Tv upgrades

[CanICruiseSoonPlease]

When will the other ships besides the Regal and the Royal upgrade the tv systems to On demand?

 

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[WupperAV]

Probably when they go to Drydock. Maybe never. Depends on the expense incurred. That's a lot of TVs.

[fishywood]

It was reported quite a while back that the promised expansion of On Demand fleetwide has been canceled (aside from Diamond and Sapphire)

[Colo Cruiser]

Other then the new ships is not being done on existing ships anymore besides the ones mentioned above.

[cheznandy]

It was reported quite a while back that the promised expansion of On Demand fleetwide has been canceled (aside from Diamond and Sapphire)

It was mentioned on the Aus/NZ board that Sun Princess has it too, I know the Dawn doesn't, and the Sea doesn't. Interesting that those are the ships they added amenities for Asia.

 

We loves the On demand TV on the Sapphire:)

[JimmyVWine]

Canceling the upgrades will mean we'll be able to continue to bring a portable DVD player and hook it up to the old style TV's. With the "On Demand" televisions, you are not able to do this.

 

Bob

Streaming media is the wave of the future (and the "now") and DVDs will soon be "the 8-Track Tapes of the 2000's". There is no reason why a ship cannot have up-to-date TVs that will also accept an "AUX In" jack. Assuming that the Grand Class ships are not going to be scrapped within the next 10 years, it is odd to think that they will be sailing in the year 2025 with 1990's TVs. Especially considering how inexpensive a small, state of the art TV is. Heck of a lot cheaper than a new mattress. Can probably buy a new TV for around the price of two pillows.

[Woobstr112G]

Streaming media is the wave of the future (and the "now") and DVDs will soon be "the 8-Track Tapes of the 2000's". There is no reason why a ship cannot have up-to-date TVs that will also accept an "AUX In" jack. Assuming that the Grand Class ships are not going to be scrapped within the next 10 years, it is odd to think that they will be sailing in the year 2025 with 1990's TVs. Especially considering how inexpensive a small, state of the art TV is. Heck of a lot cheaper than a new mattress. Can probably buy a new TV for around the price of two pillows.

 

Well that feature is disabled, at least to my knowledge, on the Royal. It didn't work for me in 2013.....

 

Bob

Edited October 31, 2016 by Woobstr112G

[shanecindy21403]

With the on demand features on the new TV systems, I don't see why anyone would even need to bring a DVD player.

 

We love the new systems and would love to have it fleetwide!

[AdoraBelle]

With the on demand features on the new TV systems, I don't see why anyone would even need to bring a DVD player.

 

We love the new systems and would love to have it fleetwide!

 

 

 

Just off the Royal. A couple of things:

 

1) the picture quality for the on-demand movies is terrible. We watched the most recent Star Wars film and it was horribly pixelated and blocky. Not sure what kind of system they're using, but it's not robust enough to stream actual "high def" video to the high def televisions.

 

2) we like to stock up on our favorite shows and "binge watch" while on vacation, some nights.

 

3) we were easily able to unplug the on-demand system's HDMI port on the left side of the Viewsonic televisions (what we had in our suite) and play back our own content stored on a laptop. This did not cause any problems when we re-connected the ship's cable (which we were careful to do each time).

 

In short ... it was kind of nice having some on-demand movies, but there were no television shows to speak of, just some news and sports channels, and the movie playback quality was very bad, especially on the large-ish televisions. I'd rather be able to play my own stuff.

[Woobstr112G]

I don't see the sense in your post.

 

In most cabins on regal/royal (which have on demand programming), the tvs are mounted nearly

flush to the wall, making access difficult.

 

Yet one poster reported being able to disconnect the ship hdmi

and plug in his own.

 

On some other ships, selecting the different inputs is disabled in firmware.

 

On some other princess ships the flat screen tv are actually 16x9 sd monitors.

 

So, you may or may not be able to connect your dvd player, but

I don't see it being related to on demand programming.

 

Ok, I'll try to explain it one more time:rolleyes:. DW and I like to bring copies of old TV comedies that aren't on the On Demand system. We've done a number of non suite Princess cruises on non Royal class ships where we were always able to hook up a portable DVD player. On our one Royal class cruise (look in my signature) we weren't able to hook up the DVD player and the shows we wanted to watch were not on the On Demand system. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of choices on the system, just not what we wanted to watch.

