HD 200 In A Hotel?

[PeteCress]

I've got the part about the HD200 being able to connect to an Ethernet cable and phone home from outside of my home network.

But what about hotels where there is no Ethernet receptacle - only WiFi?

I've done that at home using a bridge, but the bridge had to bond somehow with my router - and I'm guessing that's not going to happen at a hotel.

Anybody been there?

[OneOfMany]

I'm not sure on the extenders, since I only use PC clients around the house, but I have had success using Placeshifter off my laptop in a hotel. I just bring cables along to plug into the TV provided, and use their wireless from my laptop.

Grant

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

I've got the part about the HD200 being able to connect to an Ethernet cable and phone home from outside of my home network.

But what about hotels where there is no Ethernet receptacle - only WiFi?

I've done that at home using a bridge, but the bridge had to bond somehow with my router - and I'm guessing that's not going to happen at a hotel.

Anybody been there?

If you only have wirelss access at the hotel purchase the USB Wireless adapter for the HD200 from the Sage store.

Gerry

[david1234]

Originally Posted by gplasky

If you only have wirelss access at the hotel purchase the USB Wireless adapter for the HD200 from the Sage store.

Gerry

I've been to quite a few hotels that require you to accept their use agreement through a web interface before they actually let you out through the network.

I don't know of anyway that the placeshifter can work through that setup, unless you use some sort of internet sharing with a laptop that masks the placeshifter.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by david1234

I've been to quite a few hotels that require you to accept their use agreement through a web interface before they actually let you out through the network.

I don't know of anyway that the placeshifter can work through that setup, unless you use some sort of internet sharing with a laptop that masks the placeshifter.

I'm playing around with something that offers that possibility.

"Windy31 Wireless Router" http://tinyurl.com/27bfdcl

Basically, you plug the thing into the USB port on a PC and it becomes a WAP - with or without security and whoever connects to said WAP has the same internet capabilities as the PC it's plugged into.

Dunno how well it works Real-World yet, but I've gotten it working at home on a little netbook I use as my walking-around PC.

[dhbier]

Hotel and other disclaimer systems base the acceptence of the terms of service agreement on the MAC address of the device connecting. Once a MAC address has accepted the terms of service then it's given Internet access for the durration period (typically 24 hours). One easy way to get around this when connecting to an extender would be to connect the USB wireless adapter to your laptop, connect to the hotel wifi with that adapter (be sure to turn off other wireless cards on your laptop first), accepte the terms and conditions and then connect the USB adapter to your HD200 or HD300. Then you're good until the acceptance of the terms and conditions runs out.

[mikejaner]

Just use DDWRT, if you have a router, or an unused PC, and set it up to bridge to both wired and wireless devices. I did this on vacation, and it worked great. All you have to do is NAT all the devices on your network, and accept the EULA or whatever from a laptop before you fire up the connection on the HD200
Here's some tutorials I marked on Delicious when I did this:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php...eless_Repeater
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Autoap

[apschaefer]

If you are also traveling with a laptop:

1) Bridge your wireless connection to the ethernet card in your laptop (if your traveling with one). Usually a quick networking change is all thats required with most operating systems. Connect to the hotel internet via wifi and try the HD200. This may not work if a login is required.

2) If a login is required (pay or free). You can try and temporarily change the MAC address of your PC to match the HD200 MAC address. Plug the PC into the network cable, switch your Ethernet card's MAC address to the HD200 MAC address, authenticate, then pop the network cable into the HD200, and switch your PC back to a different address. You may need to repeat this every 24 hours when the internet connection requires you to reauthenticate.

3) Rather than bringing a router with you, You could also setup NAT on the laptop. Get the HD200 on a private LAN address and have it connect through the laptop's ethernet card, using wireless on the laptop to connect to the hotel's internet service. This is similar to option 1, but instead of exposing the HD200 to the hotel internet service you are masquerading it behind the laptop. Once you have this setup, you won't have to bother switching MAC addresses around constantly.

FYI:

Hotel internet in my experience ranges from a scale of awful to acceptable, usually hovering somewhere around the 'terrible' mark in terms of bandwidth and latency. You may get lucky at some hotels that aren't horribly over utilized, but for the most part (particularly with the ones that offer it for free) you won't be able to do much other than surf the web. In my experience I have seen dial-up connections faster than some hotel "high speed internet" offerings.



