Circus Circus Clowns Around With Their Hotel TV
I don’t take a lot of vacations, but every now and then I like to get out town, in order to do a little bit of gambling 
Every time I go to Vegas, Reno or Tahoe, I try to stay at a different casino, so I never really know what to expect. Some of the hotels that I’ve stayed at have been great and some have been terrible, but Circus Circus is the only one, that has lost my business entirely.
Normally, I’d be bothered by a dirty room or poor customer service, but in this case, it was a big fat sticker, that cautioned their guests about hooking up your outside equipment, to their television sets. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have cared about something like this, but with the explosion in the number of laptop to TV solutions, this has become an important issue for consumers to think about. What good does it do you, to be able to take your PC on the go, if hotels end up freezing you out, by neutering their TV sets?
I know that hotel PPV is a huge business, but I would think that tech savvy consumers would be a juicy demographic, that the casinos would be after. In the past, the hotels haven’t had to compete against outside video sources, but as technology has gotten better, we’ve seen new possibilities emerge. Instead of leaving your TV at home, you can placeshift it with Sling or Orb. With the proliferation of portable DVD players, it’s easy to take movies on the go. Whether it’s the newly announced Sansa TakeTV or the upcoming SlingCatcher, we are seeing an increase in the number of solutions for getting digital video to the television, on an almost daily basis.
I’ve never thought about checking to see if a hotel offers open access for their TVs, but in the future, it will be something that I make sure to ask about. I understand that the casinos would rather have me gambling, then watching TV, but being able to placeshift local sports, makes betting on them all that much more exciting.
In my dream world, casinos would charge $20 more per night and I’d get unlimited broadband, along with a TiVo that can record content during my stay, but I’m not holding my breath on this one. Right now, this is only an issue for early adopters, but as PC to TV technology goes mainstream, it will be something that more people will want to think about.
Some hotels may try to lock people into their proprietary systems, but in the future, I’m going to insist on free wifi and open television, even if it means that I’m staying at motels, instead of clowning around with Circus Circus.
Posted on October 22nd, 2007 by Davis
Filed under: DRM, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Slingbox, TV, Technology, TiVo, VOD