atari turned their flopped atari 5200 into a hotel version of it while nintendo turned their successful nes into a hotel version of it.

[johannesmutlu]

Yes that’s right while atari turned their flopped atari 5200 into a hotel version for use in hotels wich was called the spectravision while nintendo later on turned their successful famicom into a hotel version of it called the  famicom box, there was also the famicomstation variant of it,but it’s actually mind blowing how 2 different companies turned their systems with the opposite marketing effect from each other and in general just into hotel versions of it,from nintendo it’s understandible because of it’s success but why didn’t atari turned their 2600 into a hotel version of it??? Since that system was a huge success,but atleast atari tried to do what they could do with their 5200 in the hopes to make it more successful and that’s what matters😁

[VICMODEM]

This is so great. Apparently they're unrelated to the SpectraVision responsible for the Atari 2600 games and MSX computers. Was this thing only available in the US? Imagine the feel of staying at an hotel in the early 80's, with this contraption in your room. Any testimonies? Does anyone here own one of these or has memories of seeing one?

[82-T/A]

On 6/23/2023 at 7:48 PM, johannesmutlu said:

Yes that’s right while atari turned their flopped atari 5200 into a hotel version for use in hotels wich was called the spectravision while nintendo later on turned their successful famicom into a hotel version of it called the  famicom box, there was also the famicomstation variant of it,but it’s actually mind blowing how 2 different companies turned their systems with the opposite marketing effect from each other and in general just into hotel versions of it,from nintendo it’s understandible because of it’s success but why didn’t atari turned their 2600 into a hotel version of it??? Since that system was a huge success,but atleast atari tried to do what they could do with their 5200 in the hopes to make it more successful and that’s what matters😁

 

Figured I'd add a little bit of context to this. I've been trying to find one of these for as long as I possibly could.

 

Some fun background about me, I grew up in hotels. From the earliest days I can remember, my dad worked in the hotel business and was a general manager for Sheraton, and then Renaissance. I lived in two Sheratons growing up, and then only lived in a house simply because the school district where the other two hotels were, were not great. So during that time, Sheraton (and Renaissance) paid for the home we lived in. It was customary for the General Manager to live at the hotel so that he/she would be available "on site" to resolve any serious issues. These were massive hotels that were usually 10+ stories and 800+ rooms.

 

In 1989-1991, I lived in the Sheraton Stamford Hotel which had SpectraVision boxes in all the rooms. We had a suite, which meant that it was basically a presidential suite, with two adjoining rooms added on. So my bedroom was basically a hotel room. We had maid service, and I could order room service (but my mom normally cooked because we had a full kitchen in the suite). But I usually spent my summers rollerblading around in the loading dock or in the service hallways, etc. But I went into every place I could get. I found the SpectraVision room, which was also the telcom room... and basically, for SpectraVision, they had a series of heavy-duty 6-head VHS players that played on loop a series of 6 movies... whatever was the latest and greatest at the time.

 

The key point in time for me during the Summer was Terminator 2 (which I basically allowed to play on loop in my room repeatedly)... and maybe Bird on a Wire? and some others I didn't care about.

 

There were also two porn channels... which was Pay 3 and Pay 6. The box was this blue SpectraVision box which had 6 buttons, one for each pay channel, and a 2-digit display. I opened it up and discovered that you could by-pass the scrambler, and connect the SpectraVision feed directly into the RF-out that went to the TV. So I did this, and at 12... I was basically watching the porn channels when my parents weren't looking... hahah..

 

 

Anyway, sorry... going off on a tangent. When I was in the Telcom room, they had a bunch of these Atari SpectraVision boxes... like three of them, stacked in a corner with nearly a dozen broken "current" SpectraVision boxes, as well as 20+ brand new ones that were still in the non-descript cardboard box (not the Atari ones).

 

I told my dad about them, and asked if I could have one, but being the honest person he was, he realized that contractually they were required to send all of them back. For this reason, they (along with the broken ones) were all sent back to SpectraVision where they were destroyed. I don't know why... but it's similar to how the post office handles the Grumman postal vehicles. They are no longer auctioned off, but instead sent back to the original company for refurbishment or destruction. So for that reason, so few of them exist...

