How do they do it cable TV

[dolph]

I was on holiday in Galway and the little hotel we were staying in, about 9 rooms, had cable tV installed. In our bedooms we could simply change channels on the TV set and receive different programmes, including all the normal BBC 1 2 3 4 ITV 1 2 3 etc plus Sky SportsMovies etc., in all we had a choice of 20+ programmes.

I asked the proprietor how he could do this to each individual room and he told me that he had one supplied box from cable company from which the individual coaxials went to each room. That was the depth of his knowledge.

How do Hotels have such systems when I have to have three different digi boxes? With my kids it would be great to have such a hotel system.

Anyone know how it is done?

 

[plugwash]

My guess is that the box in question is essentially eqivilent to a stack of cable boxes (it may even be a stack of cable boxes in a cabinet somehwhere) one for each channel they want.

 

[OwainDIYer]

With 9 rooms vs 20 channels, it's more likely there's some form of link between the tv/remote and the headend to deliver the appropriate channel to the TV, rather than decoding and modulating 20 channels.

On the other hand it may be an analogue cable system that simply does push 20 channels down the same cable, possibly using dual standard VHF/UHF tellies to get the required channel numbers. A lot of older hotel systems used VHF for the paid-for channels and a simple relay/filter to permit or block these to the room telly.

To do this at home, shove a reasonably powerful PC/server in a cupboard with a number of TV cards in it, to act as decoder/recorder/server, and stream the video over IP to something like modded Xboxes running Myth in the rooms.