 

Bob

Edited November 1, 2016 by Woobstr112G

[AdoraBelle]

Ok, I'll try to explain it one more time:rolleyes:. DW and I like to bring copies of old TV comedies that aren't on the On Demand system. We've done a number of non suite Princess cruises on non Royal class ships where we were always able to hook up a portable DVD player. On our one Royal class cruise (look in my signature) we weren't able to hook up the DVD player and the shows we wanted to watch were not on the On Demand system. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of choices on the system, just not what we wanted to watch.

 

Bob

 

 

We were able to access the HDMI port on the Viewsonic TVs on the Royal last week (i understand some rooms have Samsung). It was slightly fiddly but doable. I don't know much about stand-alone DVD players these days, but surely you could buy one with HDMI out, or buy a converter cable. Otherwise, a cheap laptop with a DVD drive should be able to play your discs and should have video output you can access with the right kind of cable. For example, my laptop uses a kind of video port called "mini display", so I have a ten buck "mini display port to HDMI" cable from Amazon that I bring along on cruises.

 

(Not arguing, just trying to help. Eventually all these ships will have televisions with HDMI ports, and while some do make you work to access those ports, so far I haven't found one I couldn't use after enough stubbornness was applied.)

[Woobstr112G]

We were able to access the HDMI port on the Viewsonic TVs on the Royal last week (i understand some rooms have Samsung). It was slightly fiddly but doable. I don't know much about stand-alone DVD players these days, but surely you could buy one with HDMI out, or buy a converter cable. Otherwise, a cheap laptop with a DVD drive should be able to play your discs and should have video output you can access with the right kind of cable. For example, my laptop uses a kind of video port called "mini display", so I have a ten buck "mini display port to HDMI" cable from Amazon that I bring along on cruises.

 

(Not arguing, just trying to help. Eventually all these ships will have televisions with HDMI ports, and while some do make you work to access those ports, so far I haven't found one I couldn't use after enough stubbornness was applied.)

 

Thanks for your input. If memory serves me right, in 2013 we had a View Sonic. I tired every HDMI port and it did not work with the cable I brought to hook up a cheap blu ray player that I also brought along. I was unaware that some rooms had Samsung. All was not lost as we did in fact bring my laptop and watched our comedies on it. Just a little smaller screen.....:D:D:D

 

Bob

[caribill]

Assuming that the Grand Class ships are not going to be scrapped within the next 10 years, it is odd to think that they will be sailing in the year 2025 with 1990's TVs. Especially considering how inexpensive a small, state of the art TV is. Heck of a lot cheaper than a new mattress.

 

The cost is not the TVs (which will no doubt need to be replaced anyway before the ships leave the fleet), but in all the ship-wide cabling needed to allow the on-demand programming to work in each cabin.

[floridalover5623]

We were able to access the HDMI port on the Viewsonic TVs on the Royal last week (i understand some rooms have Samsung). It was slightly fiddly but doable. I don't know much about stand-alone DVD players these days, but surely you could buy one with HDMI out, or buy a converter cable. Otherwise, a cheap laptop with a DVD drive should be able to play your discs and should have video output you can access with the right kind of cable. For example, my laptop uses a kind of video port called "mini display", so I have a ten buck "mini display port to HDMI" cable from Amazon that I bring along on cruises.

 

(Not arguing, just trying to help. Eventually all these ships will have televisions with HDMI ports, and while some do make you work to access those ports, so far I haven't found one I couldn't use after enough stubbornness was applied.)

We've had both types of TV's on the Royal....both Samsung which did not work by utilizing the HDMI input and Viewsonic which did work. I tried unplugging the their HDMI input the other day & had some luck on getting it to work with my input but didn't have the time to actually watch anything since my 2TB hard drive takes quite a long time to load up- but I did have my typical entry screen (WD-TV) . I'll try today again since I have more time.

btw- we have a TV that has a broken wall attachment that allows me to access the HDMI input rather easily vs the Samsung which is almost next to impossible.

I still haven't watched all their movies yet so I haven't been pushed to try accessing their input again.

More later.