-Adam

[graywolf]

Originally Posted by apschaefer

If you are also traveling with a laptop:
Hotel internet in my experience ranges from a scale of awful to acceptable, usually hovering somewhere around the 'terrible' mark in terms of bandwidth and latency. You may get lucky at some hotels that aren't horribly over utilized, but for the most part (particularly with the ones that offer it for free) you won't be able to do much other than surf the web. In my experience I have seen dial-up connections faster than some hotel "high speed internet" offerings.
-Adam

That has always been my experience also. Tried out Placeshifter when I was on the road. Worked nicely EXCEPT for the hotel bandwidth. Got bunch of stuttering and skipping on SD recordings. Even late late at night, bandwidth usage was better but still bad.

During evening, sometimes it was just totally unwatchable.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by apschaefer

2) If a login is required (pay or free). You can try and temporarily change the MAC address of your PC to match the HD200 MAC address. Plug the PC into the network cable, switch your Ethernet card's MAC address to the HD200 MAC address, authenticate, then pop the network cable into the HD200, and switch your PC back to a different address. You may need to repeat this every 24 hours when the internet connection requires you to reauthenticate.

I found a convenient way to do this, downloading "MacShift" from Nate True's site: http://devices.natetrue.com/macshift/

With that puppy on one's laptop, making a couple of .BAT files to invoke it (one to spoof the ID, the other to reset it) takes about ten minutes.

[wayner]

It might be easier to just take a laptop or netbook along, run PS on that device and, if you want, bring in a VGA cable to plug into the TV in your hotel as OneofMany suggested. Many hotels I have stayed at recently have the VGA input of the TV wired up to the desk by the ethernet port, etc.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by wayner

It might be easier to just take a laptop or netbook along...

This is not the voice of practicality or even reason speaking.... it's more my inner geek trying to get out...

I picked up on what somebody said about an HD200 being able to render movies *and* connect remotely - which neither PS nor Client can do.

The "Hotel" in my case is actually a hospital in which I'm going to be privileged to stay in for awhile in the near future.

They have a "Public" WiFi access zone where there is no WEP or WPA password, just a one-time registration screen that has tb filled out on a browser.

I already bought a NetGear WN2000RPT WiFi extender, set up an old WAP as an unsecured "Public" point, and then aimed the WN2000RPT at it at home and ran the HD200 though the WN2000RPT as a test.

Only thing missing would seem tb the limited bandwidth of a hotel/hospital.

My plan:

• Spoof the WN2000RPT's MAC address on my netbook

• Use the netbook to log on to the hospital's "Public" WiFi and fill in the registration screen

• Return the netbook's WiFi card to it's burned-in MAC addr

• Plug the HD200 into one of the WN2000RPT's Ethernet ports

• Fire up the WN2000RPT and let it connect - which should work bc the WiFi does not force the registration screen once it has a device's MAC address registered.

• Plug the HD200 into the room's TV

• Discover that the bandwidth isn't anywhere near enough.... -)

[wayner]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

I picked up on what somebody said about an HD200 being able to render movies *and* connect remotely - which neither PS nor Client can do.

What do you mean by render movies? I think that they are still being transcoded by Sage, at least when you are not on your LAN, even with an extender rather than a PC client.

What's your internet upload speed from home? That could very likely be the bottleneck.

Good luck on your hospital stay, I hope it is not too long and things go well!

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by wayner

What do you mean by render movies? I think that they are still being transcoded by Sage, at least when you are not on your LAN, even with an extender rather than a PC client.

I really meant "Play". And by "Movies" I meant DVDs that had been ripped to disc in the .VOB format - i.e. the same format as on DVD.

What's your internet upload speed from home? That could very likely be the bottleneck.

Dunno, but we've got the low-end Verizon FIOS. Download speed is perfectly adequate for watching NetFlix movies. In fact, I even watch them over WiFi. Actual upload speed is an unknown.

I guess the logical thing to do is find somebody with FIOS that will humor me and try the same setup I used to test at home at their place.

[Grant.Edwards]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

[regarding using HD200 in a Hospital]

• Discover that the bandwidth isn't anywhere near enough.... -)

Let us know if it works. The hospitals in which I've used the "guest"
Wifi all limited bandwidth to a couple hundred Kbps. I don't think I
ever saw better than 256K, and it was usually lower.

--
Grant

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by Grant.Edwards

Let us know if it works. The hospitals in which I've used the "guest"
Wifi all limited bandwidth to a couple hundred Kbps

My Windows Network Connection says only 11k, but I am able to watch a movie via NetFlix....

PlaceShifter, OTOH, cannot connect. I'm trying to do it via my Windows Home Server address - which worked a-ok at somebody's house the other nite.

Funny thing is that my browser can connect to the WSH addr... it's just PlaceShifter that's striking out. Firewall *seems* tb ok....

I'm not going to try the HD200 until I can get PS working.