italnsd

It does not work with the TV in my room, which seems to be an older model than yours (the Samsung code indicates it is from 2008) with a non-original and limited-function remote. From different posts on the subject, including the one I linked in my original message, it seems that not all rooms in a ship have the same tv model, so you might have more luck. I think that my only option might be to purchase an HDMI to VGA adapter as in the pic below to connect to the only selectable tv input. I'll try to do it at the next port in two days. It would be much easier if I can find out how to get it delivered to a locker in Brazil lol.

That's a good question. I tried everything but I found out through many painful and extensive trials and errors that nothing quite compares to the effectiveness of the exposure to my travel footage in instantly increasing the level of enjoyment of any other activity 😉 By comparison, even your typical bottom of the barrel port excursion, when one gets bussed around and afforded 5 minutes to take photos at a historic site and 1 hour to roam around a shopping center, feels like an experience reserved only to royals. Without even counting the beneficial effects of a therapeutic 5-minute post-dinner exposure to the footage that sucks away any residual life energy, thus preventing any misguided temptation to visit casinos or martini bars and neutralizing their explosive potential of transferring large amounts of weight from pocket to regret. Life is better enjoyed with a controlled injection of daily misery, as no one ever said 😁

Not much has changed since then. I wasn't even daring to consider streaming anything, we just wanted to share on the tv screen some footage that we shot during our trip and watch some shows we had downloaded on an external drive.

It does indeed takes time to press repeatedly the Source button on the side of the TV to go from the input selected by the last passenger to the one where the standard cruise programs are. A highly technical task that cannot be left to the cleaning crew. Especially in these old models that used to cycle through all the inputs and not just the active ones. Much better to deactivate the Source button and stimulate the passengers' fantasy in cooking up alternative solutions whose inventiveness, I am sure, will never tire IT personnel.

Thanks, I thought of that possibility. Unfortunately, no luck

Sorry my bad, I assumed it was clear enough from my question that I was the type who finds solace and pleasure in life only in geeky pursuits. I thought it was a given that the most amount of fun anyone could have in a cruise was transforming the cabin into a man cave and fidgeting with the tv inputs and cables. I cannot thank you enough for opening my eyes to these unheard (by me) alternative ways of enjoyment, especially because they were so far outside the scope of my question. It's true, one never knows the wealth of incredible information that others are willing to go out of their way to provide. I feel truly humbled and blessed.

Hello all, I am currently traveling on the Celebrity Eclipse and I find myself unable to view any device connected to the HDMI ports of the TV. It's not an accessibility problem, as there are 3 accessible HDMI inputs, as shown in the attached photo. The problem is that I cannot find a way to switch from the PC input where all the content provided by Celebrity comes from to any other input. The source selector on the side of the TV is not working and the remote that I got, shown in the second pic, is much simpler than the one shown in a previous forum post on the same subject of just a few months ago and does not allow to perform the procedure presented there. I asked our concierge, who after "consultation with the IT experts" told me that it was not possible to change source because all the buttons on the side of the TV had been disabled exactly for that reason. Leaving aside any discussion on the rationale for Celebrity to go out of its way just to worsen its passengers' experience, has anyone any hint of how to proceed in this situation? Thanks in advance for all sugggestions

Sorry for the late reply, I just logged into the website after a while and saw your post. Honestly, it wasn't such a big deal, but just a last minute attempt that I made to see if we could take advantage of the incredible low prices of the Celebrity cruise at the end of April from Rio de Janeiro to New Jersey. As I expected, the rules around US visas are never that simple, so we stuck to the original plan of going on the previous segment traveled the same ship from Buenos Aires to Rio, a cruise we are currently on. Less of a deal (one week at a higher price than two) but without any visa issue. I just wanted to touch on a point you made. I do not think that the example of use case shown on the State Dept website that I quoted provides an answer to the case that I was interested in, rather it leaves it in a sort of gray zone. It's the nature of examples to be chosen very clear cut and generally away from the boundary region, to avoid the risk of making them needlessly complicated.

