BERLIN: Heading away on holiday and don’t want to miss out on your favourite TV shows, programs, soccer broadcasts or radio stations while on vacation?
Bring a streaming stick, a streaming box, or even a WiFi radio with you on your trip.
While these devices can usually connect to WiFi without any problems in a holiday home or apartment, you may run into unexpected issues in hotels, say telecoms specialists.
The first hurdle in hotels for streaming devices you bring along could be the captive portal, a login page that must be opened in a browser.
If the device in question doesn’t have a built-in browser, this page cannot be opened, meaning you cannot log into your hotel’s WiFi.
Hotspot using smartphone or tablet
The way to get around this is to use your smartphone or tablet as a WiFi hotspot.
Here’s how:
- Connect your smartphone to the hotel’s WiFi and complete the login in the browser.
- Activate the hotspot on your smartphone.
- Connect your streaming device or WiFi-enabled device to the smartphone’s hotspot.
In some cases, an alternative might be to use the MAC address. This is a unique, unchangeable identification number assigned to every network device by the manufacturer.
Some hotels let you enter a device’s MAC address on the WiFi login page, which lets you skip the hotspot workaround above.
Write down MAC address beforehand
The easiest way to find MAC addresses is to look them up at home beforehand. You can either check your device’s settings menu to see if the MAC address is listed there. Or you can determine the network device’s MAC address manually. Here’s how:
- On your laptop or desktop PC, open the Windows Command Prompt by typing "cmd” (without quotes) into the search bar and then pressing Enter.
- In the black command window that opens, type "getmac /v” or "ipconfig /all” (without quotes) and press Enter.
- The network devices will be listed, and next to the "Physical Addresses” entries, you’ll find the MAC addresses you’re looking for in the format "A0-37-0F-5C-22-5E.”
Is HDMI port locked by hotel?
Regardless of any potential WiFi issues, locked HDMI ports on hotel TVs can still pose a hurdle. This is because streaming sticks and boxes typically send the video and audio signals through this port.
If the TV doesn’t respond to a streaming device connected by HDMI, that might be because "hotel mode” is active. It is a setting that blocks external devices and changes to the default settings.
In this case, the only solution is for you to ask the front desk if the staff can disable this mode. – dpa
