Because AV is not IT!

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Would you ask your window cleaner to reprogram your central heating? Sounds a ridiculous question doesn’t it and we all know how we’d answer it, yet many non specialists are constantly being asked to operate outside of their areas of expertise or in some cases outside even their basic knowledge and understanding.

Whilst every second electrician will tell you that AV is simple and that they can sort out your system for you, this does not mean that they can deliver the quality of the AV system you require.  Can your electrician, for example, tell you if a system is en-54 compliant?  Or can they map out a speaker layout and resulting sound fields to deliver an even, phase coherent speaker system? If either of these questions is met with a confused look or enhanced bravado then the answer is probably NO.

We regularly see CCTV vans stating "audio visual systems" accompanied by the slogan "your security is our business."  These companies might well be an excellent choice to install the right security system for you, but does this make them experts in AV?  Do they understand how music systems can help you to deliver your brand values to your customers in your venue?  Or how meeting room technology can be installed to maximise the growing trend in BYOD?  

Often we find electricians fitting sound systems based on cheap components from electrical wholesalers.  These might well be suited to a warehouse or store paging system, but are wholly unsuitable for music playback in leisure spaces.  Similarly many contractors think that domestic solutions such as Bose or Sonos are suitable for commercial use, but then find that they lack consistency and control. These products although good in a residential environment, are designed for one user to use and to be controlled locally. There is no overall system control and no way to disable or limit front panel buttons which leads to issues in a hospitality environment.

Aha! It travels down a cable so it must be IT! Well yes and NO.  Much AV overlaps with IT, but IT is a discipline in itself.  The involvement of IT will help to facilitate the inputs and distribution of your AV system, but your IT team have specialist skills in other areas and most likely not in AV.

So how do AV and IT differ?  Well IT is predominantly digital; either a unit or system is connected or it's not.  But audio, whilst it has digital elements, has a varied and subjective output which can lead to a huge range of potential problems, resulting causes and a possible range of solutions as a result.  AV is also dictated by the physical attributes of a room; not only the floor area but the height and structure of the walls and ceiling and their finishes.

So before you choose who you engage to install your audio visual or music systems, first ask yourself;

• Is this their core business?
• Have they installed AV in other venues similar to mine, and what do they sound like?
• Do they have a portfolio of other venues where they have designed and fitted music and AV systems?
• and can they give me appropriate references?

If you are really not sure of their AV pedigree after pondering on these key questions, why not consider speaking to a company who specialise in sound? You and your guests really will hear the difference.

The benefits of improving your TV system

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Background
With the digital switchover, the way in which we receive and process TV signals has changed. This means that changes have to be made to hotel TV systems in order to continue watching terrestrial television.
Different options are available and which you choose will depend on the needs of your guests and how you want to use technology to position and help deliver your Brand.

So what has changed?
The TV signals now travel through the airways in a digital rather than analogue format which means that they either need to be ‘decoded’ back to analogue information using a ‘digi box’ to view them on existing TVs or new digital TVs need to be purchased which can read digital code.
RF (radio frequency) is the normal way of wiring and distributing TV signals within most buildings; signals travel through the airways and are detected by an aerial and pass via coaxial cable through amplifiers and splitters to your TVs.
With the digital change over, RF distribution can still be used to carry the new digital signals, but as stated above, either free view boxes or decoders are required for each television set, or new digital televisions need to be purchased which can interpret the digital information directly.
The digital signal carries more information than the old analogue system so it passes down the coax in groups or ‘muxes’, typically you would have five to six muxes to receive all the standard UK free view signals, but again no cabling changes are required to enable this to happen.
The other option for delivering TV to guest rooms is via IPTV (internet protocol). Here the signal travels over very cheap CAT5 cable in the style of a computer network. This in turn creates a platform from which you can deliver all previous forms of television and radio through one coherent TV channel list, (analogue, digital, free view, satellite, international, FM DAB & internet), whilst still supporting on demand films to your guests. IP technology can be customised by room and also enables you to market to your guests through the television and can be linked to your hotel’s website, PMS and booking facilities.
Hybrids of IPTV and RF distribution are also available where IPTV can either be delivered over coaxial cable or your guests can use their wi fi to deliver the interactive content and the coaxial cable can be used to deliver basic channels and terrestrial TV.

