TV's in Mexico

Hiya everyone! I have a weird question, but recently I was looking into buying a portable dvd player for our trip. But then we thought about bringing our play station. You can play games on it and watch dvd's. Did anyone else do this? Are the tv's the same in Mexico as they are here? Do they have the same cable hook-ups in the back? If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I have heard a lot of people complain about the being bored. I am staying in the apartments set-up by the hospital. Can anyone tell me abou there tv's. I don't think they have dvd players or vcr's there. Let me know if you all have any suggestions. Ronda in Ohio [email protected]

Rhonda, I do not know where you are staying but the TVs at the hospital I stayed in were very up to date. I am sure all of the new models have hookups for DVD players and games. I had the lap band and was only two days in the hospital and it wasn't that bad but I can imagine if you are staying a week or longer you have to think about things like this. Why don't you ask your doctor or his staff? Sandy Lap band- Dr. Aceves

We were in Ensenada and the TV in the Coral Hotel had one English channel,...........the news. Once in a while you could come across a random english speaking program. My 7 yr. old grandson watched spanish cartoons, didn't seem to bother him. we took a portabe DVD player and didn't use it, but we took the DVD movies just in case. The hospital TV was all Spanish. Most every nurse spoke no English. Most of the restaurant and hotel people did not speak English. A real culture shock. By the way, the Taxi drivers speak NO ENGLISH! The Doctors daughter speaks english well, but we hardly saw her. Hope this helps. Kay

Kay, It's unfortunate your experience was mostly in Spanish. We were there January 26-Feb 3, 2005 and we had a completely different experience. In our room at the Hotel Coral we had as many as 12 English-speaking channels including 2 HBO, 2 Cinemax channels, NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. They had Spanish subtitles but they still spoke English. In the hospital (room 11), we found about 4-5 English-speaking channels. On the evening of my surgery, we were able to watch The Apprentice on NBC. We had no difficulty at all speaking English with most of the hotel employees. At the front-desk and the restaurant it was very easy to communicate. I would say that 80% of the employees we talked to were able to easily communicate in English. We weren't able to communicate with housekeeping...they did not speak a lick of English. We had a wonderful taxi driver named Carlos who spoke very good English. He gave us his personal cell phone and we called him for every trip we needed. I have his cell phone number posted on my profile page. The only similar experience it seems we had is that I only had 1 English-speaking nurse...the rest relied on hand-signals and basic words. Ronda, I would suggest to you that you bring an English to Spanish electronic translator or a English to Spanish dictionary...they would probably come in handy while you're in the hospital. Best-case scenario would be to try to learn some basic Spanish before you go down there. After a few days, we were starting to pick up the language easily. Just remember that you are in their country...some people get upset that the hospital employees can't speak English but it's not their responsibility...you will be on their turf so its not fair to be frustrated with them. Also, our tv at the Hotel Coral (room 226) had front video plug ins so those little portable Atari joystick games that are so popular right now would probably have worked in the room. I would guess that your video games would work as well. Hope that helps a little Lisa

Hey Rhonda I was in Ensenada Feb. 1,05.. My husband and I took some VHS movies to watch in the hospital..You can watch English speaking tv in the Apts but some of the channels are hard to see clearly.. My biggest problem with the TV is that the only one was in the bedroom.. We were able to watch tv in the livingroom because we drove down and brought our own tv/dvd.. There electrical is the same as ours and you can interchange from american/mexico. Not sure about the cable hook-up in the back of the tv.. Might see if someone is there now that can look for you... Good luck.. GerrAnn

Hey Ronda, I stayed in the apartments also. There were about 7 english channels I guess. I was able to watch my soaps (although sometimes they were fuzzy). They have cable. I also took a portable dvd player with lots of movies - just in case. I used it some, but in retrospect, I don't think I would take it again. Just because we had english tv and I wouldn't have had to worry about it getting broken on the plane and I would have had more room for souveniors. The tv in the room is a new one, so as long as you bring your video hookups you shouldn't have a problem! The only problem I have with the apartments, is there is no recliner! I did use pillows and propped myself up, but I did miss my recliner! I hope this helps, but if you would like to ask me more questions, please do! Email me or post! Genie

I stayed at the Posada Del Rey Sol (I think that is right). The rooms were kind of small for an extended stay & there was no dresser to put our clothes in. Getting a room with a refrigerator wasn't even an option. There were about 2 English TV stations. Every now and then I found a show that was in English on a normally Spanish station. There were no hookups on the TV for a playstation or dvd player. We were bored out of our minds. We were able to play DVDs on our laptop computer. The cab drivers didn't speak English, the nurses didn't speak English, and most of the other people we encountered didn't speak English. I knew that would probably be the case, but it got upsetting at times because it made things so much more difficult. I was very stressed out about that and a few other things and came home early. I think I would have done better if I had stayed at the Hotel Coral. The people that stay there seem to like it much better & have an overall better experience. Good Luck!