!


In what way would it be?


Well then that's probably it then, the traditional subtitles are being put on in the satellite receiver that's supplying the channels (I notice that on my Virgin box there are teletext subtitles on ITV, C4 and several other channels)

if you on about hoilday parks I used to love the inhouse channel at pontins

Most hotels use the Quadriga system (http://www.quadriga.com/) which allows television, movies-on-demand, telephone and broadband connections.

The way most hotels also run their system, is they have a rack of either Sky or free-to-air satellite receivers and tune them into the channels they want and then transmit these across their network via either standard RF or Ethernet.

The reason they could have had Channel 4 (Scotland) and Sky News Ireland could be due to the technician being lazy and just adding the first one they come to when tuning it in.

In the Hilton Hotel in Cardiff, Channel 4 is on button 4, whilst S4C is on 6 so not to confuse travellers.

Another reason that you got Sky News Ireland could be because CenterParcs advertise heavily in the Irish Republic and have a lot of Irish guests, and this could something like receiving Rai and TVE in other hotels - local channels from the countries some guests come from.

I know of a few hotels which use the IP-system. You get the usual channels in the same way as detailed above, but by going through the interactive menus there are hundreds of other channels you can 'subscribe' to whilst you're there such as BBC World News, BBC Prime etc.

Even by your standards, that's stretching it a bit.

Thanks to other, more sane members for answering my queries.

PTV wasn't it? The 'production values' I saw on the one park down in the South West back in the late 80's were great!

(Think those 'home video' spoofs Mel Smith & Griff Rhy Jones used to do on one of their BBC series.)

I got asked once 'Do you want to see 'Cine Racing?' 'No' was my reply!

So most hotels all use the same system by one company, even though there are numerous systems available from numerous manufacturers? Do you have any evidence to back up your claim (and a hastily made Publisher document full of spelling mistakes does not count as evidence)?

Does Trafalgar Media install these systems by any chance?

No, Trafalgar Media manufacture the hardware, install it and code the software.

It is unusual at Centerparcs, the channels are tuned onto an analogue TV like a normal channel - but a lot of the channels tend not to work and when this happens there it displays some strange satellite error message, certainly not a Sky digibox one.

The channels use unusual regions, the one I went to was at Sherwood in Nottinghamshire - BBC1 showed Look North Hull whilst we saw Thames Valley Tonight (as it was) on ITV1. Sky News was the Irish version as has been said above.