Fuck my prior preparation day with the Chromecast with Google TV before the hotel checking…
I don’t travel too often so my Chromecast needed some tweaking (AKA updating system and apps etc), I like to take it as a travel companion and found out this shitty frame around the TV.
It is the first time it happened to me, I can see this being annoying for frequent travelers.
Pull the bottom drawer out, there might be a set top box or something else connected to the TV via HDMI that you can unplug and use the cable from.
I travel with a Fire Stick and bring a female to female HDMI coupler for this reason.
Never thought about bringing a coupler, good idea!
Call front desk and politely ask if they have a unframed / spare TV you can use. If you’re nice enough and they’re willing and able, they might just drop one by your room.
Marriott hotels have custom firmware on their TVs to prevent you from changing inputs.
That’s some fucking garbage.
Not to sound like I’m going full r/hailcorporate for Hilton but I’ve not seen them pulling shit like that yet.
I was at a Courtyard by Marriott and they had a fully accessible TV that allowed me to connect my SteamDeck and play from the bed. I will definitely stick with Courtyard for my business travel just for this alone.
Damn… The steam deck seems super awesome.
Excited for what Proton has done for game compatibility too.
I was in a relatively new hotel. They likely aren’t going to throw out existing TV’s but when it’s replaced, no more steam deck connection.
I stayed at a Hilton in Vegas that had a TV with unchangeable inputs.
That’s lame… good to know but lame… I’d be removed about it for sure as an HHonors member
Probably not custom. Many brands allow the tv to be put into hotel mode. If you have your own remote (or an IR blaster) then you can take them out of it.
The software was labeled with their brand.
Still not definitive proof necessarily. Splashtop used to sell their custom OS to most the motherboard vendors. They usually rebranded everything but it was still the same OS.
I gave up on this a long time ago. Phone screens are big enough, or a laptop if you own one, and ear buds. Done.
Definitely the fastest workaround, overall if you go alone.
Burn
Yep, between fixed mounted TV’s with zero space behind the TV to reach the HDMI ports or the TVs that have the weird cable box firmware/software that blocks you from accessing the tv inputs it was doomed from the beginning.
Chromecast doesn’t work on most hotels WiFi anyway. At least it won’t work if they have a page to sign into the WiFi after connecting. Pretty much have to use a HDMI cable in most cases
I also always travel with my travel router, another headache solver.
100% recommend this. Setting it in repeater mode with the captive portal is great. I have a Slate and a Brume.
Slate still holds up so nicely, but if it ever breaks I’ll get another one from glinet!
I should upgrade my crappy TP-Link TL-WR702N actually.
Any idea why the Slate AX router costs more than the Beryl AX, which has better specs?
Edit
I’ve done a bit of research and the Beryl is twice as fast over 5GHz. It’s slightly smaller and lighter. It has one less Ethernet port, but the WAN is capable of 2.5Gb. The Slate has an SD card slot for file sharing. It also has a quad-core CPU, so is faster when connecting to a VPN (550Mbps over 300Mbps of the Beryl).
I actually prefer the black colour of the Slate over the light blue Beryl, but with the slower VPN speed and lack of an SD, both of which are not really a problem for me, the Beryl looks like it’s the one I should go for.
If anyone in the UK is interested, you can make quite a saving in the UK from Amazon. Normal price is £119 but if you tick the £20 off and 16% off voucher you end up paying £79.96. A saving of £43.53.
Some projectors are about this size too, and are surprisingly powerful for their size. But then the new issue is finding a blank section of wall
Rip the sheets off the spare bed, hang them over the crappy artwork.
this thing is, like, 85g and half-a-phone area. Are there really projectors this size?
You can use your phone as a wifi hotspot to connect
Infinite free wifi loop hack
Google TV works because you can click through with the controller. But getting it plugged in is the first challenge 😃
The newer Chromecasts work fine since you can just log in using the remote.
For older Chromecasts, you can set up a wifi hotspot on your phone. At least on my Samsung Galaxy S22, you can share any wifi network that way. It’s also a good way to bypass restrictions that only allow one device to connect to the wifi network, as they’ll only see your phone on the network.
I ran into the same issue with the chromecast. So when I travel I always bring a roku, because that will let you access the login page.
A Travel Roku is the real pro tip.
You can call the hotel’s IT and get your MAC address whitelisted to avoid all that captive portal bullshit. Once you have one device whitelisted you can just have others spoof that MAC if you are able.
