Im currently at the Gold Coast staying in a holiday unit for a few days. As is the case with most Holiday units, now, you get a certain amount of free Wi-Fi. Usually restricted. In our case they gave us half a gigabyte a day for 3 days but we got the whole 1 1/2 gigabyte at the beginning.
They also had a smart TV, that is connect to a foxtal box. The visitor information booklet suggest that you just use the TV remote to switch the TV on and off and then use the Foxtel remote to do everything else. That seemed to be a waste of a good smart TV to me.
I noticed that the smart TV had an app already installed for YouTube as well as one SBS catch up. I thought this is good I can watch some YouTube videos and also keep up with a series weve been watching on catch up SBS.
So I go to the YouTube app and although the smart TV has already been connected to the holiday unit Hi-Fi, the first thing it's comes up with is a screen to enter the code and and password to be able to use the free one and a half gigabyte data we have be allocated. A similar sort of thing that you get when you get free Wi-Fi at shopping centres or libraries and the like. You're already connected to Wi-Fi you just need to be able to get to use the internet via their Wi-Fi.
The Holiday units wants to restrict how much they give you and be able to sell you some more Wi-Fi when you run out. Hence a code and the password, they give you when you first check in. That is why a screen had poped up to allows me to enter the code and password.
Unfortunately the YouTube app new nothing about any of this and had no way I've being able to come up with a virtual soft keyboard to enter the code and password.
Like most problems ther is more than one solution. I looked around a bit on the Smart TV installed apps and found a web browser.
As soon as I went to try and open a page on it, it came up screen asking for the code and password to access the 1 1/2 go gig. Being a web browser I was able to use the smart TVs remote to select the input position for the code and then later the password and then use the browser's virtual keyboard to enter the code and password.
The Smart TV was now using the 1 1/2 gigabyte allocation of Data.
I went to the YouTube app and it went straight into it.
When I went to the SBS catch up app it wanted me to login. A point of annoyence because I don't feel you should have to login to something that's partly government-funded. Luckley I had already setup a username and password to fraught both SBS and the ABCs efforts in relation to that. See it here
So now we were able to what episode 7 onwards of season 3 of the 6 season Italian drama series about the Naples Mafia called Gomorrah
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(TV_series)
Video chews up quite a bit of data very quickly. On the second day here, when watching a YouTube video we got a message on to the smart TV to say ther was no internet connection. Not, that we had used up the 1 1/2 Gig. Smart TVs are not smart enough to do that. Perhapsa lot of other things arent that smart either.
Lucky because the Aldi mobile deal I have on my phone if I don't use up the data each month it accumulates. I have now over 50 GB. So I set my phone to be a hotspot and set the TV to use the Wi-Fi to that was now being provided by my phone.
I rarely use phone internet for playing long videos. I dont think I had previously used mobile data that played a video for more than a few minutes.
Earlier in the day I had checked download speed and was getting at least 50 megabytes.
However mobile phone data speeds, go Up and down dramatically depending on how much load ther is on the tower. We discover this when playing the TV series. Although the speed had dropped off in the evening it was still reasonable but there were times when the movie would just stop playing. I have never had that happen at home with wired internet.
A similar thing happened when my son called us via Facebook Messenger from the Czech Republic. We got a number of dropouts. In other words the call was not continuous.
I know why people are leaving Foxtel and droves. It took me a while to work out how to use it and then when I did, I found all the movies are basically the same movies that get me fed over and over again on television. Then for me, the trouble was I would either come in half way through a movie or right near the end. Im now used to starting and intruptimg movies whenever I want. Apparently there is a facility to do that in Foxtel but you have to pay extra for it, that this holiday place have not done.