Five links, and who supplies each one
Projects stall when everyone assumes someone else has one of these links. Put a name next to each before you ask for quotes.
| Link | What it does | Who usually supplies it |
|---|---|---|
| Signal | Channels, by satellite, antenna, fibre or a content provider's feed | A broadcaster or pay-TV provider, under contract |
| Gateway | Turns those signals into MPEG-TS on IP | A head-end equipment vendor |
| Streaming engine | Takes the feeds in and hands each screen a format it plays; manages lines, packages and the guide | Cue, our streaming engine |
| Property network | Carries it to the rooms: switches, VLANs, cabling | Your IT team or integrator |
| Room screen | Set-top box, hospitality TV or app | Your TV vendor |
Rights come first
Guest rooms are a commercial use, so don't assume a home subscription covers them. Ask each provider, in writing, for its hospitality or multi-dwelling terms, and check that those terms allow what you plan: IP delivery, catch-up and any app use.
In the United States, 17 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1) gives one narrow copyright exemption. Hotel, apartment-house or similar management may relay local FCC-licensed broadcast stations to private lodgings, which leaves out bars and lobbies, with no direct charge. It doesn't reach pay channels or out-of-area stations, and whether a dormitory counts as a similar establishment is a question for a lawyer. Other countries run their own schemes, so ask your national broadcaster or collecting society. This is general information, not legal advice.
Our side is simple. As our streaming server page says, licensed content is welcome and retransmitting channels without the rights is not. If you hold a licence, tell us in chat what it covers and get our answer in writing before you pay.
Should the server sit in the building or in a data center?
Put it in a data center when channels already reach you as IP or you run several properties. Keep the conversion on site when the signal starts on the roof. The public internet doesn't normally carry multicast, so a gateway's multicast output reaches a Cue server only on the same network or through a tunnel you build and run yourself.
| Cue on a dedicated server with us | Cue on a box in your comms room | |
|---|---|---|
| How channels arrive | SRT from the site, or pulled over HLS or MPEG-TS over HTTP | Multicast MPEG-TS straight from the gateway |
| How rooms receive them | Unicast over the property's internet line | Over the building's own network |
| The weak point | The internet line: when it's full or down, the TVs feel it | You look after the hardware, its power and its spares |
Cue licences are sold for a server you run yourself, and our page describes that as a server at any hosting company. If you're picturing a box in your own building, ask us in chat before planning on it. It would also need internet access: each licence lasts a week and renews itself twice a day.
Multicast or unicast inside the building
Multicast sends each channel once and lets the switches copy it to whichever rooms asked for it, so the load follows channels. Unicast sends each TV its own stream, so the load follows screens. Here is a 120-room property with 40 channels at 6 Mbps, using our own example figures:
| Multicast | Unicast | |
|---|---|---|
| Most TV traffic on the core network | 40 × 6 = 240 Mbps, however many rooms watch | 120 × 6 = 720 Mbps with every TV on, 360 Mbps with half |
| Needs from the network | Managed switches with IGMP snooping, and a querier | Ordinary capacity |
| Works over Wi-Fi | Poorly | Yes, within the Wi-Fi's capacity |
| Rewind and catch-up | Not on the multicast stream itself | Yes over HLS or an IPTV app, if the player supports it |
Three multicast traps are worth checking on site:
- Flooding. Without IGMP snooping working on every switch, multicast can reach all ports, and a few channels can swamp guest Wi-Fi and the back office. Keep TV on its own VLAN, and test with several rooms changing channels at once.
- Wireless. RFC 9119 explains why it suffers: multicast frames go at the slowest rate of the devices connected to the access point and aren't acknowledged, so loss is common. Wire the TVs, or use unicast for wireless screens.
- Addresses. Check the TV maker's rules before numbering channels. Samsung's guide for its hospitality displays requires a wired connection and IGMPv2 or newer, recommends 234.0.0.0 to 238.255.255.255, and rules out 224.x and 239.x. Many networks use 239.x by habit, so check yours.
Will the room screens play it?
Match the output to the screens you already own, because replacing hundreds of TVs is usually one of the biggest costs in the job.
| In the room | How it gets channels from Cue |
|---|---|
| MAG set-top box | Signs in to Cue's portal, identified by its MAC address |
| Enigma2 box | Loads channels through Cue's bouquet script |
| Android box or IPTV app | Signs in to a line, or loads the M3U playlist with the XMLTV guide |
| Other set-top boxes and players | MPEG-TS over HTTP, HLS or MPEG-DASH addresses |
| Hospitality TV on multicast | The gateway's own multicast, or a UDP MPEG-TS target from a Cue box on the property's network (not from a data center). Ask the TV vendor how channels get onto the set: a setup tool, or an app that opens each address. |
Cue can relay a channel to a UDP multicast address, up to five targets per channel. If your gateway already puts every channel out as multicast, you may not need Cue in that path at all, but those TVs then sit outside Cue's lines, bouquets and guide. Test one of each TV model with a real channel before you sign anything. If you only want your own single channel as a TV app, that's a different product: see our Samsung and LG app.
Turning hotel rooms into Cue lines
Cue's IPTV service speaks in subscribers, so translate it once and the rest falls into place:
- One line per room or box, by login or MAC address, limited to one screen. A line's end date belongs to the subscription rather than the guest's check-out, so set it well ahead.
- One bouquet per room class. Bouquets decide which channels a line sees: standard rooms, suites, staff areas.
- A guide from XMLTV listings, pulled on a timetable.
- Address limits. Allow only your property's addresses, so the streams can't be watched from outside. A line can list permitted IPs too.
- Catch-up plays from rewind recordings, so size the disks for it and check your contract allows it.
Channels pass through untouched unless you ask for quality versions, so repackaging forty channels takes no encoder work at all. Re-encoding is what fills a machine: seven full-HD channels on the m710x Cue was built on, and we plan on six. Past that, use an NVIDIA card, sized on our transcoding page. If feeds arrive in an older codec, list them in the survey below.
What Cue leaves to other systems
Cue moves channels and controls who sees them. Nothing on our pages offers these, so plan for a hospitality middleware or TV vendor if you want them:
- A link to your property management system: guest name on screen, check-in and check-out events
- Charges posted to the room bill
- A branded welcome screen on the room TV, and room-service menus
- Casting from a guest's own phone
The site survey
Walk the property with this list before anyone prices the job.
- Rooms, plus public screens in bars, gyms and lobbies. Check whether your contract treats them differently.
- Every TV model and year, and whether it has a hospitality mode.
- What reaches each room: Ethernet, coax only, or Wi-Fi only.
- Switch models, IGMP snooping support, and which device acts as querier.
- Spare capacity on the links between floors and on the internet line.
- Channel list, source of each channel, codec and bitrate, and the contract behind it.
- Comms room space, power, cooling and who holds the key.
- Who answers at 11 p.m. when a guest's TV goes blank.
Questions people ask
- Can guests watch on their own phones?
- Cue can serve phones over HLS, but your channel contract decides whether you may, so ask before you offer it. Address limits keep such a service on the property's own network.
- Can one system serve several properties?
- Yes, if channels reach the server as IP. One Cue server in a data center can feed each property over the internet, with a bouquet per property, as long as each property's internet connection has room for its busiest evening and each contract covers each site.
- Do I need a set-top box in every room?
- Only if the TV can't play your streams itself. A hospitality TV with multicast support may need none, while an older TV needs a box. Test the exact model.