Thanks for looking that up. I feel that would only compound the difficulties of the situation. I'm not sure about Brazil. but surely traveling with a Venezuelan passport makes planning travel much more difficult as even countries one would not suspect, like Chile for example, impose very onerous visa procedures that I have never experienced traveling either with my Italian or my US passport (the second exposing more to the practice of reciprocating entry fees, especially in South America). My hope with this post was to get a very convincing unanimous answer that a C-visa, the only time compatible option, is a surefire solution. That did not arrive. I can definitely call the State dept. and ask the official position. However, based on the experience I mentioned, I would not feel safe even if the State dept. confirmed that it's ok, because the simple fact that there is so much uncertainty on this topic exposes us to the possibility that the officer on board, who probably has not called in any recent time the State dept, might decide to enforce what he believes to be rule, i.e., that a B2 visa is needed. There should be a better solution for these kind of uncertain issues, but I feel that as long as the decision is left to the unquestionable discretion and knowledge of the person who physically processes the check-in, even having the exact information might not matter.

Thanks for both your replies. @chengkp75: The waiting days for an appointment that I reported (6 days for a C-type visa and 752 days for a B2-type visa) were taken from the State dept website for the US Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, the country of my friend's residence. I could not find any indication that visas are also processed by any consulate in other major Colombian cities. Would you recommend sending the application to a US Embassy in a third country, other than that of citizenship (all US diplomatic offices in Venezuela are shown as inactive) and that of residence? @Ferry_Watcher: In my view the only way that this is doable is if a C-visa is sufficient. The State dept. website presents as one of the typical use cases for a C visa that of a temporary stop on a cruise, when the passenger is expected to return on board, but does not talk about the case of an initial or final stop, which means that either a C-visa is not sufficient or at the very least the situation is complicated with various possible scenarios. This situation without a crystal clear answer makes me extremely pessimistic, especially after reading the story of your personal experience That tale, in fact, made me fully realize how risky this situation is by bringing back to my memory one of the most absurd situations encountered throughout all my travels, related to the twin problem of the necessary documentation for a flight. In that situation, despite having done an extensive research before my trip, by looking at the entry requirements for each country directly on their official government's websites and despite the website of Avianca reporting exactly the same information, at the airport I was denied boarding by the Avianca check-in rep because I did not have a yellow fever vaccination card that neither the Colombian govt nor Avianca website showed as necessary. Even more absurdly, after the fact Avianca denied any responsibility for its website saying one thing and its airport rep enforcing another and even denied a refund with the absurd line of defense "it's the passenger's responsibility to know the requirements". Considering that I had done my research and provided them a printout of the requirements from the Colombian govt website, what does this exactly mean? There is only one possible answer, which is the worst possible for the passenger. The key point is that despite the claim made by airlines and cruise companies alike that they are not responsible for the advice they provide on these matters, the truth it is that they are those who make the final decision to allow or deny boarding through their personnel, the check-in rep in my case, the ship document officer in your tale. In other words, I came out of that experience convinced that in these situations that are not fully black or white, there is absolutely no way for a passenger to be on the safe side, because the travel industry has managed to frame them in such a way that the passenger always loses. One could do in advance all the research in the world looking at all the official sources available, but in the end the only way that would guarantee safety would be reading the mind of the airline/cruise company rep in charge of the decision.

Hello, I am new to the forum, brought here by a question about one of the many subtleties surrounding visas that cruise passengers end up knowing better than anyone else. I am looking at the feasibility of going on a cruise that starts in Brazil and ends up in Cape Liberty, NJ with a friend that has a Venezuelan passport. Would a type C visa (transit non-immigrant) be sufficient for my friend to go on the trip (possibly in combination with an outbound flight ticket showing a very short stay on US soil) or is a B2 visa (tourism non-immigrant) necessary when leaving the ship at the final harbor? This is not just an academic question, but it really makes or breaks the trip because (independently of the inherent difficulty in getting one visa vs. the other) the site of the US embassy shows waiting time of 6 days for a C visa and, as absurd as it sounds, a whopping 752 days for a B2 visa. Any guidance on the best course of action is highly appreciated.