Tag: edinburgh

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Hotel Screen Casting

When I travel and stay in a hotel I sometimes connect my iPhone to the hotel TV via an HDMI cable and adapter. This is so I can watch something, either I have downloaded or stream from a streaming service. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I did quite like the idea of AirPlay Hotel, but have never seen it in reality.

Recently I was up in Edinburgh attending a conference and staying at the Moxy Edinburgh Fountainbridge and the televisions had a facility to be casted to from a mobile device. Though I have seen this on other TV menus in other hotels, it usually is a feature of the television, but not set up to be used. The functionality on the TV in the Moxy was setup.

It was easy to configure and it wasn’t long before I could cast video streaming from my phone to the TV.

It worked with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and BBC iPlayer. I didn’t try other services such as Disney+ or services from Channel 4, Channel 5, UKTV, and ITV.

Overall it was a seamless experience which worked well.

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It’s no wonder…

I am not surprised that people can sometimes go over their data limits with modern smartphones such as the iPhone.

I was on the Edinburgh Tram system the other day and it offered free wifi, so I connected and signed in. A little disappointed that there was a 20MB data limit on the free wifi

I was astonished to see the data usage on my phone gobble up the data so fast. Within seconds I had already used 3MB, and all I was doing was watching the sign in page.

 I was on the Edinburgh Tram system the other day and it offered free wifi, so I connected and signed in. A little disappointed that there was a 20MB data limit on the free wifi

I am guessing that the phone was doing something in the background, probably checking e-mail, but what this does show is how much (and how fast) smart phones use data. You can start to imagine the bills if you were using your phone abroad or on a limited data contract.