Interesting how almost everyone assumes that these hotels get their TV channels from cable. It's actually fairly rare. I don't think I've seen a suburban hotel in 15 years without a satellite dish on the roof or out back. That's how the "Spectravision" or whatever pay movies get to the hotel. The nationally distributed "cable channels" get there this way too. The off-air channels are often captured just that way: "off-air", and then filtered and mixed into the hotel's distribution system. Since cable systems charge by the set, and the hotel has to get the pay movies anyway (for the revenue), few of them want to pay 2 expensive vendors for choices that the guests can only watch one at a time.