You go on a trip, you arrive at your hotel and you find yourself with the usual problem: the tv is “capada”and it is not possible to connect anything to it: it can only be used with the internal services and options offered by the hotel.
It is a common but debatable practice: there are many of us who would like to bring us a console or an HDMI dongle —a Chromecast or a Fire TV Stick, for example— to enjoy our games or streaming platforms as if we were at home, but hotels often try to prevent this. Why?
Many hotels try to avoid the use of docking ports by making plugging anything into them nearly impossible. One of the classic ways to do it is simply to place the TV against the wall.
In these installations, the TVs have very little (or no) range of movement and ports such as HDMI are practically inaccessible and out of reach.
In this case, the ideal would be to use televisions with an accessible HDMI port on one side. The other option, that the managers of the hotels used some type of extension cord to give access to those ports even if the TV was attached to the wall.
The so-called “Hospitality Mode” makes the television very limited in terms of functions, and it is a very widespread feature in hotels.
Hotel televisions can also prevent this type with another type of technique: the blocking of the “Source” button (Source) which is what we use to make the television show the signal coming from, for example, that HDMI port that we want to use.
The “Hospitality Mode” with which many hotels configure their televisions means that precisely those televisions are disabled and many options are not accessible. And among them, that of choosing the content playback source, something that once again prevents us from using it with a laptop, a console or an HDMI dongle.
What? pic.twitter.com/CWf0qz6oBb
— Visvge (@Sicclord1) January 12, 2023
Some hotels directly warn us not to connect anything to the HDMI port with warnings like the one in the image. According to the message, trying to plug something in could completely “hang” the hotel’s entertainment system.
The warning and this type of practice have been criticized in the past on social networks and forums like Reddit. The users they complain that in the end this is a way to prevent users from using their streaming services. The objective, of course, is for the hotel to earn more money with each client, since if they want to see a movie, for example, they will have to pay for it.
Hacking the hotel TV
There are various guides shared by users who have researched the subject and help unlock Samsung and LG TVs in hotels. The process is usually based on the use of a specific sequence of buttons on the keyboards of the remote controls to access advanced configuration options, among which will be those of being able to use the TV in a normal way.
There are even more extensive guides for other TV models from Sony, Haier or Philips with the codes that help access those conventional modes of use, but it is not the only way to try to access that option.
In fact, according to some users who have done it, in some hotels it is possible disconnect the RJ-11 connector which is traditionally used for the telephone socket.
If there is an RJ-11 phone cable connected to that port called Game Control/MPI, unplugging it may fix the problem.
On TV it can be called another way (it is usually used to connect specific controls, and they call it “Game Control/MPI”), but if we disconnect it, theoretically the television will go into user mode and not in the traditional hotel mode. From then on it should be possible to connect, for example, a Chromecast to the HDMI port and change the source with the TV remote to finally use our dongle.
If access to the HDMI port is achieved, rather than connecting a console or an HDMI dongle, some users take the opportunity to connect their laptops. Here the key is have a long enough HDMI cable to be able to have the laptop next to us while we control the playback on the TV.
The problem has been discussed on various platforms for a long time and in fact on YouTube it is possible to find all kinds of videos helping to unlock the hotel’s TV in order to use it conventionally.
The situation is certainly strange considering that users have been traveling to hotels with their laptops and all kinds of entertainment devices for a long time, hoping to enjoy them wherever they travel. Maybe hotel managers should take this into account and facilitate these options.
