Time for our every two year exercise in Hotel TV

[kenglish]

Yep! Election night is a couple of weeks away. Time for engineers across America to check out the Democrat and Republican Election-Night Headquarters hotel ballrooms, and figure out a way to get our stations' HDTV signals to those fancy big screens the news (and promotions!) folks love so much.

I noticed that one local hotel "has Cable" according to their website. I need to call the other one....last time, they only had analog NTSC from satellite, with about a 15-second delay.

Just thought I'd remind everyone. (Hmmm. gotta be some way to get a meal/drink outta the "site survey".)

 

[radiorob2.0]

Be prepared to hoist a high gain antenna on the roof and run coax and appropriate amp. Been there, done that.

 

[kenglish]

Yep! We ran 1000' of RG-11/U and a preamp back on the infamous New Year's Eve 2000, to get all the way inside a huge convention center.

Last election, we put VHF (for analog) and UHF (for DTV) antennas on the roof, and ran about 200 feet of coax. We offered a split to all the other stations, but everyone (even our own) just wanted to put their website's homepage on the big screens anyway.

I wish I had a fiber optic system for these things.

 

[kenglish]

Checked out the Demo's hotel choice yesterday (going over to the GOP's hotel today)...
They have an OK looking all-analog system, but they don't even have the local CBS affiliate (an ex-O&O).
They tell me that their MATV tech is going to "rig-up" an off-air Digital TV system this week, just for the elections. : I'm not so sure, since they also said, "It might still be a little grainy on a big screen".

Turns out, they do use OTA for locals, not DBS (like they originally thought).

 

[radiorob2.0]

Checked out the Demo's hotel choice yesterday (going over to the GOP's hotel today)...
They have an OK looking all-analog system, but they don't even have the local CBS affiliate (an ex-O&O).
They tell me that their MATV tech is going to "rig-up" an off-air Digital TV system this week, just for the elections. : I'm not so sure, since they also said, "It might still be a little grainy on a big screen".

Turns out, they do use OTA for locals, not DBS (like they originally thought).

Why do they not have the local CBS on their system? Also, define "Rig". I envision all sorts of experiments.

 

[kenglish]

No one there knew why they don't have CBS. I don't know whether it's a retrans issue, or a tech problem.

They said the tech that "services the Marriott" will be working on the system. I was told, last year, that the local Marriott is scheduled to be upgraded right about now, so he might be using the headend equipment that is going to go there. Key word is "might".

They both are Lodgenet contracts.

BTW, it sounds like no one has ordered the sets from the rental house yet.

 

[kenglish]

Turns out, they did have CBS...it was moved from 2 to 21, due to ingress.

We had the four local news ops on CATV channels 31, 33, 35, and 37 as ATSC channels, but none of the rental TVs would detect them. So, he moved them to 2 and 3, then nuked the two PBS stations (7 and 11) for the night. With all the DTVs running on ATSC within the 2-13 part of the OTA channelization (and the rental TVs set for OTA mode), they all worked fine.

The other hotel (GOP HQ) didn't have any digital. All stations ran analog (3 stations ran their coverage in stretch-o-logue on the widescreen sets). Lots of noise, ingress (pre-ghost "halos"), etc. They also had Fox News up on the big, big, big-screen, pulled in as NTSC (where's the smiley for "Yuck"?). I told them to talk to us IN ADVANCE next time...we could'a fixed things up.