 

 

 

On 7/28/2023 at 12:25 AM, VICMODEM said:

This is so great. Apparently they're unrelated to the SpectraVision responsible for the Atari 2600 games and MSX computers.

 

Correct, as far as I know, it was a separate company that developed Pay Per View cable boxes just for the hotel industry. I did some research years ago... and I could find no correlation between the two.

[johannesmutlu]

On 9/11/2023 at 6:29 PM, 82-T/A said:

 

Figured I'd add a little bit of context to this. I've been trying to find one of these for as long as I possibly could.

 

Some fun background about me, I grew up in hotels. From the earliest days I can remember, my dad worked in the hotel business and was a general manager for Sheraton, and then Renaissance. I lived in two Sheratons growing up, and then only lived in a house simply because the school district where the other two hotels were, were not great. So during that time, Sheraton (and Renaissance) paid for the home we lived in. It was customary for the General Manager to live at the hotel so that he/she would be available "on site" to resolve any serious issues. These were massive hotels that were usually 10+ stories and 800+ rooms.

 

In 1989-1991, I lived in the Sheraton Stamford Hotel which had SpectraVision boxes in all the rooms. We had a suite, which meant that it was basically a presidential suite, with two adjoining rooms added on. So my bedroom was basically a hotel room. We had maid service, and I could order room service (but my mom normally cooked because we had a full kitchen in the suite). But I usually spent my summers rollerblading around in the loading dock or in the service hallways, etc. But I went into every place I could get. I found the SpectraVision room, which was also the telcom room... and basically, for SpectraVision, they had a series of heavy-duty 6-head VHS players that played on loop a series of 6 movies... whatever was the latest and greatest at the time.

 

The key point in time for me during the Summer was Terminator 2 (which I basically allowed to play on loop in my room repeatedly)... and maybe Bird on a Wire? and some others I didn't care about.

 

There were also two porn channels... which was Pay 3 and Pay 6. The box was this blue SpectraVision box which had 6 buttons, one for each pay channel, and a 2-digit display. I opened it up and discovered that you could by-pass the scrambler, and connect the SpectraVision feed directly into the RF-out that went to the TV. So I did this, and at 12... I was basically watching the porn channels when my parents weren't looking... hahah..

 

 

Anyway, sorry... going off on a tangent. When I was in the Telcom room, they had a bunch of these Atari SpectraVision boxes... like three of them, stacked in a corner with nearly a dozen broken "current" SpectraVision boxes, as well as 20+ brand new ones that were still in the non-descript cardboard box (not the Atari ones).

 

I told my dad about them, and asked if I could have one, but being the honest person he was, he realized that contractually they were required to send all of them back. For this reason, they (along with the broken ones) were all sent back to SpectraVision where they were destroyed. I don't know why... but it's similar to how the post office handles the Grumman postal vehicles. They are no longer auctioned off, but instead sent back to the original company for refurbishment or destruction. So for that reason, so few of them exist...

 

 

 

 

Correct, as far as I know, it was a separate company that developed Pay Per View cable boxes just for the hotel industry. I did some research years ago... and I could find no correlation between the two.

SHAME on those companies who not only ordered a back order of their hotel products (whether broken or not) but also destroy them,why??? To keep them secret from the main public and to also avoid a copy cat of clone products from iligal companies or something like that???

 

[CatPix]

Something more simple : these products had reached their end of life. What were they gonna do? Industries are not charities.

Selling products like those to consumer mean that you have to create a new financial entry, hire or put someone to manage it. If the company was created to RENT to hotel, selling to private customers mean they may even need to change their comemrcial status. And to what end? Squeezing 4 000$ out of aging electronics? It is more sensible for companies to just send those to the shredder. Not out of an evil need to make it vanish, but because selling them used would be alot of trouble for a neglictible gain, and brokers wouldn't care about some aging devices with such a specific purpose.

 

As for why there weren't 2600 versions of those, it's probably because it was cheap. The point of those machines are to allow companies to get the games and machine cheaper if they rent them than buying them and havint to maintain them, with the benefit of a game changer integrated.

The Atari 2600 sales really took off in 1980. By then Atari already had the Atari 8 bits and was probably planning a console version (future 5200) and given the low price point of the 2600, turning it into a rented machine wouldn't fetch much money, and probably more trouble than anything.

