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LG to Bring AirPlay to Hotel Room TVs Later This Year
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LG get to sell their sets into more hotels and the exposure to guests who enjoy using Apple stuff. When they want a new TV LG is suddenly making the short list.
I have an LG TV that's only a few years old and the software is up to date. I've used Air Play 2 to stream cable in a room that doesn't have a box. I'm not sure if its LGs fault or the cable companies fault with a buggy app but it doesn't work great.
Constant freezes and having to reboot the TV.
Constant freezes and having to reboot the TV.
Great now the room next to me can play loud awful music...
Anything that makes using the TV in a hotel room with my laptop. phone or tablet is welcome.
Currently its pot luck whether I can connect to the HDMI.
Be interesting to see how long this becomes to a standard in UK hotel rooms, or other manufacturers adopt it.
Recently stayed at a Marriott with a Samsung TV that allegedly supported connection via SmartThings, after an hour of trying I gave up meaning the TV was useless to me.
Currently its pot luck whether I can connect to the HDMI.
Be interesting to see how long this becomes to a standard in UK hotel rooms, or other manufacturers adopt it.
Recently stayed at a Marriott with a Samsung TV that allegedly supported connection via SmartThings, after an hour of trying I gave up meaning the TV was useless to me.
Absolutely it would and if people can afford a first gen $3500 device, then they should use that instead of this but for the rest of us, this will be awesome. Also if you have more than one person in the room, the Vision Pro won't really work for a social viewing experience like AirPlaying content will.
I bring my chromecast, connect to hotel tv, connect my phone to hotel wifi, setup hotspot on my phone and configure chromecast. It's working great.
I stayed in a Four Seasons in Baltimore that was a Junior Suite (free upgrade for my $300 room). It had a 55" LG in the bedroom and a 65" LG in the living room. Airplay would be a plus.
It's bad enough to pay $500 a night just to sleep! You want to throw in sitting for hours watching TV (which you can do at home for free)?
Good point! There would be a sliding scale of worse-ness. But in reality, taking my AppleTV with me is so easy that I wouldn't pay much more for that service in my room.
The ability to connect to the wifi, and most hotel TVs have everything locked out, probably for ease of support.I don't understand. If a TV has AirPlay it has AirPlay. Why would it need anything special if it's in a hotel?
Or they mean.... there will be an extra fee to enable it in your hotel room?
Many times it's a bit more complicated than that. I spend about half my life in hotel rooms -- usually higher end properties. The amount of lockdown that these companies place on their sets borders on the ridiculous. It might have made sense in the days of pay-per-view and hotel provided soft porn, but these days I have to think a large majority of guests would rather watch their own streaming material -- including their own porn.
I've found TVs in properties that have the ports disabled. Most times, they're difficult to access behind the mounts. Many times the remotes don't include input controls. Often times the sets are set to very low contrast and brightness, and the color pallets are all off. Sound is sometimes manipulated.
In spite of my joke, I actually have trained myself to be a TV hacker. I carry a universal programming (NOT programmable -- PROGRAMMING) remote and know the access codes to the service menus on Samsung and LG TV models. Usually simply connecting the HDMI cable to a port is not enough. Most times the digital and networking interfaces need to be disconnected to allow the TV to reboot into normal mode. Those ports are far more difficult to access than the HDMI ports. Once the TV reboots after that, you often need to access the service menu to enable the ports, adjust the color, brightness, and contrast, and make sure the sound is set to normal mode so it doesn't interfere with your AirPod connectivity on your iPad or iPhone when connecting.
It actually can be quite infuriating. Sometimes I'll be so pissed I'll leave everything disconnected and the settings changed as a protest. There's no need for this level of lockdown with programming the way it is these days. I will sometimes note what hotels are the most difficult for this and stop patronizing the property.
-- jjudson
TV Hacker Extraordinaire
I use Chromcast when I travel. When each hotel room has its own wifi Chromecast works stable. When wifi is common for all floor or building I need to scan QR to connect and it needs to be repeated even when I pause playing for going to restroom for 2 minutes. It is frustrating and I hope Airplay will work more stable.
I've had an AppleTV in my suitcase for years now, but always have to do the stupid MAC address shuffle to get it to connect to the hotel's WiFi.
I wish Apple would have simply added a reasonable WiFi-configuration utility to tvOS instead - I really hate AirPlay 🤷♂️
What I would love is an Apple TV with inputs in the box. That way I don't have to deal with changing inputs on the tv itself, and the tv can rest inside of tvOS.
Cool. About time.
Now give me an easy way to hook up my game console to the Tv. No; streaming is not the solution. If I bring my laptop/Pc/console/handheld and want to play on a big screen, then let me. Why are hotels such jerks about allowing people to watch what they want? Do they get that many adult video subscriptions to warrant these restrictions?
Now give me an easy way to hook up my game console to the Tv. No; streaming is not the solution. If I bring my laptop/Pc/console/handheld and want to play on a big screen, then let me. Why are hotels such jerks about allowing people to watch what they want? Do they get that many adult video subscriptions to warrant these restrictions?
I just watch on my laptop. With the laptop in my lap, the screen is much bigger than the TV across the room. Better picture quality too.