Hotel video streaming options
April 7, 2022 5:11 AM Subscribe
I'll be traveling soon and staying at hotels. What are the best options to stream video on a hotel room's TV? I have accounts on Netflix, Hulu, etc. I have a MacBook, so a Chromecast is an option. But another option is a low-end streaming device like a Roku that I configure in advance and connect with the hotel's WiFi.
It depends a lot on the specific hotel. I have stayed at hotels with Cast-enabled TVs already in the room, and some with smart TVs that I could log into streaming services with. I've also been totally out of luck.
Regarding msbrauer's concern, I did find this hacky guide to spoofing your Chromecast's MAC address which is risky. It mentions that you could use a Roku or Fire TV instead. But, it might not even be possible to plug anything into a given hotel's television's HDMI ports. You'd have to call to be sure.
posted by mkb at 6:18 AM on April 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Regarding msbrauer's concern, I did find this hacky guide to spoofing your Chromecast's MAC address which is risky. It mentions that you could use a Roku or Fire TV instead. But, it might not even be possible to plug anything into a given hotel's television's HDMI ports. You'd have to call to be sure.
posted by mkb at 6:18 AM on April 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I'm not sure what ports the MacBook has, but you should be able to get an HDMI cable or USB-C-to-HDMI cable and just plug it into the hotel TV. The last few hotels I've stayed at have had TVs with HDMI ports, and you can just treat it as an extra monitor.
posted by LSK at 6:50 AM on April 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by LSK at 6:50 AM on April 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
Best answer: This really has a wide range of possibilities.
Some hotels are nice and put cast-able TVs in the rooms and it is very easy. Usually you turn on the TV and it has instructions for how to cast to it right there on the screen.
Some don't do you any favors but the TV is a TV and has an HDMI port so you just need a cable to connect the two. For a Mac, you'd need a mini display port to HDMI dongle to add to your probably massive dongle collection.
And some hotels are bastards and have a screw-plate over the ports so you can't mess with them. For these, you need in addition to the above a screwdriver. It's funny. More than once I've been at a work meeting in the office (I work remotely and fly in every so often) and someone wanted a screwdriver and I pull one out of my work bag and they all look at me like I'm Macguyver or something. I've never been hassled for it by TSA. It has been in my carry-on bag for 10 years.
posted by cmm at 6:58 AM on April 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
Some hotels are nice and put cast-able TVs in the rooms and it is very easy. Usually you turn on the TV and it has instructions for how to cast to it right there on the screen.
Some don't do you any favors but the TV is a TV and has an HDMI port so you just need a cable to connect the two. For a Mac, you'd need a mini display port to HDMI dongle to add to your probably massive dongle collection.
And some hotels are bastards and have a screw-plate over the ports so you can't mess with them. For these, you need in addition to the above a screwdriver. It's funny. More than once I've been at a work meeting in the office (I work remotely and fly in every so often) and someone wanted a screwdriver and I pull one out of my work bag and they all look at me like I'm Macguyver or something. I've never been hassled for it by TSA. It has been in my carry-on bag for 10 years.
posted by cmm at 6:58 AM on April 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
not really answering the question but perhaps helpful in some way:
in the various hotels i've had to stay in over the years, the mix of security and unsecurity features both physical and digital, plus my own personality quirks, make this a battle i am 100% not interested in fighting anymore, ever. i just watch my shows on my laptop and never even turn the hotel tv on. my expectations are set accordingly.
posted by glonous keming at 7:43 AM on April 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
in the various hotels i've had to stay in over the years, the mix of security and unsecurity features both physical and digital, plus my own personality quirks, make this a battle i am 100% not interested in fighting anymore, ever. i just watch my shows on my laptop and never even turn the hotel tv on. my expectations are set accordingly.
posted by glonous keming at 7:43 AM on April 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
A story:
A few years back (slightly pre-pandemic), I drove down to DC to pick up my daughter for summer visitation. My usual routine for pickup was to drive down on a Friday, stay in a nearby hotel, and pick her up and drive back home on Sunday. Then for dropoff, we would drive down on a Saturday, drop her off, stay Saturday night in a nearby hotel, and drive back on Sunday. In this particular summer, I took down a Roku stick. It plugged right into the TV and started up and connected with no issues. Two months later, in the same hotel, the TV did not have an HDMI port. At all. I called down to the front desk and explained the situation, and asked whether I could get a different room, and the person at the desk said they didn't know which rooms had TVs with ports, but they would check with the manager on duty. The manager on duty didn't know either, so they checked with maintenance. They didn't know either. They offered to send someone to a few different vacant rooms to see if they could find one, but at that point I gave up and just watched Netflix on my laptop.
The moral of the story: Don't bother getting any additional hardware, and count yourself lucky if anything above "watch Netflix on your laptop" ends up working.
posted by Etrigan at 8:18 AM on April 7, 2022
A few years back (slightly pre-pandemic), I drove down to DC to pick up my daughter for summer visitation. My usual routine for pickup was to drive down on a Friday, stay in a nearby hotel, and pick her up and drive back home on Sunday. Then for dropoff, we would drive down on a Saturday, drop her off, stay Saturday night in a nearby hotel, and drive back on Sunday. In this particular summer, I took down a Roku stick. It plugged right into the TV and started up and connected with no issues. Two months later, in the same hotel, the TV did not have an HDMI port. At all. I called down to the front desk and explained the situation, and asked whether I could get a different room, and the person at the desk said they didn't know which rooms had TVs with ports, but they would check with the manager on duty. The manager on duty didn't know either, so they checked with maintenance. They didn't know either. They offered to send someone to a few different vacant rooms to see if they could find one, but at that point I gave up and just watched Netflix on my laptop.