Edited September 15, 2023 by CatPix

[johannesmutlu]

7 hours ago, CatPix said:

Something more simple : these products had reached their end of life. What were they gonna do? Industries are not charities.

Selling products like those to consumer mean that you have to create a new financial entry, hire or put someone to manage it. If the company was created to RENT to hotel, selling to private customers mean they may even need to change their comemrcial status. And to what end? Squeezing 4 000$ out of aging electronics? It is more sensible for companies to just send those to the shredder. Not out of an evil need to make it vanish, but because selling them used would be alot of trouble for a neglictible gain, and brokers wouldn't care about some aging devices with such a specific purpose.

 

As for why there weren't 2600 versions of those, it's probably because it was cheap. The point of those machines are to allow companies to get the games and machine cheaper if they rent them than buying them and havint to maintain them, with the benefit of a game changer integrated.

The Atari 2600 sales really took off in 1980. By then Atari already had the Atari 8 bits and was probably planning a console version (future 5200) and given the low price point of the 2600, turning it into a rented machine wouldn't fetch much money, and probably more trouble than anything.

Well that’s a very interesting thing to mention,yeah,renting stuff is indeed cheaper then buying them,and maintaining those rented old devices will eventually end up very costly,that cost will eventually raise up and altogether will costing more then those devices itself costed and also the value of those old devices will lower down overtimes,so eventually shredding those devices will eventually become cheaper then keeping maintaining them,that’s like buying a car for $45.000 and driving a million miles with it,not only will it’s value lower down each year but it’s components will age overtime as well and eventually counting the tax you have to pay for using it on the road as well as for paying the gas when going to a gasstation once needed,will eventually drive up the costs,sothat within 10 years you may have paid more for the gas and tax then for the price and the current value of your car,so eventually most people will decide to buy another car,knowing that it is not worth using their old car anymore because of it’s low value,

HOWEVER to me i consider such practical businesses to be absolute ludicrous because look how rare such old cars,computers or game consoles etc,,, could become because of this,that’s really sad,

sure if they would still reproduce those same devices and cars endlessly,i wouldn’t mind if those old ones getting sended to the shredder since new ones getting produced anyway,

 

also it’s not worth for companies to let their old/outdated or unwanted products sitting in a wearhouse for 30 years with the believe that those items could become rare and thus more valueble then ever before some day(let’s say (let’s say $1 million),because the renting costs  a company has to pay for the upcoming 30 years and the fact that those renting costs could increase overtime(let’s say it will became altogether $3 million),it will simply just not be justified,thus making $2million lose.

but still it’s sad that item just getting more rare overtimes because of this🥲

 

 

[82-T/A]

On 9/15/2023 at 7:28 AM, johannesmutlu said:

SHAME on those companies who not only ordered a back order of their hotel products (whether broken or not) but also destroy them,why??? To keep them secret from the main public and to also avoid a copy cat of clone products from iligal companies or something like that???

 

Yeah, it's kind of frustrating. I've seen this business model before, and I think it has less to do with preventing IP rights or technology being stolen, and more to do with a licensing model. The SpectraVision cable boxes (as well as the SpectraVision Atari 5200 systems) are all "pay per view," so to speak, and they are relatively useless outside of the hotel environment. The cable boxes for example, reference specific channels that are encrypted across a hotel-provided coax cable. For example, Channel 30-36 are all the pay channels:

 

Preview Channel = Channel 30

Pay 1 = Channel 31 / Movie

Pay 2 = Channel 32 / Movie

Pay 3 = Channel 33 / Porn

Pay 4 = Channel 34 / Movie

Pay 5 = Channel 35 / Movie

Pay 6 = Channel 36 / Porn

 

 

Each one sends a digital signal across a SEPARATE channel, which if I remember correctly was channel 40. This is to indicate what channels are being watched, at what time. And for all sex of the movie channels, there was basically a VHS tape on a 6-head VHS player in the communications room that was playing on repeat for a month. Those movies (for licensing reasons), were returned at the end of the month and a new set of videos were provided.