[GRAYTech]

The cost is not the TVs (which will no doubt need to be replaced anyway before the ships leave the fleet), but in all the ship-wide cabling needed to allow the on-demand programming to work in each cabin.

 

What cabling would be needed beyond the coax that is there ?

[JimmyVWine]

What cabling would be needed beyond the coax that is there ?

 

This is what a typical On Demand setup looks like in a hotel. But frankly, if hotels were all able to transition over to On Demand without ripping out walls and doing wholesale re-wiring, then I assume a ship can too.

 

[GRAYTech]

Looks like coax and either phone cable or cat5/6?

 

I'm guessing phone and they tie into he existing lines ?

[JimmyVWine]

Looks like coax and either phone cable or cat5/6?

 

I'm guessing phone and they tie into he existing lines ?

 

I think that is right. It is not complicated. Heck. Even a Motel 6 can do it.

[Cruiser411]

Just off the Royal. A couple of things:

 

1) the picture quality for the on-demand movies is terrible. We watched the most recent Star Wars film and it was horribly pixelated and blocky. Not sure what kind of system they're using, but it's not robust enough to stream actual "high def" video to the high def televisions.

 

2) we like to stock up on our favorite shows and "binge watch" while on vacation, some nights.

 

3) we were easily able to unplug the on-demand system's HDMI port on the left side of the Viewsonic televisions (what we had in our suite) and play back our own content stored on a laptop. This did not cause any problems when we re-connected the ship's cable (which we were careful to do each time).

 

In short ... it was kind of nice having some on-demand movies, but there were no television shows to speak of, just some news and sports channels, and the movie playback quality was very bad, especially on the large-ish televisions. I'd rather be able to play my own stuff.

 

hmmm... maybe they were having difficulties after the drydock. When I was on Regal, the picture quality was perfect HD quality. Very nice. I especially liked that you could stop a movie and restart it later.

[GRAYTech]

This is a bit OT but does anyone know if the newer ships Royal / Regal are wired with a hard wire (Ethernet) network connection in the passenger cabins ?

[h3rjp]

This is a bit OT but does anyone know if the newer ships Royal / Regal are wired with a hard wire (Ethernet) network connection in the passenger cabins ?

 

 

I'm sure they were. But the network cable obviously didn't give you access to anything. I seem to remember plugging it in to see what happened!

 

 

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[h3rjp]

I think that is right. It is not complicated. Heck. Even a Motel 6 can do it.

 

 

I'm on the Azura right now (the last of the grand class ships to be built). It has an interactive tv system that looks similar to the one pictures above. But it's slow and hopeless.

 

Compared to the speed and functionality of the one on the Regal, this is crappy addition to a small and awkwardly placed tv.

 

On the Queen Mary they have started to fit the large wall mounted TVs at the base of the beds and the main preparation work was done during dry dock to route both network and power to a place it was never designed to be.

 

Making the old TVs interactive isn't a problem, but probably offers little benefits. To *upgrade* the TVs to what we'd now regard as a reasonable size, in a convenient position is major, major work.

 

 

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[Kinkacruiser]

Adding to the cost, would be the fact that passengers would remain in their cabins watching movies and therefore not be spending around the ship.

[floridalover5623]

A little update on the Viewsonic TV's on the Regal. On the Viewsonic it's possible to disconnect their HDMI input from the set (it's not possible with the Samsung sets due to the location of the input). I used their input to connect my WD-TV unit to their HDMI input with my own cable & it works fine. The volume is controlled with their remote & all other functions with my remote.

 

I was told that the tv's in the crew cabins now have an HDMI input so they can connect their own equipment ...computers, dvd players (which the company no longer supplies to them). They can even connect a hard drive directly to the TV for playing content similar to any smart TV.

There is one loose HDMI cable behind my cabin TV which is not used for anything & I have to try connecting my hard drive directly to it as soon as it's returned. It could possibly be another input that could be used but of course you would need a remote tuner to change the input & the one I have on my phone doesn't work.

 

On a side note I was told that the their working on an audible tone for their messaging system which can't come soon enough. :D

[GRAYTech]

On a side note I was told that the their working on an audible tone for their messaging system which can't come soon enough. :D

 

You just made my day. Now let's hope it happens in the next couple of months.