Hotel TVs

I’m staying in a hotel right now. I carry an HDMI cable in my backpack so that I can watch YouTube, Netflix, etc. Hotels will often take measures to ensure you can’t do that. This one had:

• Clean Remote with limited buttons
• A Samsung Hospitality TV with no external buttons
  • There is a remote receiver button, but this only does power
• Coaxial Cable Locks/Guards

The first step is to get the coax unplugged since the TV boots from this signal and runs a locked down OS.

Coax Cable Lock#

There lock was really just blocking access to the “nut”. It spun freely and covered the connector. They had these on the TV end and at the wall.

Wall Coax#

All we need to do is wedge something between the nut and guard. I used a plastic knife first, but it broke on the TV end. A house key did the trick.

I plugged in my computer, and tried unplugging the TV to reset it. After a few minutes I turned it back on, but it was still trying to connect to the coax source and didn’t find my HDMI source.

Reduced Function Remote#

I ended up searching the TV model number and finding the manual. There was a code to get the TV out of hospitality mode. Typing in the code with the Clean Remote unfortunately didn’t work, but I was able to find a menu that contained a way to switch sources. So in the end, I won.