KENNECTED

Hilton Embassy Row (Renovated rooms)

Hilton New Orleans Riverside (Various Rooms)
During the last two stays, I was in two different suites. One stay neither room had it, during the second stay the parlor (go figure) had the new clock and the bedroom had a regular clock.

Hilton Post Oak

ByrdluvsAWACO

Well that changed last night with a stay at the HGI PHX Airport. There it was waiting for me in my upgraded suite. I tried out all the features and my Ipaq worked well with it.

There is a radio. I changed the channel to the local rap station while testing it out.

I saw no way of changing the presets. There's probably some combination of buttons that have to be pressed. The jazz button was set to KYOT . Which is our local white-bread jazz station here in PHX.

Points Scrounger

Congrats!

You gonna buy one for yourself?

ByrdluvsAWACO

I sure am. It'll give my bedroom that "Honors" feel.

SPN Lifer

Perhaps the more technologically adept in our midst can figure out and pass on the secret to personalizing the four radio buttons?! @:-)

Maybe if you buy or win one it comes with an owner's manual?

RogersPark

I have been frustrated by the fact that I couldn't wake to the station of my choice (NPR) when using the "Wake to radio" setting on the new Hilton clock radio.

Tonight I remembered to bring along a small Phillips head screwdriver and was able to assign the local NPR station to one of the preset buttons on top of the radio:

1) On the top of the back side of the radio there are two screws. Remove the small machine screw on top.

2) The top of the radio lifts off from back to front. There are two tabs on the front side of the top that hook into the body of the radio. The back side of the top has a tab with a threaded hole that the screw threads into. The five preset buttons have little plastic caps on them which fit up into holes on the top.

3) Facing the front of the radio, looking down at the top, there is a small lock switch on the left of the far side. Switch this to "off".

4) Tune the radio to the station you want and hold down one of the preset buttons until it beeped (the same process as many car radios). This may be easier if you remove the plastic cap from the preset button.

5) Switch the lock to "on", replace any plastic caps that you may have removed from any of the preset buttons, replace the top of the radio and replace the small screw.

6) Wake up to the station of your choice!

Good luck!

P.S. It appears that the time and calendar functions are adjusted here, too, but unless the time was wrong, I would not recommend fooling around with these settings.

aks0516

You truly have got to be kidding. Why would any hotel go to the expense and trouble of installing nice new products if those products are just going to be tampered with and lobotomized? I once asked a hotel agent about the lack of [xxx] (don't recall what it was, only that it would have been helpful to have it). The response: people just bust it or steal it, so management has no incentive to do it. I am sure hotels consider what defensive measures they need to take to protect themselves from the public. Hilton probably did not count on screw-driver-wielding crazies prying open their clocks and having to check the integrity of the settings every day. If it had, we would not have had the benefit of these new clocks. This is just plain wrong. When will people learn?

wilp888

Maybe this is a stupid question but why do they lock the station? Why aren't you allow to choose your own station to wake up to?

RogersPark

I have tried but I just do not understand this response. Hilton has designed their own clock which does have some very good design features.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....ighlight=radio

However, I believe it is a major design flaw when it isn't possible to choose the radio station you wish to wake up to. As far as I am concerned this is similar to changing the station presets in a rental car.

The process I described is the process you must go through if your station of choice is not one of the four stations assigned by the hotel. I would strongly suspect that the instructions that come with the radio are very similar to the process I described.

I was not advocating damaging the radio. In fact, I cautioned against changing anything except a station preset. Removing and replacing this screw does not damage the radio. Substituting a one radio station for another on a preset button does not damage the radio.

I think the readership of this forum consists of responsible, good citizens not inclined to malicious mischief and/or vandalism. Therefore I really don't understand your negative characterizations and hyperbole.

As to why Hilton did not design the clock so that users could select their own station to wake up to, I cannot even guess since it seems so obviously consumer unfriendly.

oosillyoo

You know I have a problem somewhat similar to yours. At my house the bed is close to the bathroom entrance so I don't have to walk far to the bathroom. What I think I need to start doing on some of the rooms where the bed is too far I need to start moving things around.

Also, don't even get me started on when the closet is right bye the entrance to the room. Do you think the hotel would mind if I move that also so I don't hit it with the door anymore and I can open my door all the way, like I like to at home?

Speaking of the door, I don't have automatic door closers at my front door at home so can I remove that too?


Sorry, I think those stations were picked for a reason and unless you are going to be responsiable to change them back EVERY TIME you really shouldn't do it. And that screw was put there for a reason, not to just slow you down.

cbob

I'm with you.
And I'm sorry that you are taking so much flak for this.

My peeve about those fancy new radios, and the older cheaper versions that I was faced with at a couple of Hampton Inn stays over the last couple of weeks, is that the TIME is invariably wrong.

What was wrong with the old "set the time, alarm, and radio stations yourself" radios?
OK. From the responses here so far, I'd say that many folks do not want to deal with anything more complicated than the TV remote.
The European and Asian Hilton family hotels solve the problem nicely by not providing alarm clock radios at all. I have to bring my own travel alarm. Looks like I'll now end up bringing one on my USA visits as well because so far, the "features" of the new clock radios seem to be :
- crap radio stations (or terrible reception) on the presets
- time and/or date set incorrectly (often AM when it's PM etc)
- bewildering array of non-intuitive buttons and switches that don't allow you to change anything

Commander Bob
And since I always have a small Phillips with me...
Thanks for the tip!

u600213

You could call to room service for a chamber pot :-)

Regarding the radio presets, I am pleased with the info on how to change them and have no problem with someone who wants to set them differently. I usually stay in weird places with bad radio station choices so I just stream audio over my laptop .

Points Scrounger

As these spiffy new clocks have an mp3 connection, I'd leave it on AUX (I think the setting is called) and set my player to wake to the local NPR station using the clock-radio as speakers.

lance6

Hacking the radio to get better stations is a minor issue, especially if the hotel-set stations are crap.

If you're maliciously damaging things, that's another story. If Hilton expects us to like the new radios that they're so excited about plugging on their websites, at least improve the user interface.

I'll remember to bring my Phillips mini-screwdriver set next time!

pdhenry

Strange. It's much easier to change the presets on the Hampton radio. The "lock" switch is on the outside of the back of the case. I think the procedure is otherwise the same as the OP has described.