How to fix your hotel TV when it won’t accept your HDMI input

You’re in a Marriott hotel and to keep yourself company, you’ve just bought season four of Downton Abbey. You can’t wait to see how the family and staff will recover from that crisis at the end of season three.

You dig around in your backpack for your trusty micro HDMI cable. You plug one end of the cable into your laptop and the other into the variable media port box.

But nothing happens.

Your laptop sees the television, but the television doesn’t see the laptop. You press every button on the television remote without success. You press the input on the side of the television but the television appears locked to the hotel menu.

Here’s the fix (at least for some hotel televisions).

Look for an RJ11 cable (looks like a telephone cable jack) at the back of the television.

Unplug it.

Now you should be able to press the input button on the side of the television to select the HDMI input.

That’s it.

At last you can watch the tortured romance of Mr. Bates and Anna at Downton Abbey while you pretend to work.

Don’t forget to plug the RJ11 cable back in before you leave!

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