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Motel TV's

R

radiorob2.0

With all the discussion of old televisions, let me add hotel televisions. The TV in my den is a hotel model. I had a ten year association with a hotel/convention center. One of the owners gave our business a new set when they were changing out the rooms. It came home when the hotel went out of business. It's a late nineties vintage Phillips with a "smart plug" RJ-45 jack for Lodgenet. To access the menu you have to punch the volume, channel and power buttons in a certain order.

Twenty years ago my uncle salvaged a seventies vintage RCA Mural TV. It had been sitting in the elements. He allowed the snow to melt and the set to dry out before determining a resistor was bad. It was replaced. The cabinet was faded and the speaker cover was missing but the set functioned for years.
 
My uncle was in charge of maintenance for a very large downtown hotel. He would offer to get used hotel TV's for
any member of the family who wanted one whenever they renovated the rooms. My dad would generally take him up
on the offer, because those hotel models from the 70's and 80's had a hidden volume limiter that hotel maintenance
could set at a level so as to not annoy surrounding guests. With a house full of kids and a shot to sleep in on Saturday
morning, my dad just loved that feature! :)
 
If I bought a used motel TV, it would have to cost me next to nothing because of the abuse those things get from drunken guests, unruly kids, you name it. One good thing: you'll never lose the remote, because it's bolted down. ;D

Which leads me to this question: Out of all the motels which still have those little backlit "COLOR TV by RCA" signs hanging out front, how many still have RCA sets?

--Russell
 
Russell W. said:
Which leads me to this question: Out of all the motels which still have those little backlit "COLOR TV by RCA" signs hanging out front, how many still have RCA sets?

--Russell
Click to expand...

I wondered the same thing. Once in a blue moon you will see that sign with the meatball logo.
 
Not to stray too far OT, but while most (decent) motels today have cable or satellite, did you ever stay in one back in the day that had really crummy OTA reception? Like lousy signals on even what should have been solid locals? I remember quite a few of those. (But then, on my budget, I've almost always stayed in establishments that, shall we say, would not have come close to 3 or 4 stars in the guidebooks...) ::)
 
Motel 6s generally still get their local stations off the air, and the quality of reception varies dramatically.

Worst ever? A Best Western (I think that's what it was) in Bullhead City, Arizona a few years back. OTA reception was off the local translators of the Phoenix and Vegas stations, but the TVs were set to cable channels, not UHF channels, so KPNX was on "93" and KTVK on "102" and so on. And the picture quality was awful.
 
The oddest OTA was in Topsail Beach, NC at a hotel with no visible antenna. The 1981 room had a 19" Sears Television. The coax came out of the wall and fed into a balun and converted to the screw terminal antenna input. Only two channels were available the first day, ABC and NBC from Wilmington, about 30 miles away. The next day an additional NBC was available from Washington about 50 miles away. Then the next day an ABC appeared from New Bern, also 50 miles away. Ironically, the TV at the mom and pop grocery next door could receive CBS from Greenville, again 50 miles away with nothing more than rabbit ears.

Beyond that weirdness, it was a nice place.
 
Best Ever? A 40" LCD panel in a hotel in Brownsville(!) Texas, during a two day stay down there this summer. It was a Residence Inn, recently remodeled, I think.
 
A Best Western hotel in Knoxville I stayed in earlier this year had a 32 inch HDTV, but then it only had analog cable, nothing digital at all. The pictures were VERY poor quality. Perhaps they were in the process of getting HD cable, but they didn't have it yet.
 
My first expiriance was a Motel we stayed at called the High Tide in Clear Water Florida. This was in 1955 and I was 3 years old. The Tv was one that you had to put 25 cents in for every hour that you wanted to watch. I think my dad over rode the coine timer. Does anyone know what tv stations we could have watched in March of 1955?
 
I've previously stated some of my experiences with hotel TVs, but here's something I thought I'd bring up. I know that sometimes they would have these TV sets with built-in radios. I believe they were RCA-branded, and single-rotary tuner. You know, the kind with channels 2-13, and A-F for VHF channels. There was usually a switch on the bottom for "TV-FM-AM." However, all the hotels I stayed at with these TVs had cable boxes. I remember one in Watertown, NY in 1998 that had a Pioneer cable box on it, and I'm pretty sure it had real cable TV. But I remember it had a national feed of Fox, probably because Watertown didn't have its own Fox affiliate.
 
