Television and In-House Movies

[Cruisenewbie63]

Hi,  Can anyone please advise on tv Channels  ( how many)  and what the in house move Channel is like?  I assume dvd payers are not available,  or smart tv connection to Netflix etc.     thank you 

[Liz Masterson]

Sometimes live TV works and sometimes it doesn't. I just marveled that it was available at all! There are movies to watch... some influenced by your itinerary, others recent releases or old favorites.

 

If you use the search function here, I'll bet you can find a list of channels. Movies will change over time. AsI recall, there seemed to be an awful lot of sports channels. And the TV does more than TV and Movies. All the lectures and port talks can be viewed, either live or when they are uploaded later. And there is a selection of music channels as well. 

 

The TV also lets you view your account, make dinner reservations, and book treatments at the spa. You can see where the ship is on a map and their is a bridge cam that lets you see what is in front of the ship. Which is fun to watch when your getting dresses in the morning as you are pulling into port. AND YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO VIEW THE SAFETY VIDEO.

[TayanaLorna]

35 minutes ago, Liz Masterson said:

Sometimes live TV works and sometimes it doesn't. I just marveled that it was available at all! There are movies to watch... some influenced by your itinerary, others recent releases or old favorites.

 

If you use the search function here, I'll bet you can find a list of channels. Movies will change over time. AsI recall, there seemed to be an awful lot of sports channels. And the TV does more than TV and Movies. All the lectures and port talks can be viewed, either live or when they are uploaded later. And there is a selection of music channels as well. 

 

The TV also lets you view your account, make dinner reservations, and book treatments at the spa. You can see where the ship is on a map and their is a bridge cam that lets you see what is in front of the ship. Which is fun to watch when your getting dresses in the morning as you are pulling into port. AND YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO VIEW THE SAFETY VIDEO.

There are also Ted Talks and episodes of TV series.  Cannot connect any device to the TV and there is no Bluetooth for headphones which can be problematic if you want to watch a movie in the evening and your neighbor is home.  We got complaints when we were trying to watch the Star Theatre show live and we did not have the TV volume anywhere near full.

[philw1776]

Big issue for us geezers. Really need closed captions as the sound in today's movies is crap.

 

[Heidi13]

2 hours ago, Cruisenewbie63 said:

Hi,  Can anyone please advise on tv Channels  ( how many)  and what the in house move Channel is like?  I assume dvd payers are not available,  or smart tv connection to Netflix etc.     thank you 

 

Affirmative, they have no DVD player and also don't have any accessible ports to plug your own hardware into the TV.

 

From memory they had about a dozen TV programs, the usual US ones plus Sky News and Sky Sports. They don't have a separate film channel, but on the films tab you have a significant number of films available.

 

In 4-months we never did watch any of the films, so no idea what was available. Checked the football results & highlights on Sky Sports, which was our only TV watching, so can't recall the other stations.

[LindaS272]

There’s usually MSNBC. I don’t think all the TV channels are the same system-wide. All we have watched is MSNBC.

[OneSixtyToOne]

I’ve owned a Slingbox for years. It allows me to access my own TV and DVR from my device on any internet connection. Seems like every trip we took was during the season finale of Game of Thrones. Great internet bandwidth when you wake up at 4:00 AM. 😉

[Haqdeluxe]

1 hour ago, OneSixtyToOne said:

I’ve owned a Slingbox for years. It allows me to access my own TV and DVR from my device on any internet connection. Seems like every trip we took was during the season finale of Game of Thrones. Great internet bandwidth when you wake up at 4:00 AM. 😉

I'm sure those of us that have Hulu and Netflix accounts could stream content too but we don't because our host has asked us not to, even at 4 am. 😀

[OneSixtyToOne]

6 minutes ago, Haqdeluxe said:

I'm sure those of us that have Hulu and Netflix accounts could stream content too but we don't because our host has asked us not to, even at 4 am. 😀

Most streaming sites block international ip addresses. 

[longterm]

9 hours ago, Liz Masterson said:

Sometimes live TV works and sometimes it doesn't. I just marveled that it was available at all! There are movies to watch... some influenced by your itinerary, others recent releases or old favorites.

 

If you use the search function here, I'll bet you can find a list of channels. Movies will change over time. AsI recall, there seemed to be an awful lot of sports channels. And the TV does more than TV and Movies. All the lectures and port talks can be viewed, either live or when they are uploaded later. And there is a selection of music channels as well. 

 

The TV also lets you view your account, make dinner reservations, and book treatments at the spa. You can see where the ship is on a map and their is a bridge cam that lets you see what is in front of the ship. Which is fun to watch when your getting dresses in the morning as you are pulling into port. AND YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO VIEW THE SAFETY VIDEO.