 

Obviously, these boxes are completely useless to anyone outside of the hotel... and for that matter, useless to anyone in modern times because back then... we only had some 25+ channels back in the late 80s / early 90s. Today, they wouldn't work because basic cable is provided in almost any hotel room, which usually includes like 50+ channels now... and it's all streamed anyway.

 

 

The Atari 5200 might work on its own, or could be modified to do so... as it would have sent a signal back on channel 40 to let the front desk know that you were playing it. They would then charge you for the service... like $8.99 would show up on your hotel bill or something. There would have also been a preview channel for the 5200 also which previewed which games were available (in the system). There was also the opportunity to play the game for a few minutes before you were charged... as a preview if you will. It would have been able to display a warning letting you know that you were going to get charged after that point.

 

But to that point... they crush / destroy the systems not because they're worried people will steal the IP... but because they're worried that worn out and / or broken systems aren't going to reflect well on the company. The company, SpectraVision, would want people to see these in a hotel and think... "Wow, modern entertainment," and see a clean, new, well-running system. The hotel also has to pay a license for each box that they have activated, with a buffer of spares. So when the hotel is no longer using them, they don't want someone selling them off and another hotel buying them and being able to use them and not pay the license for all the boxes they're using.

 

But I totally agree, it's sad... because these (the Atari 5200 machines) are definitely a piece of history, and it bums me out to know that I had one in my hand and those are long-since gone. :(

 

 

On 9/15/2023 at 6:40 PM, johannesmutlu said:

also it’s not worth for companies to let their old/outdated or unwanted products sitting in a wearhouse for 30 years with the believe that those items could become rare and thus more valueble then ever before some day(let’s say (let’s say $1 million),because the renting costs  a company has to pay for the upcoming 30 years and the fact that those renting costs could increase overtime(let’s say it will became altogether $3 million),it will simply just not be justified,thus making $2million lose.

but still it’s sad that item just getting more rare overtimes because of this🥲

 

It does irk me that when SpectraVision was bought out and the name changed (Hotelvision I think it was?), that they destroyed everything ... like, it went all right to the recycling facility. I'd love to have one of those old boxes to tinker with like when I was a kid... haha.

 

Also, I noticed you're from the Netherlands. My dad is Dutch... I used to visit there all the time when I was a kid, loved the Netherlands. My family is from Vassen / Appeldorn.

 

[jhd]

 

Hardware for things like the Sega Channel are very similar. It was rented from the cable company, and supposed to be returned at the end of the service. I have literally only seen one such device for sale, and it bore a property tag from a long-defunct cable TV company. Presumably the majority were destroyed when the Sega Channel ceased to exist.

 

I moved cross-country a few years ago. I contacted the local cable TV company about their hardware when I terminated service. I was told that since it was due for replacement (it was some 10 or 12 years old and it did not support HDTV), they did not want it back. I could have kept it, but as it served no useful purpose I just tossed it in the dumpster.

 

Personally, I do not remember ever encountering any in-room game systems. I'm guessing that these tended to be found in higher-end hotels. I do recall staying in a few (expensive) places in the early-2000s with wireless keyboards and set-top boxes for Internet access, which is a later evolution of the same concept.  

 

      

[Flojomojo]

I wonder if the time period where it was economically reasonable to rent video games by the hour was longer or shorter than the era where we would pay 25¢ a play for arcade games in convenience stores?

 

Or hotels with 30-pin iPhone music/charging docks?

 

The whole concept of this, like renting videotapes, must be very strange to kids nowadays 

 

I can’t remember the last time I turned on a hotel screen, since I always have my own. 

[82-T/A]

13 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

I wonder if the time period where it was economically reasonable to rent video games by the hour was longer or shorter than the era where we would pay 25¢ a play for arcade games in convenience stores?

 

Or hotels with 30-pin iPhone music/charging docks?

 

The whole concept of this, like renting videotapes, must be very strange to kids nowadays 

 

I can’t remember the last time I turned on a hotel screen, since I always have my own. 

 

Haha... every time I travel, I go right to HG-TV like the mid-40s old man that I am.

 

 

But yeah... I think the big problem was that the game system didn't work with the other box (which was much newer). You had an even further limited number of channels, and it just wasn't feasible for the hotel. You'd make much more money from the Pay Per View than you would from the video game system... and couldn't have both on the same TV.