We are evaluating the need to continue offering coaxial cable to resident rooms. I'm wondering if anyone offers streaming subscriptions such as HULU or Netflix to their residents.
------Tom Tiberi | Director of Campus Living University at Buffalo | Buffalo NY | (716) 645-3070 ------
A year ago we stopped providing coaxial cable service. Instead, we now exclusively offer Xfinity On Campus and students can use a Roku device to stream the content to a TV if they wish. Since moving away from coaxial and providing Xfinity On Campus we have not received any complaints from our residents.
------David Machado | Director, Housing Building Operations & Conference Services Santa Clara University | Santa Clara CA | (408) 554-4900
I would be interested in others' responses as well. We currently provide a basic coaxial cable in each student room and suite and in the community lounge areas in the residence halls. This has come with minor issues that tend to be very time consuming such as ensuring each room and suite has a cable box and the designated remote with it. If the remote goes missing, universal remotes do not work with the cable box so there is a fee associated with replacing the remote. Others input would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
------Gina DeMart-Kraus Acting Director of Residence Life Ursuline College | Pepper Pike OH | (440) 646-8336 [email protected] ------
At Tennessee State University, Comcast is our television and internet provider. We currently still have Co-axial cable television in every student room and many of our lounges. Nevertheless, we are transitioning away from Co-axial cable. One year ago in February 2018, we upgraded our television service to streaming via Xfinity On- Campus. Being that students don't really watch conventional (co-axial) television programming anymore, it was not a big leap to streaming tv because many already watch their programming via apps and the internet. We provided Roku boxes; however, they can access their accounts by using desktop computers, laptop computers, and other hand-held electronic devices that connect to wi-fi. Someone, I believe it was Gina, mentioned cable boxes and remote control devices. We still have Co-axial cable in all the student rooms; however, they don't need cable boxes. The simply connect their television to the co-axial outlet using a co- axial cable cord and the signal is already there.
Hopefully this helps.
------Julius Proctor | Area Coordinator Tennessee State University | Nashville TN | (615) 963-5361
2 years ago we went away from satellite television service (except for one television in a common area/game room) and started offering Residence Life Cinema through Swank Media Productions. Institutions are able to choose movies and television shows each month so the offerings do not get stale. RLC provides programming guides for a lot of their movies so if RAs wanted to do a watch party with a certain movie or a certain theme they could easily do so with the guides. They have been great to work with and I have had zero complaints from students. You can ask for usage statistics to see what movies your students are watching and think about discontinuing movies/shows nobody is watching in favor of other more popular titles. Along with blockbuster movies they have documentaries and educational programming as well. www.swank.com/residence-life-cinema/movies-tv
Hope this helps.
------Joseph Belter | Director of Residence Life Southwestern Oregon Community College | Coos Bay OR | (541) 888-7635
At Kansas State University we dropped coax cable 2 years ago and chose not to replace it with a streaming option. We have had virtually no complaints and students have found their own ways to get the content they want via SlingTV, PS Vue, etc or Netflix, Hulu, etc. We have not seen any major strain on bandwidth (probably because even when we had cable students didn't subscribe).
We have surveyed students about the potential of having a streaming service or movie channel and the general feeling is students don't want to pay for those services so we have not pursued them further.
For context sake, we are a campus of 19,000 students with about 5,200 beds on campus.
------Nicholas Lander | Interim Associate Director Kansas State University | Manhattan KS | (785) 532-6453
Hi Tom,
We turned off coaxial cable last summer and switched to Philo - and we are happy with this solution. We actually ran both services (coax and Philo) side-by-side for a short period to ease the transition. Now, our overall user base for Philo is about 15-20% of our residential population and there was no discernible concern or outcry from students that we discontinued providing traditional cable tv.
I think the longer-term question is what expectation students have that we, as housing providers, continue provide this type of service. As someone else pointed out, students are able to freely choose their own options that best suit their viewing habits from the multiple companies that offer this type of service and consideration needs to be given to why the obligation to provide this still falls under our purview.
------Howie Glassman
Director, Housing Services New York University
We disconnected traditional cable services 2 years ago, and it was hardly noticed. We had surveyed our residents before hand and found that very few of them even knew about it, much less utilized it. We chose to keep active connections for our lounges and our Family Housing occupants still have the option to use cable television services from our local provider.
We still wanted to provide some entertainment solution for our residents, so we looked at solutions like Philo and Xfinity. Both products were very nice, but for various reasons we did not choose either one. We also looked at offering each resident a purchased account for either Hulu or Netflix, however at that time neither company supported a model like this.
We ultimately chose to implement Residence Life Cinema (mentioned before by Joseph) through Swank. This has been very successful for many reasons:
1) The service is offered through a locally hosted server that sits in our datacenter and periodically updates itself. All of our residents stream the content locally which has significantly cut down our external traffic. This gives you more control over performance, and your IT staff will like that.
2) Swank looks and feels a lot like other streaming services like Netflix or Hulu. They also offer movies shortly after they leave the theaters. It seems the content is available before any of the other services get it. The residents like that.
3) Each month you can update your local catalog with almost any film you can think of, new or old. We found success by letting our residents participate in this process. They are actually engaged in this process and vote on movies they would like to see each month. Often they choose older movies from their childhood for nostalgic purposes. Sharkboy and Lavagirl?
4) I believe Swank's primary service is offering content for resident life programming. They provide us with lots of marketing material like posters, and conversational guides for specific movies that deal with topics like Sexual Assault, Racism, etc... Our ResEd team has been super stoked with having better access to these services.
5) The last cool advantage we have found is that we can build our own internal content and host it on the local Swank server for streaming. We have promotional commercials or 20 second "bumpers" that our student leaderships teams create and play before each movie of their choice. Think about those commercials for upcoming films, local events or services that you see in the movie theater just before the main film starts. This has made our marketing and student leadership teams super happy.
Sorry for the long post. Providing cable services to our residents was a dilemma and Swank solved it very nicely for us. If I can clarify anything please feel free to reach out, [email protected]
------Ryan Jennings | Residential Computing Manager Western Oregon University | Monmouth OR | (503) 751-4018 Does anyone know if Swank is available for campuses in Canada? Or if there is anything else like that in Canada?
Or has anyone ever entered into a deal with Hulu, Netflix etc. to provide access to all of your residence students?
Thanks
------Joseph McGibbon | Manager, Residence Life Laurentian University | Sudbury ON | 705-675-1151 ext 3008 ------
I asked Swank your question about service in Canada and the answer is yes they can license movies in Canada through a partner they have. You should contact them directly for more information on how this works. Here is their "contact us" page: www.swank.com/residence-life-cinema/contact/.
I hope that helps.
------Joseph Belter | Director of Residence Life Southwestern Oregon Community College | Coos Bay OR | (541) 888-7635 ------
Hi Tom, We are also a SWANK school, and we use the bumper videos to ensure that our campus partners have better outreach to our residents. We show videos from the registrar, health services, career services, and our university marketing team in addition to a lot of the content that SWANK provides. The movies are very popular because we get to show things before they release on DVD and have access to most of the popular content that is out there. We have very high viewer numbers. Feel free to reach out if you'd like more details from us as well!
------Sandra Brasch | Assistant Director, Marketing University of Central Florida | Orlando FL | (407) 823-4663 [email protected]