Thanks! I don't think we could have watched 38, as there was no UHF converter. We would have been able to watch 8. I wonder if it was nbc back then.
 
Michael Bayus said:
Thanks! I don't think we could have watched 38, as there was no UHF converter. We would have been able to watch 8. I wonder if it was nbc back then.
Click to expand...

NBC and CBS, at the least. If the set had no converter, then 8 would've been the only choice, unless you could pull in WINK, WTVJ, WMBR (WJXT) or WDBO (WKMG) -- WTVT ch.13 did not sign on until April 1955.
 
Does anyone remember the pay TVs in motels? When I was 6 or 7 we took a trip out west to Mount Rushmore and they were all over the place. It was like a quarter for 20 minutes. I know it was less than a half hour, cause I wanted to watch the Brady Bunch and this pay TV was in COLOR (we only had B&W set) and for my quarter I didn't get to see the whole show.
 
Mark said:
Does anyone remember the pay TVs in motels? When I was 6 or 7 we took a trip out west to Mount Rushmore and they were all over the place. It was like a quarter for 20 minutes. I know it was less than a half hour, cause I wanted to watch the Brady Bunch and this pay TV was in COLOR (we only had B&W set) and for my quarter I didn't get to see the whole show.
Click to expand...

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,109278.0.html

This is what happens when threads get bumped a few pages back (I wish this forum would display more recent threads per page, so that at least the last month or so would get displayed on one page...). :(
 
azumanga said:
Michael Bayus said:
Thanks! I don't think we could have watched 38, as there was no UHF converter. We would have been able to watch 8. I wonder if it was nbc back then.
Click to expand...

NBC and CBS, at the least. If the set had no converter, then 8 would've been the only choice, unless you could pull in WINK, WTVJ, WMBR (WJXT) or WDBO (WKMG) -- WTVT ch.13 did not sign on until April 1955.
Click to expand...
It's a myth that some TV's did not have built in UHF tuners before 1964. In areas with UHF stations in the 1950s, and early 1960s, almost all TVs did in fact have built in UHF capabilities. Our family stayed in a motel in Montgomery Al several times in the early 60s which had TVs which apparently had a built in "UHF strip" to recieve WCOV/20 in addition to WSFA/12 (32 had not come on the air yet). With a UHF strip, a UHF channel could be tuned on an unused VHF channel. This was not a case of WCOV being converted to VHF in a MATV system. Each TV had it's own indoor antenna---a Bow-tie and screen similar to what Radio Shack sold until a few years ago. I remember it working quite well, as long as you were satisfied recieving only two channels, in b&w!
 
Nothing beats the Hyatt in Downtown Chicago with 42" Hi Def LCD screens feed by well split "cable" - with the aspect ratio set to "stretch"...

Come on, Hyatt, at least feed the local OTA stations in HD...
 
Jim said:
Nothing beats the Hyatt in Downtown Chicago with 42" Hi Def LCD screens feed by well split "cable" - with the aspect ratio set to "stretch"...

Come on, Hyatt, at least feed the local OTA stations in HD...
Click to expand...

It could be beyond their control. I worked for a hotel/convention center. During renovation, the company providing in-room pay per-view rewired the entire complex. Their system diplexed with the local cable company. The signal the PPV comany provided looked perfect in every room, the cable channels had noise. The company told the owner it was beyond their control because the cable system provided a less than perfect signal. Of course the cable company denied there was a problem. Considering my experience with the cable company, I side with the PPV company.
 
I remember staying at a motel , maybe 8 yrs ago, B and W TV (that had rabbit ears and a loop) between Philly and Harrisburg. Motel was on a hill with great visibility in all 4 directions. Was amazed to get near perfect pictures from about 60-75 mi, probably 20-25 channels.
And with cable you would have gotten far fewer locals...
 
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