The case of the veterinary horse at HotelTV, when a simple mistake covers everything.
In summer 2019, LG Hungary approached us to help solve a hotel TV challenge in a new hotel in Brussels.
One of their partners sold 180 LG HotelTVs, including the Pro:Centric server, to the Meininger chain’s newest hotel. They have installed and commissioned everything, but the TVs cannot connect to the server and do not receive the preset channel list.
The antennas, headend and cabling were installed by another company, they say everything is fine.
Both installers said they did everything right and spread their hands. According to LG, the TVs are also immaculate, yet you can’t watch TV in the rooms.
Our task was to identify the cause of the problem and propose a solution.
I flew to Brussels with confidence, because with modern equipment and decades of professional experience, I have overcome many seemingly insurmountable challenges.
The manager of the hotel was looking forward to the opening of the hotel and the arrival of the guests, who of course complained about the TV.
The colleague on shift showed me the headend, which had been professionally installed by the Austrian company. I asked him to show me the LG Pro:Centric server as well, as I hadn’t seen that. At this point there was some confusion in the power room as he had no idea what I was asking for. We had no choice but to go through every room in the hotel from basement to attic where we could imagine the server could be. The other company claimed that they had definitely installed it.
After a long search, we found a professionally installed server that worked. There was just one problem, they got the floor wrong and it wasn’t installed in the right room. This resulted in the server being connected to the TV network in the wrong place, so it didn’t work properly. Hooray, we have the bug, we have the solution. Just a drill between the two floors and a cable connection.
I flew home, filed the report, pointing out that there was no time to delay the intervention, because if it was not done quickly, there could be more problems.When the HotelTV devices are first turned on, they try to connect to the HotelTV server, which if it works properly (and is connected in the right place) sends the preconfigured channel list and settings to the devices. If the TV doesn’t detect the server signal when it’s first turned on, it never looks for it again, switches from hotel mode to home mode, and asks the user to do a channel scan.
As the negotiations were underway to decide who would be responsible for the 15-minute intervention, more and more guests arrived at the hotel. After turning on the TV, of course, everyone did a channel search and the programmes appeared on the sets out of order. This wouldn’t have been a big problem, but here Murphy stepped in and cleverly arranged for the first 10 channels to be encoded. When this happens, a nice black screen appears with a white caption saying “this is an encrypted channel, if you want to watch it, call your provider”. If a guest sees a sign like this in a hotel, who do you call? Of course the receptionists had no idea what to do.
The story ended with us being asked to solve the problem. I flew out again, did the professional wiring, got the connection between the server and the TVs up and running. There was only one “small” task left, to do a factory reset on all the TVs to get them working again. Anyone who has run a hotel knows that when the hotel is full, it is no small challenge to get into all the rooms and fiddle with the TVs. Again, of course, there were no volunteers for this task. The hotel manager had only us to rely on, so a colleague of mine moved in for a few days and systematically went through the rooms, reset, tested and documented.
The end result was a perfectly working TV system, it’s just a pity that it was only about a month after opening.
Lessons learned:
It is also advisable to entrust the delivery and installation of the TV sets to the company that installs the headend (control panel) and the antennas.
Don’t leave the installation of the TV system to the last minute, as it can be a lot more hassle in an established hotel.
Tibor Posta
HotelTV specialist
