Plugging into Cruise Ship & Hotel TV's

[sengsational]

What has been your experience plugging your device into a TV when you're traveling?

I'm going to have many sea days on a ship (CDF Horizon), and I thought it might be nice to veg in the room and do some serious binge watching. I can't seem to watch more than two at home because "I should really be doing something". But there's not going to be anything to do, so...

It seems as if the hotels I've visited domestically have been spending less effort at hiding the inputs on the TV's. Seems like it almost would be a selling point..."free wifi, accessible HDMI port and USB port on our 40" flat screens." Who knows what I'll find on a French cruise ship? I know: Nemo!

 

[Senator]

What has been your experience plugging your device into a TV when you're traveling?

I'm going to have many sea days on a ship (CDF Horizon), and I thought it might be nice to veg in the room and do some serious binge watching. I can't seem to watch more than two at home because "I should really be doing something". But there's not going to be anything to do, so...

It seems as if the hotels I've visited domestically have been spending less effort at hiding the inputs on the TV's. Seems like it almost would be a selling point..."free wifi, accessible HDMI port and USB port on our 40" flat screens." Who knows what I'll find on a French cruise ship? I know: Nemo!

You will have plenty to do on the cruise ship a sea. Work out, walk the deck. Take a nap on the deck overlooking the ocean. Eat, drink. Socialize, etc.

I always liked the sea days more than the shore days.

Be prepared for 220V outlets. Likely they have both. Cellular coverage at sea is expensive.

 

[Teacher Terry]

We turned off our cells completely so as not to have a large bill. WE did have to pay 20.00/day for internet because I was teaching an online uni class during the cruise. WE had a ton of things to do on the ship. They offered so much stuff that you could not do it all in addition to exercising, swimming & hot tub. WE wanted to make sure we burned calories so we could eat plenty.

 

[Nemo2]

Don't know, never tried, but pretty sure it's CCTV for the most part.

 

[audreyh1]

I noticed that a Marriott I have a reservation for offers to let you log into your own Netflix or Hulu (and a couple more maybe) accounts on their TVs. Hadn't seen that before. They have a selection to erase all your account settings from the TV and also promise that all settings are wiped out when you check out.

There was no charge for this as far as I could tell.

 

[mn54]

We just got back from a 12 day cruise through the panama canal. Except for sleeping, we were never in our room. There is so much to do. The weather was fantastic, why would you want to sit in your room and look at the tv?

 

[Alan]

I've plugged our iPhone or iPad into an HDMI port in many hotel room TVs to stream Netflix or BBC iPlayer programs.

Never even considered it on a cruise ship.

 

[6miths]

Same as above. Always take a long an HDMI cable now to watch programmes DS has loaded onto a USB or to stream Netflix at hotels if I think I will have anytime. Didn't really have time to watch much TV shipboard as there always seemed to be lots on the go.

 

[sengsational]

Thanks all. This will be my first cruise with more than two sea days back-to-back, so as to the comments of never being in the room, that has been true on all of my cruises to date, but having no ports, I wasn't sure how much I'd find to do for all those hours.

After a bit of searching*, at least one room on the Horizon has an HDMI connection:

Nice sized room with updated TV - bring along an HDMI cable and you can plug right in with whatever device you bring.

 

[Gone4Good]

Never been on a cruise ship (French or otherwise) but we do travel with an HDMI cable. Our experiences are pretty mixed. I'd say we can plug in to the hotel T.V. maybe half the time.

Sometimes the T.V. is bolted to the wall so you can't get to the input jacks. Sometimes the T.V. is so old it doesn't have an HDMI port. Sometimes the T.V. is in such a weird configuration or is so small that we're better off watching on our laptops - that's the case with our current room in Mexico.

I'm curious to see how Netflix works in international waters (assuming you're binging on Netflix). They've gotten a bit strict with geolocation restrictions lately. I'm guessing the ship's wifi is going to be set to a specific location (France?) and you'll get that country's Netflix library wherever the ship roams.

 

[sengsational]

We're going to plan ahead and bring the shows to binge on...I didn't want to try their wifi for streaming...that might be too much to ask. I can get 30 seasons of a one hour TV show on a $30 thumb drive...more than enough.

 

[M Paquette]

We're going to plan ahead and bring the shows to binge on...I didn't want to try their wifi for streaming...that might be too much to ask. I can get 30 seasons of a one hour TV show on a $30 thumb drive...more than enough.

Good plan. On board wifi can get congested, as it all bottlenecks at a satellite link with not that much capacity. Data on board a ship or out of country can also be pricy. I've been on cruises where getting an email to successfully send via wifi and the ships sat link generally required waiting til 3-5 AM and trying multiple times.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[txtig]

Last Fall, DW and I attended an out of town wedding. We were worried about missing a LSU (Geaux Tigers!!!) football game. It was being shown on the SEC Network, which wasn't part of hotel's cable lineup. But, I knew the SEC Network was available on my Amazon Fire Stick. Took it along with us, and after logging it into the hotel's wifi network, I was able to stream the game to the hotel TV with no problem. I'm planning on buying a second Fire Stick just for traveling.

The only issue was that the hotel remote control was not the original remote that came with the TV. It did not have a “Menu” button to allow the switching the source to the correct HDMI input. But, it was simply a matter of using the buttons on the TV itself to access the Menu screen.

 

[DrRoy]

When I am vacationing I prefer to do things that I cannot do at home. I just got back from an eastern Caribbean cruise and did not watch more than 10 minutes of tv a day, and that was about the ship. There is such better things to spend your time on. Take a day off at home to watch TV.

 

[sengsational]

When I am vacationing I prefer to do things that I cannot do at home. I just got back from an eastern Caribbean cruise and did not watch more than 10 minutes of tv a day, and that was about the ship. There is such better things to spend your time on. Take a day off at home to watch TV.

I watch almost no TV at home. Not that I can't, just that I don't. I might not watch much TV on the ship, but it's a contingency plan if the long span of sea days bore me. I started moving in that direction because the reviews say most of what they'll be playing on the TV will be in French and Spanish, so if I want to watch TV, I think I better bring it with me.

 

[Zip605]

I have found that a F-F HDMI connector is useful if you can not get to the back of the TV but can get to the cable box. Just pull the HDMI cable off the box and attach the connector to change the cable end to female gender, the same as on the TV. I found one at Home Depot of all places. It was about 1 inch long. It was pricy at $10 but no other store had one on the island where we we vacationing.