What about Satellite TV?
Satellite TV and Sky is normally just an input into an RF or IPTV system, it is not a system in its own right unless you budget to wire and place a sky decoder in every guestroom. The use of Sky+ boxes in each guestroom also has to be considered very carefully as Sky+ does not delete content between guest stays so this system can breech copyright laws.

What kind of TV system do I need?
In order to answer this question you will need to understand who your customers are and what they want from your technology offering.
Each hotel has different customers with different requirements and it is very hard to design a TV system until these are quantified and the management have agreed what they want to supply to their customers to satisfy, exceed or change their technology expectations.
The requirements of a venue with predominantly single male business clients will be very different from a family hotel with lots of child guests, which will in turn differ from a gastro hotel where the main attraction is the restaurant and food, where little time is spent in the rooms.
In a recent online survey carried out by CGA Integration, guests said they would expect to have more TV channels on their hotel TV than they have at home and many had in excess of 100 there. Having said this, it is probably better to offer less (say 20) well picked channels targeted at your specific customers, rather than expected them to wade through reams of irrelevant channels to find something suitable to watch.
If you want to offer your customers movies on demand (adult or otherwise), you will probably need CAT5 cabling or wi fi to stream or supply the movies to the guest rooms and provide a mechanism for billing these. This will in turn determine which kind of TV system you will require as either IPTV or a hybrid system will be needed to enable this to happen. However, if your customers do not require this kind of service, you may be able to improve your current TV offering by just to tidying up your TV systems rack or ‘Head End’.

Refurbishment vs. Refit
If you are managing a new build or a complete refurbishment of a venue it is advisable to take this opportunity to run CAT5 and good quality coaxial cable to each TV location. By doing this, all options are open to you and if you wish to change your offering moving forward all the hardware is in place to enable you to do this easily.
If, however you are refitting a trading venue you are more likely to be limited to TV options you can deliver over existing coaxial cable, either with or without the inclusion of wi fi. However it is prudent to include the addition of CAT5 cabling to all TV locations as part of your room refit programme, as this will open up future options for your venue.

What are the benefits of tidying up my Head End?
The ‘Head End’ is the term used to describe your TV system rack where your aerials, sky boxes, amplifiers and controllers all join up and then send signals out to your rooms or to sub distribution points in certain wings, floors or areas of your hotel.
A well designed head end will take in all of the inputs from these different sources and set them up so that you can define what is visible to your customers in their rooms and what will not be available e.g. you may choose to remove adult or shopping channels that might not be appropriate for your customer profile. It should also allow you to group and rename inputs such that similar channels can appear together e.g. all sport channels or all news channels appear in one location.
If the Head End has been set up properly all you will need to do in your guest rooms is put your TV into ‘auto tune’ and the TV will put all the channels exactly where you want them.
You may also want to add your own channels to your TV system; this might be a promotional video of your venue’s facilities or a marketing video to promote a sister hotel. This is very easy to do with IPTV as most will allow you to record or transfer footage onto the hard drives for playback. Even with an RF and Free view system you can still insert channels created on video playback devices or DVD players and fed them into your Head End.

Do I need a special TV?
Generally the answer to this question is no. IPTV generally uses your in room TV as a monitor so no special functionality is required if you decide on this route and equally if you carry out all the channel selection and tuning in the Head End of your RF and free view system, this in turn can be played through your existing guest room TVs as well.
If you are choosing new TVs it is always prudent to choose models with hospitality functionality; a special remote or button press sequence which will allow you to:

1. Lock out the setup menus,
2. Set the maximum volume
3. Preset the ‘turn on ‘ channel

Models that carry this feature do not need to be expensive; most Samsung TVs for example have this
functionality built in, even if you buy them on the high street. You may just need to ask the engineer who sets up your Head End to show you how to operate this function or purchase a remote from them to enable you to carry this out for yourself.

Next Steps
Once you have identified what you want to offer your customers, contact CGA Integration and we can discuss how we can best deliver the options available for your venue and your budget.

Phone: (0845) 058 4650
info@cga-integration.co.uk
www.cga-integration.co.uk

Are you a slave to technology or is your AV working for you?

I have recently had the pleasure of meeting many hoteliers and hotel developers at Hotel Summit; a meet the buyer event and I came away with the feeling that your AV is a burden and an expense and that the technology has not been set up to serve you, it is almost as if you are working for the technology.

In the internet/cat5/network age we have the ability to look at all areas of AV either remotely or across the network so that we can monitor it or it can be integrated with our other systems and then report to us when we need to interact or attend to it!

What is happening without network/remote support?
If you don’t have network / remote support you are unaware of the status of your hardware until if fails or worse still until a guest/delegate complains - leading to (avoidable) equipment failures and breakdowns causing disruption to events, your budgets and leaving your guests/delegates with a bad experience of your facility

What could happen if we added network/remote support?
With remote support or basic network settings your system could email you, you technical people or an external AV company to notify them that a unit is faulty, overheating or needs attention - thus ensuring issues are dealt with before the become a crisis.  With a little more investment systems can be centrally controlled and monitored by you, your technicians an external company - or all three. Customers can be supported, systems monitored in real time and usage & faults logged against each piece of hardware to give you useful metrics.

So what are the benefits?

Maximum up time - avoid preventable problems; lamps reaching the end of their life can be changed before they fail and new lamps ordered in good time. Works can be planned when rooms not in use or out of hours.
Minimise Carbon - minimum site visits as engineers can remotely check parts required. You’ll also have the ability to cross reference room usage/equipment status and bookings to turn off remotely/centrally equipment left on in unused rooms
Maximum Reliability - as faults are monitored and logged against hardware poorly performing hardware or software settings can be changed and evolved to get the best reliability and lowest running cost of all hardware
Improved Customer Experience - as all equipment will perform as expected within a brand standard and your guests will receive a better experience and go away happy!

What areas can be controlled this way?
TV systems - IPTV systems can be remotely diagnosed and supported down to each room's set top box - giving fully support.
IPTV video on demand content - this is now normally delivered and updated remotely - thus ensuring regular secure updates to your on site film and media library
Digital signage - each sign can be remotely managed and supported to ensure maximum up time
Background music systems - many basic amplifiers now have the ability to support Network cards to enable remote support or more advanced systems can support and report to sound processors that give AV support companies full visibility of all sound system hardware.
Hard drive music systems - all hard drive music systems can be supported remotely enabling music update and changes to be made at any time and hardware issues diagnosed and resolved
Video projectors - many video projectors are now capable of reporting back to you over a network to flag problems or with some more interactive systems full remote possibility is possible to allow customer support, fault finding and fault logging
Lighting systems - many of the larger lighting systems now have remote support ability to allow for programming tweaks and fault finding

What is possible?
Video projectors that email or report to you when overheating, filters blocked or the lamp is reaching the end of it's life cycle and will be needing replacement shortly
Sound equipment that can be monitored remotely or linked to your BMS so that its functionality can be monitored
Usage statistics on TV systems so you can increase or reduce certain typed of channel or change you charging structure
Engineers and support staff are able to remotely diagnose faults, restart units showing errors and help users on site for minimum down time.
Engineers who are able to diagnose faults remotely are able to order parts and attend site with the correct part first time to resolve problems in one efficient visit - minimum delay, down time and carbon footprint.
Faults can be logged against certain pieces of hardware so that the items that are not reliable or take a lot of support can be identified and either replaced or reconfigured to reduce cost and reduce the maintenance burden

All of these do affect you initial purchase cost – BUT all will help with your running costs and in turn keep your total cost of ownership lower by reducing calls and increasing the life span of products.  So get your AV working for you.

CGA Integration Ltd