Here are some working solutions for watching TV using your cell phone data.
Perhaps you've cut the cord and eliminated your cable TV or internet provider and now you want to
use your cell phone to stream TV. You can watch on your phone but how do you get it to your TV
or computer. There are several options but some come with gotchas like licensing restrictions that
block the display of your streaming content or hitting your data caps. To avoid these challenges
I'm going to share a few working solutions and one big surprise trick you've never heard of to
get more data for streaming out of your cell phone plan. Let's get started. HDMI Adapters.
Since modern TVs all have standard HDMI ports you can use an HDMI adapter to connect your iPhone or
Android cell phone and play TV shows from apps like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and other streaming
TV services. The HDMI adapter passes both video and audio to your TV and it automatically renders
the image to full screen to fit your TV picture. This is a simple solution that works on almost
any cell phone and TV but you have to make sure you select the right HDMI adapter. Cheaper clones
of these adapters often don't work at all or don't work with certain apps. For the iPhone
you need to use an Apple Lightning to Digital AV Adapter. This adapter plugs into the lightning
port on your cell phone which is available on iPhone 5 or newer models and works with iPads,
iPods and other devices. Basically anything with a lightning port. This adapter includes
a lightning port input as well. That's handy to keep your cell phone charged while the
lightning port is used for HDMI output. It's important that you get the official Apple
version of this adapter and I'll provide a link in the description of this video.
There is electronics inside this adapter that handles the translation and cheaper
clone versions of this product will not render properly for some apps on your cell phone.
People complain all the time on message boards that this adapter solution does not work for
Netflix and other apps and it's simply because they bought a cheap clone without the electronics,
so make sure you get the correct one. For Android phones it works the same way. You just need to
use the correct adapter that fits the connection port on the phone. Most of the newer models have a
USB-C port so I recommend a USB-C to HDMI adapter with pass-through power. This can keep your phone
charged while the USB-C port is used for HDMI output. The nice thing about this adapter is that
it also works with newer Mac and Windows laptops and other devices that have the USB-C port so it
serves a dual purpose. I'll provide a link to the correct adapter in the description of this video.
Screen Mirroring. Screen Mirroring is the process of mirroring your cell phone screen onto another
device wirelessly through your network. It is based on Miracast or Airplay technology.
For it to work, you'll need a TV that is connected to the same network as your phone.
This generally requires a screen mirror device like Chromecast, Microsoft Wireless Display
Adapter, Roku, Firestick, Anycast, or other type of dongle that is connected to your TV. Your
smart TV may have networking built in and apps that can provide the same functionality though.
Once you are on the same network you can enable mirroring from your phone and your screen is
mirrored onto the TV display. Sadly though, this solution has one major flaw. For most TV streaming
apps on your phone it requires a separate internet connection on your network and does not use the
cell phone internet data. If you've cut the cord from your Internet service provider you no longer
have this Internet connection on your wireless network. As soon as you mirror your Netflix,
YouTube TV, or other streaming app from your phone you'll get an error stating it's unable to
play the content or you'll get an endless spinning circle on the TV. It does work for phone mirroring
but license restrictions prevent most common streaming TV apps from working properly.
Tethering with a smart TV or computer you can tether your phone and use the cell data
provided by your carrier to stream TV. On the iPhone go to Settings, Personal Hotspot,
turn on the option Allow Others to Join, and set up a password.
Now you have a fully functional Wi-Fi hotspot that can be used by any device to access
streaming TV services on the android. This is available under Settings, Network & Internet,
Hotspot & Tethering. For a smart TV you will have options available to connect to your network. You
can add a wireless connection and select your newly created phone Wi-Fi hotspot. Your smart TV
will now run any streaming apps while connecting to the internet through your cell phone.
If you don't have a smart TV then you can add a device like a Roku that essentially turns it into
a smart TV where you can set up a wireless network connection in the same manner. For a computer,
connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot and download streaming TV apps for Netflix, YouTube TV,
or any other services you want or you can just run them directly in a browser. There are two main
warnings when using this solution. First, you are limited to the data cap of your cell phone plan.
You can easily use multiple gigabytes of data per day streaming TV and if you hit your data
cap most carriers drop the speed down to 2G which makes it unusable for almost everything. Second,
many carriers do not provide 4G speed with a tethered hotspot. They reduce the speed to 3G
even when you are within your data limits. That is often why TV apps run much slower when tethered
as opposed to running them directly from apps on your phone. This may result in lower resolution
or choppy video. Tethering Data Trick. There is a simple trick to avoid the data cap limitations
on your cell phone plan when tethering. This surprising solution works with most carriers.
When data packets transmit to the carrier they contain a Time to Live (or TTL) setting. The
TTL decrements by one for each hop through a device until it reaches its destination or hits
zero and is thrown away. This prevents data packets from floating around the Internet forever.
Your cell phone has a default TTL of 64 and your carrier looks for this number in data packets to
provide high speed data back to your phone. If the TTL is not 64 they throttle data when you're
over your data cap. The trick to avoid throttling is to set the TTL on any tethered devices to 65
so that it decrements to 64 for the carrier. For example, a Windows 10 PC has a default TTL of 128.
To change it to 65 open a command prompt and run it as administrator. If you type Ping 127.0.0.1
you'll see that the TTL is 128 in these data packets. To change it to 65 type in this command
and hit Enter. Now when you ping you will see the TTL is set to 65 and when you tether to your
phone you won't have throttling. It's magic. Now you can do this for a Windows PC but you can't
set the TTL on a smart TV, Roku, or other device used for streaming TV. You don't have the option.
However, I do share a solution in another video by using a cell phone
SIM router to set the TTL for every device on your network. So if you are interested in that solution
follow the link I provide in the description of this video. Hopefully one of these options
works best for you to use your cell phone for streaming TV. I've used both the adapter and
router solution and have completely cut the cord from all cable and Internet providers.
Don't forget to check out the links in the description below this video. Thanks for watching!
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