Enabling the Aux HDMI Ports on an LG Hotel Television

I’m away from home this week, working in Texas and staying at a large hotel chain. I’ve been messing around with my Raspberry Pi a bunch lately, so I decided to bring one with me, assuming that the television in my room would have one or two unused HDMI ports that I could connect to. It did — it’s a 40″ LG television, with two HDMI ports available on the side.

When you press the “Aux” button on the remote…

…this is the menu that pops up.

And when you select the second HDMI port, this is what you get:

Nothing.

I rebooted the Raspberry Pi, but still could not get any video. To make sure everything was working, I disconnected the HDMI connection from the wall and plugged the Raspberry Pi into that port and it worked just fine. For some reason, the hotel chain had disabled the HDMI ports on the side of the television.

There’s another connection on the back of the television, an RJ-11 connection that looks like a phone cord. It connects to what looks like a small IR port on the front of the television. Once I disconnected the RJ-11 (phone jack) from the back of the television and hit the “Aux” bottom on the remote again, I got a different menu on the television.

From this menu, I was able to select and use the television’s other inputs.

Success!

The bad news is, with the cable disconnected, you can no longer change cable channels. The good news is, you can easily restore the television back to its prior state by reconnecting the RJ-11 cable. After doing it once I found I was able to easily reach up and disconnect the cable without moving the television or messing with any of the other cables.

Before leaving the room, be sure to reconnect the cable so the next person who stays there has a functional (but crippled) television. I’m not entirely sure what the rationale is in regards to locking customers out of the television’s additional HDMI ports, but if you need to enable them, now you know the trick.