Televisions, NHS managers and remote controls being inserted where the sun never shines!
As I still work for this barking mad NHS trust in this green and pleasant land, you'll have to forgive me being a little... vauge about names!

In my time at this hospital, one monumental total fuck up of a project was installed. At the cost to Mr. and Mrs Joe Taxpayer, of Millions of our hard earned pound notes. Oh, and money is still being wasted on it.

Now, this project wasn't really needed. The staff of the hospital all agreed that the patients should provide their own televisions if they want to want telly. Its that sort of... place, this hospital.
So, while this television system was being installed, there was grand promises made to patients of how super the new system will be, with movie channels and information channels, and of course the staff were promised with claims of being able to remotely control these televisions - they could be remotely switched off, or channels blocked if they deemed inappropriate.

Oh and any person with any experience of psychriatric patients will agree and know all full too well that you never, EVER promise anything. Cos simply, if you don't deliver, it WILL come back to bite you on the backside.

So of course, these televisions are about as reliable as a Austin Maxi on a damp autumn winter. The power supplies that power them were grossly underrated, and there were massive problems with ventilation as a lot of them are mounted high on the patients rooms walls behind all covering shrouds.

However, these tellys weren't your bog standard 15" £120 job from Argos or whereever, these units cost in the region of about £300, with the IPTV conversion box and associated bits costing from what I remember about another £400 odd. Now, the manufacturer of these tellys and the SOLE (ahem!) supplier of them were about as reliable as the tellys themselves. We ran out of power supplies to replace the ones that had given up the ghost, and although promise upon promise of replacements were given, they never turned up.

So, your happy (then) techie exclaimed "why not just buy a load of better psu's from RS components and bingo, by jove, we can get things fixed and the patients and staff will love us all once more!

Unfortunately the manager who was overseeing this project didn't agree with my perfectly simple yet clear as a window solution. We couldn't do that as we can only use the psu's supplied by the tv manufacturer. Oh, and if you use any other type then the telly's maintenance warranties would be buggered. My comment of "But they are bog standard psu's! They are standard 12V 5A units with a barrel on the end! How can they be different?! And we do all the maintenance anyway, so how can they have a warranty? Oh yeah, what do we do about if a remote control doesn't work any more cos they've had it up their jacksy?"

Mmmmm. Didn't go down too well. Apparently I'm not "qualified". And he didn't like me very much after that.

The best bits are leading up though my readers, do not dispair!
These telly's had the promise of being able to be remotely switched off or administered, so if a channel was blocked off, you couldn't watch it? Right?
Wrong. All the patients had to do was turn it off at the mains and turn it back on. Et Voila. Jobs a good un, and the thought of some of these patients tossing it off to Sexcetera on Virgin now makes my stomach turn. Bleugh.

And, the staff and overall director of the hospital have raised concerns time and time again about the reliability of the system, and it has been deemed simply not fit for purpose. So, it should be shot like a lame horse, like a poorly dog. Put it out of its misery and switch it all off. Oh no, not this manager. Lets keep spending lots more money on it, lets keep spending money on useless "upgrades" that actually make the system work.

I nearly forgot - the piece de la resistance.
The system is based on freeview channels being received by a central reciever. Lets say this big box has lots of recievers to pick up the individual channels, then a clever computer turns all these channels into data, pipes em all down Cat5 cables to the tellys, where another clever little computer box strapped to the back converts the data to pictures and sound.
However, if your aerial isn't aligned properly to the transmitter, then you get a crappy signal full of drop outs and poor quality.

The management are still ignoring the fact that there are daily complaints about the picture dropping out, freezing, etc etc.
All they need to do is align the aerial properly.

It's pointing at the wrong fucking transmitter anyway.
( Tesco Quality 60.825659, -0.788337, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 13:51, 5 replies)

Granny
was in hospital a couple of years ago, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why there was this funky arse tele thing in the room.
Flat screen, on a long telescopic pole. All swsish and what not - and she had to buy a fackin' card to get a code to watch.

One thought I had was "Money grabbing feckers... What else does an octogenarian have to do all day?" but then I thought "Maybe the hospital gets some cash flow going back in to it..."
But with your post, no apparently not - the cash goes back to the shitty company that made and supplies the things.
Bstrds.
(tweebianmonkey Should be known as Widget, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 14:12, closed)

They have web access, and also block b3ta.
So I was without b3ta while in hospital. On top of that, they make a fortune on the calls out and in to the thing. :/
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 19:28, closed)

A guy I worked with
was part of the local IT team for the hospital. When he went in for a knee op and was gonna be in for 4/5 weeks or so he planned in advance...

Turned up with his work laptop.... "You can't use that" say ward "it hasn't been certified..." - he shows them hopital PAT sticker...
Unplugged the network cable for the telly from the wall, plugged in one he brought with him, connected to laptop, loaded up the software he preinstalled the week before - free tv and internet!
( notmyrealname, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 22:36, closed)

We have had radio a century and television for more than half that -
and it's still an utter mystery to most of the people that use it.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Thu 17 Jun 2010, 10:43, closed)

Could be worse
It could be the payroll system:
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/16/2928346.htm
(xanthine, Thu 17 Jun 2010, 11:48, closed)