American Diners Since 1947American Diners Since 1947 Hosted on Zooomr

From time to time, I get a crazy idea in my head that I actually want to travel somewhere. Whether it be to some exotic destination or a business trip out of the town, the idea of spending time in a city other then San Francisco always seems appealing at the time. The problem though, is that in reality, I actually hate being more then 10 blocks from my home.

I don’t expect everyone to share this view and their are plenty of times when I don’t even share this view, but all it takes is a couple of days away from home and I remember why it is that I hate travelling so much. It’s easy to point to the hassles of flying, living off an itinerary or any other petty complaint, but it really all comes down to the lack of internet access and the loss of my TiVo.

For many business travellers a laptop and a Sling box works perfectly for overcoming this obstacle and theorhetically, I could always breakdown and buy a laptop to travel with, but I’ve been reluctant to do that until Microsoft comes out with their long overdue fancy Longhorn software that they keep promising me. I could also upgrade my Slingbox to the new High Def Sling so that it supports my TiVo series 3, but with as little as I travel, It’s hard for me to justify the expense.

While, I’m probably not the average traveller, staying in a hotel this weekend did make me think about how terrible the television and internet in hotels really is and ways that technology could be used to get around bad hotel TV.

Having been an early TiVo adopter, it’s been a long time since I’ve been forced to watch live TV, but just try taking a weekend off from your DVR and you’ll quickly remember why it’s such a transformative technology. I used to wonder why hotels didn’t just buy up massive quantities of TiVos for their guests to use, but one look at the outrageous pay per view charges and it’s very clear why they have no interest in offering a more compelling TV experience to their guests.

I was equally as shocked when it came to the internet charges. Sure I could spend a whole month’s worth of DSL for 24 hours of internet service, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. In the lobby of my hotel, they actually had an internet kiosk, but instead of paying $5 for an hour or two, they actually charged .49 cents for every single page you accessed on the net. You want to check your email, it’s .49 to access the login page, another .49 to get to your inbox and of course each message you read will set you back another .49. Who would pay such outrageous prices is way beyond me, but at the same time, trying to go a couple of days without getting on the net was a lot harder then I expected.

In thinking about my experience, it really convinced me that if I had to travel more, that I would definetely buy a laptop and a Slingbox, so that I could always maintain control over my media preferences. It also made me wonder why Sling hasn’t put out some type of an outgoing USB adapter that would allow consumers to plug in their laptops directly to the hotel television sets. I suspect that such a device probably does exist, but I’ve seen no marketing information on it and it seems like a natural peripheral product for Sling to sell.

By marketing a Sling branded adapter to get television from laptops to an actual TV, it would help increase the appeal of the product from niche travellers to a wider mainstream audience. A lot of people may not care about watching TV on their computers, but at the end of a long day, I don’t want to stare at some laptop screen, I want to sit back, relax and watch real TV.

Whether Sling chooses to sell this sort of product at a profit or to give it away to help differentiate their brand, I see an opportunity for them to take something that is currently too complex for most consumers and to make as simple as plugging in a cord from their laptop to an analog TV. While I suspect that the quality wouldn’t be the same as watching my HDTV 60″ Sony Wega, it would certainly beat having to watch bad politcal ads on someone else’s local news.