Hi-Def Hotel Rooms (with LCD and Plasma)

When it comes to electronics, there are two kinds of people in this world.  There are those who shell out a ton of cash for the new gadgets the same day they're introduced; and there are those who wait a little while for the technology to settle down a bit and for the prices to drop.  I'm one of the latter…

I remember when Plasma TVs first came out.  They were spectacular, awesome, and impressive to a whole new degree, IF you had something to drive the picture.  At the time, Cable and Satellite TV had yet to offer hi-definition picture broadcasting, and precious few DVDs had the image quality to drive the new Plasma screens to their impressive limits.  The result?  An enormous flat TV for $12,000 that showed you the same old stuff you'd been watching on 66% of the screen with two black vertical bars on the left and right edges.  That's not for me.  I knew several people who couldn't wait to plunk down that kind of cash though… Incredible though it was.

Things are finally shaking out in the hi-def world now.  Aspect ratios are now fairly standard, Blue Ray won out over HD-DVD, and Cable and Satellite providers have a fairly impressive line up of hi-definition channels to watch.  I still haven't bit the bullet and bought a hi-def TV, plus the extra money to get a hi-def dish and service… but many hotels are doing it!

Maybe that's a better deal for me, I travel all the time so why should I spend extra money for TV at home?  The TVs in hotels are quite impressive.  They even have Satellite providers that put 10 or more hi-def channels in your room for you.

Some hotels take it to the next level.  They hook the TV up to a console that is mounted to the desk in your room.  If you have a couple of short cables, you can hook your laptop into the TV and watch a DVD movie!  You'll need a standard PC video cable… the kind you use to plug your laptop into a standard meeting room projector.  You'll also need a sound cable, and this one is harder to come by.  It's a cable with a stereo mini-plug on both ends… it looks just like the end of your headphone cable, but on both ends.  You'll only need a foot or two of slack in the cables; just enough to route from your laptop to the console on the desk.

With these two cables and a few DVDs, you check out some of your favorite movies in the full glory they were intended to be seen in!  I watched Clint Eastwood in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" in hi-def for the first time… it was very impressive!