The moral of the story: Don't bother getting any additional hardware, and count yourself lucky if anything above "watch Netflix on your laptop" ends up working.
posted by Etrigan at 8:18 AM on April 7, 2022
Apple apparently added the ability to log into a captive portal (the barrier where you enter your room number and last name) to the AppleTV in the most recent software update. Roku sticks supported captive portal logins already, so one of those would be my choice if the TV didn't just allow you to cast directly to it or log into your own streaming accounts like some of them do.
posted by fedward at 10:18 AM on April 7, 2022
posted by fedward at 10:18 AM on April 7, 2022
Many hotels now have smart tvs that allow you to log in to your own Netflix or Hulu account right from the TV. If you are expecting to stay in hotel nice enough to have strong wifi and TV's capable of receiving a cast signal, it's more likely that you'll be able to just log in directly.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 11:53 AM on April 7, 2022
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 11:53 AM on April 7, 2022
I would be extremely reluctant to put network credentials (even for something as trivial as a Netflix or Hulu account) into a device to which members of the public have physical access in private for long periods of time. If you do, at least make sure you don't use the same credentials anywhere else, and change them right after.
The only time I have successfully used a Chromecast in a hotel was a case where there was an Ethernet cable with no captive portal, to which I connected my own AP. Obviously neither ideal nor reliably repeatable.
My usual solution is to connect a laptop or tablet with HDMI output (and on which I can easily do the captive portal dance) to the TV with an HDMI cable. Almost all hotels I've stayed in recently have TVs with an accessible HDMI port and a way to switch inputs. (Anecdata, small sample size, specific to urban areas in the mainland US.)
Some but not all tablets and phones can do HDMI with an adapter. The options I'm aware of are USB-C to HDMI, MHL and SlimPort.
The Roku stick mentioned above seems like a good solution; I have not tried it.
posted by sourcequench at 1:43 PM on April 7, 2022
The only time I have successfully used a Chromecast in a hotel was a case where there was an Ethernet cable with no captive portal, to which I connected my own AP. Obviously neither ideal nor reliably repeatable.
My usual solution is to connect a laptop or tablet with HDMI output (and on which I can easily do the captive portal dance) to the TV with an HDMI cable. Almost all hotels I've stayed in recently have TVs with an accessible HDMI port and a way to switch inputs. (Anecdata, small sample size, specific to urban areas in the mainland US.)
Some but not all tablets and phones can do HDMI with an adapter. The options I'm aware of are USB-C to HDMI, MHL and SlimPort.
The Roku stick mentioned above seems like a good solution; I have not tried it.
posted by sourcequench at 1:43 PM on April 7, 2022
In the past I have taken an older small belkin router and plugged that into the ethernet cable in the room rather than trying the wifi. It let's me have my own network which I can use a hidden ssid on. Recently a lot of hotels no longer have an ethernet cable and are wifi only, ideally the front desk would know what is in the room.
posted by dstopps at 5:01 PM on April 7, 2022
posted by dstopps at 5:01 PM on April 7, 2022
Some "Wifi Travel Routers" have features that are useful.
There are some that will act as a wifi client on one side, to hook up to the hotel or public wifi, and then offer a NAT and access point (what most people think of as a "router"). This allows you to configure your gear to all connect to the travel router over your own private SSID, and then the travel router acts as a wifi client that the hotel sees. Often they can also accommodate wired devices as either downstream or upstream devices, which is handy for the occasional hotel that still offers wired ethernet.
The trick here is that you can then use a laptop or other device capable of interfacing with the hotel's login portal to do the login, but then ALL your devices have access, because they are all coming from the same client, from the hotel's point of view.
Since there isn't any one perfect recipe for this that works all the time, I often just use a laptop to connect directly to the hotel wifi, and then run a FreeBSD VM to act as an access point (USB wifi dongle). In the last ten years, it has also become very common for hotels to have standard flat panel TV sets fed via HDMI from a dongle or settop box of some sort, and I carry a ten foot HDMI cable and often just hook up the TV directly to the laptop HDMI and that works out pretty well too. As a network engineer, I found the PC-based solutions less frustrating than trying to make adjustments for the specifics of a hotel via a travel router.
posted by jgreco at 9:44 PM on April 7, 2022
There are some that will act as a wifi client on one side, to hook up to the hotel or public wifi, and then offer a NAT and access point (what most people think of as a "router"). This allows you to configure your gear to all connect to the travel router over your own private SSID, and then the travel router acts as a wifi client that the hotel sees. Often they can also accommodate wired devices as either downstream or upstream devices, which is handy for the occasional hotel that still offers wired ethernet.
The trick here is that you can then use a laptop or other device capable of interfacing with the hotel's login portal to do the login, but then ALL your devices have access, because they are all coming from the same client, from the hotel's point of view.
Since there isn't any one perfect recipe for this that works all the time, I often just use a laptop to connect directly to the hotel wifi, and then run a FreeBSD VM to act as an access point (USB wifi dongle). In the last ten years, it has also become very common for hotels to have standard flat panel TV sets fed via HDMI from a dongle or settop box of some sort, and I carry a ten foot HDMI cable and often just hook up the TV directly to the laptop HDMI and that works out pretty well too. As a network engineer, I found the PC-based solutions less frustrating than trying to make adjustments for the specifics of a hotel via a travel router.
posted by jgreco at 9:44 PM on April 7, 2022
I use my Kindle Fire HD to watch shows when staying in a hotel. It works with regular wifi access.
posted by tacodave at 4:33 PM on April 8, 2022
posted by tacodave at 4:33 PM on April 8, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by msbrauer at 5:53 AM on April 7, 2022 [1 favorite]