On our trip in March, TV almost never worked...

[longterm]

8 hours ago, philw1776 said:

Big issue for us geezers. Really need closed captions as the sound in today's movies is crap.

 

The TVs in the rooms are throttled so that you can't turn them up very much; at their loudest it's often too low to watch a movie, especially with the way movie soundtracks are these days.

[UWDawg]

On 9/8/2022 at 5:32 AM, Cruisenewbie63 said:

Hi,  Can anyone please advise on tv Channels  ( how many)  and what the in house move Channel is like?  I assume dvd payers are not available,  or smart tv connection to Netflix etc.     thank you 

Per https://www.vikingcruises.com/oceans/ships/viking-neptune.html

Each stateroom is equipped with:

42" flat-screen TV featuring CNN, CBC, MBC2, beIN Sports

 

This doesn't match my recollection of channel offerings.  I seem to recall MSNBC and a Fox news channel plus an Aussie news channel being included.

 

In addition there were a collection of recordings from onboard destination lectures, Ted Talks, Viking TV recordings, and other destination information programs.

 

For the 21/22 World Cruise on the Viking Star, there was a wide selection of on-demand movies... maybe 50 or more... which seemed to be curated towards our planned destinations.  I'm not sure a shorter cruise will have as many movie selections.

 

As others have indicated, there are no exposed ports so you cannot record to an external device or direct output from an external device to the TV.  Likewise, there were no audio ports or bluetooth options, so you were restricted to the standard TV speaker.  

 

 

[longterm]

25 minutes ago, UWDawg said:

Per https://www.vikingcruises.com/oceans/ships/viking-neptune.html

Each stateroom is equipped with:

42" flat-screen TV featuring CNN, CBC, MBC2, beIN Sports

 

This doesn't match my recollection of channel offerings.  I seem to recall MSNBC and a Fox news channel plus an Aussie news channel being included.

 

In addition there were a collection of recordings from onboard destination lectures, Ted Talks, Viking TV recordings, and other destination information programs.

 

For the 21/22 World Cruise on the Viking Star, there was a wide selection of on-demand movies... maybe 50 or more... which seemed to be curated towards our planned destinations.  I'm not sure a shorter cruise will have as many movie selections.

 

As others have indicated, there are no exposed ports so you cannot record to an external device or direct output from an external device to the TV.  Likewise, there were no audio ports or bluetooth options, so you were restricted to the standard TV speaker.  

 

 

Same on cruises we’ve taken; unfortunately, the TV and movie channels almost never worked on our last cruise. Hoping for better on next cruise in March. 
 

Not a huge movie selection, but on a cruise we don’t watch TV anyway. 
 

The list of lectures haven’t changed in a while either. 

Edited September 9, 2022 by longterm

[UWDawg]

36 minutes ago, longterm said:

The list of lectures haven’t changed in a while either. 

 

On the 21/22 World Cruise, lectures from the Star Theater were recorded and posted a few hours later for viewing on the stateroom TV.  I think you had to navigate to the Enrichment section off of the TV menu.  Port talks were similarly posted, but under a different menu selection.  While the evening performances were not posted, you could watch them from your stateroom by selecting Live TV then Viking Today from the TV menu.  I think the Port Talks could similarly be watched live from your stateroom using the Viking Today menu selection.

 

I recall not being able to find one of the lectures once and so I called Guest Services.  GS contacted the Audio/Visual team and then called me to let me know that the A/V folks would try to post the lecture again, but it might take an hour; sure enough, when I checked later, it was there. 

[longterm]

5 minutes ago, UWDawg said:

 

On the 21/22 World Cruise, lectures from the Star Theater were recorded and posted a few hours later for viewing on the stateroom TV.  I think you had to navigate to the Enrichment section off of the TV menu.  Port talks were similarly posted, but under a different menu selection.  While the evening performances were not posted, you could watch them from your stateroom by selecting Live TV then Viking Today from the TV menu.  I think the Port Talks could similarly be watched live from your stateroom using the Viking Today menu selection.

 

I recall not being able to find one of the lectures once and so I called Guest Services.  GS contacted the Audio/Visual team and then called me to let me know that the A/V folks would try to post the lecture again, but it might take an hour; sure enough, when I checked later, it was there. 

Yes, it's good to be able to see Port Talks later in the evening if you missed it earlier (which we invariably did).

[travelbug11]

On 9/8/2022 at 2:52 PM, longterm said:

The TVs in the rooms are throttled so that you can't turn them up very much; at their loudest it's often too low to watch a movie, especially with the way movie soundtracks are these days.

I called and they sent someone up to increase the volume.