I have yet to call a hotel IT department that was competent enough to even know what a MAC address is. Last time I called one, the lady on the phone didn’t know the difference between megabytes and megabits.
What hotels are you guys staying in that give guests the ability to contact their IT department at all?
That sounds like insanity to me.
I have yet to stay at a hotel that wasn’t able to get my streamer onto the network without a login page. 🤷
Doubtful many would have access to that without calling a different company.
And doing that would be a security risk regardless, if they just randomly whitelist devices… holy fucking shit, no wonder everything is getting “hacked”.
deleted by creator
Mac filtering is slowly dwindling for newer technology that works better.
The mildly infuriating part is that you posted it back to back on the same community 20 minutes apart
What the heck?
Thanks for letting me know.
I read a post (back on Reddit a few years ago) someone had the same situation they ended up buying a TV at the local BestBuy to place in front of the Hotel’s TV and returned it before leaving.
That seems like a huge hassle for something completely unnecessary
Yes but that is very petty so I’ll allow it.
You stole my thoughts.
Ask the desk if it’s not an option, I’d leave a negative review.
Fill out the individual sections please. My staff gets a bonus based on the staff service portion and I can guarantee you none of them played a part in how the building was designed.
Absolutely! I was thinking on Google maps or Yelp or something, but definitely condemn the design specifically. Don’t need to get any hotel staff in trouble!
Is it possible it had an access panel with input ports somewhere around it? I’ve seen that in hotels in the past. On the side, or underneath, or in a drawer.
It is all sealed, if a wire catches fire I’ll be the last one to know it (?).
If its completely sealed it’s likely if you just yank it evenly from either side (using light force) the outer frame should click off
With a ton of effort, we got our Chromecast plugged into the TV screwed onto the wall at the last hotel we stayed at, only to find that the WiFi signal wasn’t strong enough for the Chromecast to pick it up.
What is their financial gain from doing this? They really hoping I’ll get their shit pay per view?
Looking at it they most likely just were concerned about aesthetics
Dude, the TV isn’t even Smart TV, and the quality is ass, I think it is 360p or some shit.
Seriously doubt it’s an SDTV. I don’t think those have been produced for a while now.
Nah, it is not, but it must be using a non HD cable box.
Hdmi ports aren’t meant to be used over and over. Plug in and leave be. Then again I guess they could just have an hdmi cable sticking out of it that cannot be removed and is being held in place by the frame. But why not just cast it?
I recently went to a hotel that had something like that. A breakout box with HDMI in and RCA Video in even. They also had a special Netflix app that you could connect to your account temporarily with your phone or credentials.
Most hospitality systems have a “channel” set up to receive HDMI1 or HDMI2. The front desk will tell you how to connect, if you can find a port.
Sometimes you have to find the box and override it, if the display is framed like this.
This, the don’t just rip off framing every time they need to replace it. There will be some way to access it. When I traveled for work, I had a tool bag for a few things, chiefly the thermostat.
i hate when they do this shit, so obnoxious
I wonder if it’s because people keep breaking them trying to access the ports.
Yes. I work in hospitality design and everything is meant to be tamper proof.
I’ve seen some tamper proof TV’s in which they add an HDMI\USB hub to plug in our devices too.
Depends on the TV. That one is a cheap LG.
A sacrificial setbox is cheaper than a tv. Let that get worn out ports instead of a tv, and if it falls, far more likely to survive.
But they don’t buy those.
https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4051379.html
They don’t…? Not the “exact” same thing, but there’s an entire market dedicated to just that thing.
Man … That shit just makes me want to do malicious shit to their ports.
I’m gonna jam this hdmi in backwards, dry.
You should if they’re trying to lock you out of it I think.
Or they just don’t want to provide support when people start plugging in incompatible devices.
Incompatible with HDMI?
The device that is connected to it might be having unrelated issues but not playing, non-tech people might be trying to connect something other than hmdi like say dataport, and a ton of other things. Or the people don’t know how to switch inputs, or keep trying to use hmdi2 because that is what they have at home even though they plugged it into hdmi1.
Just a bunch of time consuming fun.
Fair enough :)
Why Roku no worku!
Lots of things are incompatible with HDMI. For example, if I plug my mouse into it it’ll probably cause issues.
I usually take mounted tvs off the mount in hotels to plug in my Chromecast w/Google tv, but this one looks tough!
I don’t think it is possible to achieve this without proper tools 😂
I don’t understand the rational
Sometimes I don’t either…
Maybe it makes it harder to steal the tv.
Couldn’t they just anchor it to the wall?
