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HDTV in A Luxury Suite: COMPANY REPORT Hotel TV-system Installation, Germany

1) The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Munich installed a new TV system to improve the quality and variety of channels for its international guests. 2) The system utilizes products from SPAUN to receive channels from 6 satellite positions and distribute them through an IPTV system to the hotel's 85 TVs. 3) The new system provides over 45 HDTV channels and pay-TV options in multiple languages to satisfy the hotel's goal of offering the best TV experience for its discerning clientele.

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Alexander Wiese
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48 views5 pages

HDTV in A Luxury Suite: COMPANY REPORT Hotel TV-system Installation, Germany

1) The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Munich installed a new TV system to improve the quality and variety of channels for its international guests. 2) The system utilizes products from SPAUN to receive channels from 6 satellite positions and distribute them through an IPTV system to the hotel's 85 TVs. 3) The new system provides over 45 HDTV channels and pay-TV options in multiple languages to satisfy the hotel's goal of offering the best TV experience for its discerning clientele.

Uploaded by

Alexander Wiese
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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COMPANY REPORT

Hotel TV-system installation, Germany

HDTV from Dubai in Munich. Here in

Luxury Suite 704 on the top floor of the


Mandarin Oriental Hotel, IT Manager Mirko
Menzel presents the TV channels from the
PayTV provider OSN. These are the same
channels that can be seen throughout
the Middle East and North Africa. And it's
the Arabic guests that can get these OSN
channels in the best possible HDTV quality
on 55" B&O TVs in the middle of Munich
when they stay at the Mandarin Oriental
Hotel.

HDTV in a
Luxury Suite

A look at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in

Munich. The Luxury Suite 704 is the best


room in the hotel and is located right under
the top of the dome.

The best TV quality for the most discerning guests


Utilizes SPAUN's line of quality products
SPAUN switches permit the distribution of more than
four satellite positions
Focus on HDTV channels
Distribution to TVs via IPTV
146 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine 05-06/2014 www.TELE-audiovision.com

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147

COMPANY REPORT

Hotel TV System Installation, Germany

SPAUNs Quality Products


for Quality TV Installations

148 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine 05-06/2014 www.TELE-audiovision.com

A view of the rooftops of Munich. You get

a fantastic 360 degree view of Munich from


the rooftop terrace. In the background are
the twin spires of the Frauenkirche, one the
most well-known landmarks in Munich. In the
foreground you can see a section of an offset
dish.

Munich

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Every TV system customer wants


good quality products for their setup
but theres a group of customers that
are doubly interested in the best possible product quality: and that would
be hotels since they are themselves
dependant on their customers. Luxury
hotels would only be satisfied with high
quality products since the guests that
stay in these kinds of hotels would naturally only want the best. One of the
best hotel chains in the world are the
luxury hotels operated by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Some of these
hotels are operated entirely by this
group while some of the other hotels
are operated in conjunction with partners. Either way, this hotel group places the highest value on providing the
most perfect service and this includes
the TV service for their guests. But how
do the TV channels find their way to the
high-end devices in the guest rooms?
Currently the Mandarin Oriental Hotel
Group consists of 45 hotels: 19 in Asia,
14 in the Americas and 12 in Europe.
The group started out with two special hotels: the Mandarin Hotel in Hong
Kong that opened in 1963 and the acquisition of the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok in 1974. With this, two of the best
hotels in the world now belonged to the

group upon which the owners built on:


additional luxury hotels were continuously opened in the most important cities in the world. In 1990 came the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Munich that can
be found in a building that was erected
in 1880. This building was originally
built as an opera house. Today the hotel
has 73 luxury guest rooms and suites.
Mirko Menzel is the hotels IT Manager and he tells us where the guests
of this luxury hotel in Munich come
from: 20% of our guests each come
from the USA, the CIS countries as well
as the Middle East. Roughly 5% come
from China. For the guests that come
from the USA, the hotel offers Englishlanguage TV channels; for those guests
from the CIS countries, the hotel has
Russian-language channels available.
Especially challenging up until now has
been making Arabic channels available,
but not any more. Recently we completely updated our entire TV system
and setup satellite dishes for six satellite positions, we learn from Mirko
Menzel. Now we can receive the BADR
and NILESAT satellites with their numerous Arabic-language TV channels.
Before the conversion to the new TV
system, the hotel was only able to offer
180 TV channels to their guests, now

