Lay My Hat

Following your helpful advice we have purchased wifi for our holiday cottage and now a new smart tv.

For the smart tv each of the catch up services (itv hub, iPlayer etc) requires a login and we are reluctant to use our own account. So we are considereding leaving it for each guest to use their own logins but concerned this some guests may not have their login details with them. I would be grateful for any thoughts on how to allow guests to use the smart tv without using our own login details?

Thanks

Set up accounts using throwaway email addresses. Check every now and again that they are still working.

Yes, I would set up a new email account for stuff like this. It's a bit frustrating having to log in to BBC iPlayer nowadays so I would make that as easy as possible.

Also the last guests won't log out for your TV will remember their log in.

That does not include Netflix and such like as they will have to log in with their own account.

I wouldn't worry about it, most people will have or be able to reset their log in. If they don't, they can create one.

Thanks for your replies. A new email account sounds like the best way. I just hope guests don't login and logout with their own account as anyone following them might not have their details with them to login after that.

It does sound like you're asking for trouble, but good luck. We'll watch with interest what happens, but sure as eggs, there'll be login / logout issues on a regular basis.

As Robert Heinlein said, " Never underestimate the awesome power of human stupidity".

Mols

I think the BBC iPlayer works a tad differently now.

When wanting to use the bbc iPlayer on a device now inc Smart TV's i think the BBC creates a token (Ramdom string of number and letter characters) for the device on first use displayed onscreen asking you to visit the bbc website to enter this info AND your TV licence number.

The bbc then remember the device in future and as long as you renew your TV licence no further login details are required to use the bbc iPlayer on that device.

This is something we have been looking at, I can imaging some guests will use their own login. As suggested the BBC one now needs you to login on another device to activate the token. We plan to create dummy accounts for each property.

We quite often get guests who have logged in to Netflix or Amazon and forgotten to log out. We get the odd request to log the TV out, I usually tell them to fix it themselves as on most services you can force all devices to log back in. We are remote and I don't want to ask the cleaner to have to do this.

I am considering leaving some bluetooth keyboards as I find using a remote to log in quite tedious.

Having recently set up a smart TV, yes I have set up separate accounts with each provider under an old email address that I use for random things. If you use your own the guests can interfere with your viewing by watching programmes you may have left half way through watching. I haven’t provided the password but I’ll just have to see what happens over the coming year. I’m hoping for all the free accounts like BBC iplayer and All4 that guests will simply use the logged in account and not log out. If they do use their own, I’ll simply log back into the account I’ve created next time I visit.