The Travelling Cordcutter
One of the biggest benefits of cutting the cable cord is the ability to enjoy the content you want to watch anywhere.
When you do travel, obviously watching TV is never the main focus. Enjoying new places, new cultures and adding new experiences is the primary reason for travelling. However every once and awhile after playing tourist all day, you’ll come back to your hotel or AirBnB and just want to relax and watch a movie, your local news, catch up on a few episodes of one of your favorite shows or maybe watch the big game.
Having your Apple TV setup in a hotel using a travel router
Most people wouldn’t think of packing any kind of streaming device with the other travel essentials, but the reality is they don’t give a second thought to bringing along their smartphone, tablet or laptop computer.
The benefit of all of the streaming devices is that they are very compact in size offering the ease of being able to easily fit inside your luggage. Imagine trying to do this with a cable box?
A sample of streaming devices while at a cottage. The Google Chromecast, Amazon Firestick, Roku, Apple TV and a travel router.
When I travel these days I bring along a sampling of streaming devices, not because you need multiple devices, but because at Kutko we are constantly paying attention to every streaming service and how they are different on every streaming device.
This includes testing these device while travelling, but also being able to support any questions we get from clients who happen to be using the same devices.
Although it’s been awhile, when travelling abroad via airplane the added benefit of all of the streaming services is that many of them (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple+, Disney+, Paramount+) offer you the ability to download content offline to your smartphone or tablet. I’ll often load up my tablet with a variety of full seasons of shows and movies to help bide the time on a plane or in case you end up sitting in an airport due to a delay. In the past few summers I’ve been doing this for camping as well.
A sample of offline viewing using HBO Max
When staying at an kind of short-term vacation rentals like VRBO or AirBnB setting up your streaming device is fairly straightforward. Your host will include the wifi password, you connect your device to said wifi network and enter the password.
At many hotels this isn’t as simple. Many hotels will require you to connect via the wifi via a browser first, often with a little pop up screen.
The problem with many of the streaming devices is that they lack any kind of browser that allows you to do this.
A sample of a hotel wifi sign in pop up window.
This is why investing in a small travel router is a good idea. I’ve been using the TP-Link Wireless N300 Travel Router for several years but there are plenty of various models on the market.
They are inexpensive and simple to use. Essentially what you do is connect the travel router via a browser window to the hotels wifi. Once connected you can then use it as your own hotspot to connect any of your streaming devices to the travel router.
The challenge I’ve found in many hotels these days is that some of them still have traditional cable, some of them have smart TV’s or their own streaming devices. By bringing my own streaming device I don’t have to sign into all of my own services on the hotels device.
I’ve been in hotels where the previous guests in the room didn’t sign out of their Netflix account. On top of that if you are in a foreign country the streaming devices may not have all of the local Canadian streaming apps available. Bringing your own device means you’ll have access to all of the apps you are use to.
Ultimately the benefit of having a streaming device while travelling is being able to watch as much or as little of your favorite programming. This is the true benefit of cutting the cable cord. No PVR’s are needed, no need to set up and scheduled recordings.
Since streaming services offer all of their content on demand, you can catch up on last nights episodes or an entire season of a show anytime you want from any place in the world.
About Kutko:
Kutko is a Canadian based cord cutting company that offers help to every day Canadians on how to get rid of cable and cut the cord.
If you are interested in cutting the cable cord and not sure where to start then get in touch with us and arrange your free phone consultation today.