its 264. Naturally, we could incorporate more than 1000 TV channels but
this wouldnt make any sense for our
guests. We chose only the best channels in terms of content and technology. Shopping channels, for example,
are not really interesting to our guests
and have been omitted. This results in
the hotel being able to offer more than
45 HDTV channels. Each guest room
is equipped with a B&O HDTV device;
suites have two TV units installed. So
the hotel has 85 TVs in operation in its
73 rooms. The suites have big screen
55 TVs while the rooms have 33 models.
A highlight is the inclusion of PayTV
channels. Mirko Menzel: Our guests
are especially interested in sports programming. We have contracted with
several PayTV providers and offer their
content to our guest rooms. Mirko
Menzel has yet another highlight to tell
us about: Since our guests come from
all over the world, we pay particular
close attention to their native language
when they place a reservation. When
they arrive at the hotel, the menu on
the TV in their room is already preprogrammed for their language. This
pleases the Arabic guests to have the
TV menu in Arabic. We can set up the

A look at the hotel's rooftop terrace.

The satellite dishes can be seen in the


background; they receive a total of
six satellite positions and provide the
international guests of the hotel with a
huge selection of international HDTV
programming for their enjoyment.

150 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine 05-06/2014 www.TELE-audiovision.com

large projects is the precise preplanning that is necessary. All levels need
to be calculated ahead of time so that
there wont be any surprises during the
installation. Experience has shown us
that only the very best quality products
should be used since only then can we
really stick to all of the preplanning requirements. Its no surprise that Ingo
Wlfel has in the meantime become

The Mandarin

Oriental Hotel's TV
system schematic
equipped with
quality components
from SPAUN.

TV menus in English, Russian, Spanish


and Italian.
You might be asking yourself how
the hotel solved the problem of providing the TV channels from six differ-

ent satellites to each and every guest


room in the hotel. The hotel found the
right partner for this endeavor with the
company VersaKom Service. The companys President, Ingo Wlfel, is espe-

cially familiar with this technology. He


worked in VersaKom Services predecessor company since 1997. We install
TV and data systems all over Germany. Some of the companys excep-

152 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine 05-06/2014 www.TELE-audiovision.com

tional projects included cable systems,


for example, in the town of Herzberg
in Brandenburg. There we installed a
fiber optic based distribution system
for 1700 households. Another highlight

was an Internet distribution system for


a college dormitory in Freiburg. Here
we connected 6000 dormitory rooms
with high-speed Internet access.
The challenge with these kinds of

Ingo Wlfel is the President of

VersaKom Service. His company


planned and implemented the
hotel's TV system

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153

very confident in SPAUNs product line:


Their reliability is unsurpassed. The
expertise they have with large distribution systems also led to contracts with
extremely discerning customers: For
example, we are the technical service
provider for the Olympic Park in Munich
and for the Marriot Hotel and Sports
Bar in Munich. And now the luxury
Mandarin Oriental hotel in Munich has
become part of that elite group.
The best part about the installation
at the Mandarin Oriental is the reception of six satellite positions; a standard multiswitch can work with four
positions, but not more than that.
The solution came with the SUR 211
F switch from SPAUN (new label: SUR
211 WSG). It involves the use of an
A/B switch which is gated by the multiswitches. In this way two parallel lines
can be connected together increasing
the maximum number of satellite positions from four to eight. Distribution to the guest rooms is handled by

IPTV, explains Ingo Wlfel, Some of


the transponders are fixed on PayTV
channels; the Smartcards are permanently installed there. The FTA channels are activated in the IPTV transponder depending on demand. There
are currently 88 transponders available but we are in the process of expanding the system to 100 transponders. And even though the system
has been set up so that all of the 85
connected TVs can all be used at the
same time, it cant hurt to have some
reserve capacity available.
Mirko Menzel explains, That is part

of our quality philosophy; we want to be


prepared for extreme cases even if we
never have to use it. This highlights an
argument that only on second thought
belongs in the Quality category: its not
enough for everything to function properly under normal circumstances. The
best possible quality only makes itself
known when unusual situations surface
and everything still continues to function the way its supposed to without
any limitations. The SPAUN products
used in the Luxury Mandarin Oriental
Hotel precisely fulfill this high quality
guarantee.

1. The SPAUN switches are all mounted very close together. And as you would
expect with a quality system, the cable connections are also professionally
installed. Even when nobody will ever see this installation except for the hotel's
technicians and TELE-audiovision's editors, it's easy to see that everything was
handled very professionally, not just those portions that can be seen out in the
open.
2. The rack with the IPTV combiners
3. The back of the IPTV combiner. Several of the slots are fitted for PayTV and
stuffed with the corresponding Smartcards.
4. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in central Munich not far from the Hofbruhaus
and the high-end shopping area on Maximilians street (Maximilliansstrae).

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