Watching Netflix/YouTube in Your Cadillac
We've all wanted to be able to watch videos in our car. 10 years ago I wanted to build a PC to put in the back of my 1983 Ford LTD Crown Victoria so I could have videos play on monitors I wanted to install in the back. I'm not shy to admit that, but I'm glad I didn't have to go through all that work when I could have just spent $100,745.00 on a 2018 Cadillac CT6 Platinum and another $49.00 on a Roku Express.
The 2018 Cadillac CT6 that we're featuring has dual 720p screens in the back along with the main CUE display up front. The rear arm rest has a USB and HDMI input that allows you to connect devices to those monitors. Since the Roku Express uses a USB power cable and a standard HDMI output, we knew we had to hook them up. The other major benefit is Cadillac's use of 4G LTE and WiFi in all their vehicles, allowing you to use the car's data connection and WiFi to stream 'live' content wherever you are.
First you need to check the car's WiFi settings to get the hotspot name and password, then plug your Roku into the rear inputs. You'll need to use the remote that came with the Cadillac to change the monitor inputs to HDMI. Once booted, use your remote to navigate to the network settings and enter in the WiFi details. You also might need to change the display settings, we found that Auto Detect didn't work properly, and we set the display to 720p manually. After that you're pretty much good to go! Roku has a large library of apps you can download including Netflix and YouTube, which are the two we used during our testing.
We found that the screen quality was quite good at 720p, rendering the Roku UI properly along with the applications. We did try this with the 2018 Cadillac Escalade however the rear monitors ended up over scanning the app interfaces, only showing us the top 25% of the screen, as if it was cropping 3/4ths of it. It is possible to navigate some apps in this mode, but the experience wasn't great.
The CT6 on the other hand worked flawlessly, allowing us to watch any content we wanted with the LTE connection anywhere we went. Rear passengers can use the wireless headphones that come with the CT6 to listen to their content, or the front screen can display the HDMI signal and use the 34 speaker Bose Panaray system when parked.
Either way this was a fun little experiment that worked really well. While sales of the CT6 are pretty low, we do like the fact that buyers can get this type of service to work without having to mess about that much.
You can watch our full episode of PRN_tech on getting Netflix and YouTube to work in your Cadillac below: