I read user suggestions that TiVo do this for years, and now they’re doing it – the Morgans Hotel Group will be putting TiVo in the rooms of their new Mondrian in South Beach. Based on the description of what will be available, it sounds like this will be using the TiVo HD. It will be available to all Mondrian residents and guests starting with the official opening on December 1st.

I have mixed feelings about this. It is certainly nice to have TiVo available, but I think it will make the most sense for people with extended stays. If you’re not going to be there for long, you probably won’t spend a lot of time programming your SPs, etc. But I can think of ways that this could be much more usable.

For a while now I’ve been asking TiVo to do something to allow users to synchronize their settings, SPs, WLs, etc, between units. This would be very useful when users upgrade to a newer TiVo, or when something happens that requires a replacement, or just the loss of the data due to a drive failure, etc. Such a feature would also be very nice for situations like these. You show up in the hotel, go to the TiVo and ‘log in’ to your account, and all of your settings automatically download and the TiVo is your TiVo. When the guest checks out the hotel could reset it automatically, ready for the next guest.

I’m curious if there is any integration with other hotel systems as well. I see a lot of potential there. Most of you have probably stayed at hotels and are familiar with the on-screen account systems that let you review your folio, check out, etc. That could easily be done using Home Media Engine to use the TiVo as the interactive platform. Beyond that HME applications could be used to make reservations for dinner, to access information on local events and services, etc. TiVo would provide quite a powerful STB platform with HME. And I could easily see TiVo used for video on demand services as well, with a local server and a fast network connection.

I can see many ways TiVo would be used in a hotel environment, beyond just a stock TiVo in the room, but it isn’t clear if anything along those lines has been done here or is in the cards.

Press release:
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