Sony is introducing the highly anticipated world’s first 200Hz LCD Television to Australia. 

The BRAVIA Z4500 LCD Television series will be available in 40”, 46” and 52” screen sizes.It incorporates the groundbreaking technology – Motionflow 200Hz – for the fastest frame rate available on an LCD Television .

Moving pictures on TVs are created by showing a sequence of still images (or frames) in quick succession. Motionflow 200Hz technology creates three additional unique frames for every original frame, increasing the typical frame rate from 50 to 200 per second. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s next in the TV game is interesting to say the least.

Discussions on several fronts paint an interesting story all revolving around TVs that can browse the internet.

Sounds great on the first pass however contemplating a little genius hacker who can write code for a virus that makes our TV crash when the favorite movie or sporting event is on, brings a sobering thought. Of course behind the scenes chip makers like Intel want to have full control of this market & technology on one side and the TV manufacturers are resisting at all costs in the hope of maintaining their own process.

Currently it is said that Samsung and Panasonic will roll out a TV in Australia this year that can, access finance, weather and news through Yahoo which will likely be done through a Channel 7 Yahoo alliance. More of a canned version rather than the full blown internet in all its glory! 

You may also be interested that US research is looking to give some credibility to the introduction of TV that produces a 3D picture. They claim on surveys made, the public would be willing to pay extra for a 3D producing TV.

In fact, the claims say “it will be a major force in the future for home entertainment”.Will be interesting to see the marketing hyperbole used to get you to pay a premium to what amounts to wearing a special set of glasses to watch the 3D effect and keep your head still for fear of getting dizzy spells!

Content is likely to be an issue somewhat like the “blueray” experience – there’s not much around!    

Greg

Have you seen or heard of these scams currently doing the rounds in your Hotel? 

Fake petty cash dockets are easy money for those with access to the petty cash tin. Dockets that smooth things out for a guest problem tend to be the easiest to get through. If you have suspicions then ask the guest if something was bought for them.

It won’t surprise you that it will be hard to track that “overseas guest who had a ruined shirt bought for them”, but then your thief knows exactly that and it can cover their tracks nicely. Most of that sort of stuff is only junior league. Scammers have become very clever as is evident by the following that has occurred in recent times. 

This scam begins when Sales and Marketing are contacted by an individual as an agent for a large company, foreign government department ect. The arrangement is made to reserve a meeting room and accommodation for a dozen or so guests to say at the hotel. The reservation is always made for a future date. After a couple of weeks goes by the individual will make contact with the hotel and request that his company executives or dignitaries would like to take a tour or play golf.

The hotel is asked to make the required arrangements and add the cost to the existing contract. Once the arrangements are completed and the contract is done our scammer asks the hotel to send a letter documenting the arrangements with an attached invoice with banking details. 

When our scammer receives letter and invoice they will call and ask for the banking information so they can wire transfer to the hotels account to pay the invoice. On receiving that information the scammer now has the hotels letterhead, Managers signature, banking details he can create a document on his home computer that requests the bank to wire money from the hotels account to some other account – likely offshore but not always.

This scam works a treat. Maybe your hotel has tighter security than that but it has been said and proven many don’t. 

Double check your systems. Make sure you are not vulnerable to a simple rip-off technique that could be sucking dollars from your bottom line. 

Greg