Content Manager

Content Manager controls what guests see on the TV and on their phone: the movies, the hotel services, the TV channels and the smart apps — with more (videos, hotel information, branding) to come. Changes appear on TVs and phones right away — there is nothing to publish.

Open the console and pick a screen under Content Manager in the menu. You need the Content area — see Areas and roles.

Apps built for the TV or the phone read all of this through the Client API. Which TV app a room gets is chosen in TV Manager → TV Apps; TV settings such as resolution and power behaviour are in TV Presets.

#Movies

The Movies screen lists the movies shown in the TV's movie section.

Press Add movie, or Edit on an existing title.

Untick Active to hide a movie without deleting it. Delete removes it permanently.

#Services

The Services screen lists hotel services — for example housekeeping, room service, or the spa. Guests see these on the TV and can request them from their phone. Requests arrive in Requests.

Press Add service, or Edit on an existing service. Delete removes a service permanently — untick Active instead if you may want it back.

Each hotel has its own services and TV texts — for example the welcome page mentions the hotel by name. If the TV fields are empty, the TV falls back to the description.

#Channels

The Channels screen is the hotel's TV channel list. A channel has what guests see — a number, a name and an icon — and what the TV needs to open it (How the TV opens it). Guests see the channels that are On, in number order. Apps read the list from the Client API, and a partner TV app can ask the TV to tune one.

Add a channel with Add channel. Choose the tuning method — the kind of address the TV understands (this is the channel class of the LG IDCAP channel change request) — and fill in only the fields it asks for:

Optional fields (symbol rate, PID numbers, stream types) make the channel change faster; leave them empty if you do not know them. A wrong value is explained before you can save — the TV is never given a channel it cannot open. Frequencies are typed in MHz for terrestrial and cable, and stored in Hz as IDCAP wants.

Import from a TLL file. Press Import TLL… and choose the TLL (or XML) file of a configured LG TV — the same files the TLL Converter opens. The screen tells you what it found (IPTV, terrestrial, cable and satellite channels, webOS 5 files too) and which channels it left out because a TV could not open them; the TV's own deleted, hidden, blocked and skipped channels are not imported. Choose to keep the existing channels or replace them.

Icons. Find icons looks up a logo on the internet for every channel without one (for the channels you ticked, or the first 150 shown), one at a time; Stop ends it. To choose yourself, click a channel's icon (or Search inside the channel): a grid of candidates opens, or paste an https address. Logos come from Wikimedia by the channel name — a wrong match is possible, and logos are trademarks, so check that the hotel may use them.

Other things you can do: search by name, number or address; show only the channels that are On, Off, without an icon or with a problem (a duplicate number, or values a TV cannot open); tick channels to turn them on or off or delete them; Renumber numbers all channels 1, 2, 3 … in the order shown.

#Smart Apps

The Smart Apps screen lists the apps guests can open on the TV — YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Google Cast and whatever else the TVs support. Apps read the list from the Client API; a partner TV app can ask the TV to open one.

• Where the list comes from. When a TV is installed, and each time it starts, it asks itself which apps it supports (idcap://application/list) and tells the console. New apps arrive switched off — turn on the ones guests should see. A hotel with no TV yet starts with the four standard apps already on; it says No TV has reported its apps yet until one does.

• On is the list. The apps that are On are the list the TV and phone apps receive (Client API). There is one switch per app and it only switches — nothing is deleted. The screen opens on All (the On apps first, the others dimmed); On shows only the apps that are on, and an app you just switched off stays in view, dimmed, until you change the view. An app that needs a registration token asks for it when you switch it on (see below).

• Order. Drag an On row by its handle (⋮⋮) to change the order; it is saved when you drop it. The handle also works from the keyboard (arrow up and down). Apps that are off have no order and no handle.

• Everything is edited in the table — there is no Edit window. Click an app's name or description to type a new one: Enter or clicking elsewhere saves it, Esc cancels. The description (up to 200 characters) is the line guests see under the name. The TV's own name for the app stays visible under yours, and a later report from a TV does not undo your change. Click the icon to change it (below).

• Add app adds one by its app id (what the TV launches, for example netflix); use it for an app no TV has reported. Remove deletes an app you added or a standard one; an app a TV reported comes back at that TV's next report — turn it off instead.

• Icons. Click an app's icon to search the internet for it (Wikimedia): you get a grid of candidates — square app icons first, then logos — and click the one you want. Change the search words if the first try misses, paste an image address, or remove the icon. Nothing is chosen for you; the same picker opens from a channel's icon in Channels. Logos are trademarks, so check the hotel may use them.

• Registration tokens. Some apps — Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Google Cast — only start on a TV after the token the app company issued under the hotel's contract has been registered on it. So such an app cannot be turned on without its token: each time you switch such an app from off to on, a window opens. If no token is uploaded yet, paste the token string (or Choose file… with the text file you were given) and press Upload token and turn on — the app turns on as soon as the token is uploaded. If one is already uploaded, you can turn the app on with it, or paste a new token first to replace it. (An app you add yourself can be marked as needing a token in Add app.)

  • Many at once — Upload tokens… takes one line per app (netflix = <token>), or JSON: { "netflix": "…" } or the IDCAP token list [{ "id": "netflix", "token": "…" }]. The screen reads it and shows what will happen to each app before anything is uploaded; an app that is not in the list yet is added, switched off. Use it to load or replace tokens without turning anything on.

  A token is a long text of letters, digits and + / = - _; line breaks and spaces from pasting are removed. For safety a token cannot be shown again once uploaded — only that it exists, and when. Only the Content area (Operator) can upload. TVs read the hotel's tokens each time they start and register them (idcap://application/register); a token you upload is used from the next start of each TV. Until you upload one, a TV uses the token built into the TV app for Netflix, Amazon and Google Cast, if there is one — upload the hotel's own to be sure.

The Smart Apps screen is part of the Streaming apps module (Settings → Site); switching that off hides it.