Master Antenna TV Systems (Hospitals, Hotels, etc)

That looks like a great quality vintage AM/FM tuner you have underneath the DAB tuner though. Does it have AM stereo, or is it newer than that?

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I wouldn’t know D:
That isn’t my photo (à la the watermark in the corner). I’d long since turfed the tuner in question and had to search for another.

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I would not be suprised if that’s probably the one! I also note according to the manual that Dgtec were (are?) a Hills product and Hills is also a big player in Hospital TV systems.

Great work temp!

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Currently in hospital after an operation yesterday… Really need to pee but one of my roomies just collapsed and coded at the end of the bed but he’s coming ok now and will be alright but not what I needed to wake up too.
TV however is great, seems to be just like a normal TV, a couple of old entries in there like Aspire and an old duplicate WIN entry but the rest are all good and perfect reception. Only issue is the speaker on the bed buttons is muffled when soft and quite loud when at a clear level. At least I’ve been able to watch the cricket though and should be home and tucked up in bed before day 5 starts.

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I recently went on a two week holiday in WA, QLD and NSW. Three places I stayed (Quest Bunbury, Crown Promenade Perth and Meriton Pitt Street Sydney) had Foxtel channels. I wished I had taken some photos for comparison. From my memory Crown had the best line-up because it included most Foxtel sports and movie channels in HD plus a dozen foreign language channels. Meriton had six of the seven Fox Sports channels but reception was average. Quest also had several Foxtel channels but no Fox Cricket, and picture was blurry.

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Currently staying at the Rydges in Cairns for the weekend, the TV in the room is bizarre.

As with many places, Rydges are feeding the signal into the TV through their own methods. It seems to me like the TV is receiving an analogue signal, there’s no EPG, and some of the channels that aren’t working are showing the static effect that used to be prevalent in the analogue days. As usual, all the menu options are disabled. They’ve also custom named all the channels on the TV, which are mostly wrong. Picture quality is really bad on some channels, and some are stretched to shit!

This is what i’ve got:

1: “ABC1” showing ABC, picture quality is very low!
2: “ABC2” showing ABC Kids/Comedy, picture quality very low, colours jumping around, looks terrible.
3: “ABC3” showing ABC Me, working normally
4: “FOX1” showing Fox Sports 2, normal.
5: “FOX2”, unsure of exact channel, severely stretched horizontally, heaps of text, logos, details from the left and right of screen cannot be seen.
6: “7TWO” showing 7Two, working normally.
7: “SEVEN” showing 7, poor picture quality.
8: “7MATE”, showing 7mate, normal.
9: “WIN9” showing WIN, working normally.
10: “TEN” showing Nine, audio working sometimes, picture frozen on a cap from The Grinch movie
11: “ELEVEN” showing SBS Viceland, poor picture quality.
12: “GO” showing 9Life, working normally.
13: “GEM” showing 10Peach, normal.
14: “ONE” showing 10Bold, normal.
15: “SBS1” showing SBS, poor picture.
16: “FOX8” showing Fox8, poor picture.
17: “ANIMAL” showing TLC, severely stretched horizontally, cannot are left or right side of image, TLC logo, or heaps of text.
18: “MUSICMAX” showing Max, funnily has no audio.
19: “SKY NEWS” showing SkyNews, image squished vertically, letterboxed at the top and bottom of feed.
20: “GATEWAY”, nothing, just analogue static.
21: “7TRAVEL”, nothing, just static.
22; “7TRAVEL”, black screen with the words No Signal.
23/24/25: No name, just a blue screen with no audio.

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Some pics (sorry, just photos of the TV)

Bad picture quality on ABC Kids:

Stretched horizontally:

Nine is stuck on this frozen image. Yesterday, Saturday, when I arrived it was frozen on a picture of Today Extra with 9:15 on the clock, was like that all day yesterday. Today, it’s stuck on this image from The Grinch Movie.

Sky News, black bars top and bottom:

TLC, badly stretched left and right:

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I stayed in an Adina in Sydney last weekend. The room had a standard definition television so none of the HD channels were visible, and as I have experienced before Fox Sports, Sky News and Discovery were all analogue channels. Also, I tried to plug my laptop into the HDMI inputs but they had been disabled. They really need to replace all the televisions in those serviced apartments.

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Sounds like a lot of their distributed networks need to be fixed. But I’d say it’s an expense they don’t think they need to spend.

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I hope you complained about the poor reception, static, distorted AR, etc?

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Gee, I’m now starting to think that the MATV system where I stayed on the Central Coast last month wasn’t that bad…although it was still extremely disappointing to see two (later one) Foxtel channels out of action and unwatchable regional channel reception for almost all the trip!

Ahh, that stretched picture reminds me of when pubs/clubs first upgraded their main screens to widescreen plasmas & Foxtel Digital more than a decade ago while often still keeping smaller 4.3 CRT (or in some cases, LCD) sets.

Woah, now that’s really dodgy!

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Exactly why I actively avoid Adina accom. Have done so since it was named Medina in 2003, two visits more than enough.

What suburb on the Central Coast?

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Umina at the holiday park which will undoubtedly be packed with tourists from Sydney over the next week or two. The TV signal most likely would’ve been fed through some internal MATV system due to the presence of those six (or 4-5 on the last trip) Foxtel channels. Don’t know about the FTAs but I’d imagine they would’ve originated from just over the water at Bouddi.

Although most average viewers probably won’t care just as long as the main Sydney channels are working, from this media enthusiast’s perspective it was disappointing that reception of the regional channels weren’t working (and was still patchy on the last day) because after being in Sydney for the entire year, it would’ve been good to have the opportunity to watch channels other than relays of the exact same channels I receive at home…even if the Central Coast services of Prime7 & NBN Nine have very little local content.

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And WIN still isn’t available from Bouddi or Gosford ether (AFAIK).
Only Forresters Beach (Wyong).

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Exactly and Umina does not receive the Wyong signal, Bouddi is it.

Exactly, during aggregation switch on, I was constantly frustrated about motels and resorts not updating equipment for the UHF channels. Ended up asking upon booking if they had the new channels installed.

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My work (which I just started at) has an old Foxtel standard box (with the curved sides) and looks like it’s sent out via analog.

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That sounds like one of the early generation of digital receivers (a Pace model I think). I had one of those when I first got FOXTEL in 2008.

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Correct me if I’m wrong on this, but weren’t Foxtel using Pace set top boxes even back in the analogue days?

Either way, here’s a picture of the one Petarkco is probably referring to - there were a couple of different versions with the logo though:

OldFoxtelBox

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I remember doing a job at a motel and seeing about 10 of them all rigged up to a MATV. Probably never been turned off since 2004. They’re hardy boxes. My dad has still got one. He’s someone who doesn’t notice the difference between HD and SD so has never bothered upgrading.

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Funny that.

My elderly mother doesn’t know that there IS a difference. Her telly can only receive MPEG2 channels and is an older 720p model. I know she’s not the only one like this.

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