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Thread: Foxtel in hospitals, how does it work?

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    Default Foxtel in hospitals, how does it work?

    hey all,

    im about to spend a long period in a hospital, trying to work out how foxtel works at these places... it seems there might be coax in the roof, but there is a white unnamed box on the back of the tv where the coax and a rj45 cable both go into...

    it seems the hospital can turn the foxtel on off remotely via this setup..

    i wonder if i plug a dm directly into the coax i might be in action?

    thanks all



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    I don't know where you are or what hospital you're going to and never have seen a system with a white box. However i've worked on the tv systems in pretty much every hospital in WA at some point and can tell you what usually happens over here.

    All of the systems have a number of foxtel decoders at the hospitals tv headend (one for each channel that is viewable in the hospital) audio and video from each box is then fed into a modulator which places it on a tv channel in the system. These channels are then viewable throughout the hospital by any tv.

    Now the tricky bit is where some hospitals like to charge for using the tv and there are various ways they go about it. but the short version is that the white box on the back of the tv is probably blocking out certain channels until someone enables them. At which point the tv can receive these channels.

    Anyway you will find that there is not actually a sat signal on the cable that goes to the tv. All the channels will be analogue which will include loclly available free to air channels, the available re-modulated foxtel channels and possibly some radio channels etc.

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    All they do is have X amount of Foxtel boxes in a room, and the TVs are tuned into each channel that is permanently on with each box. A 3rd party company controls the service remotely switching it on and off.

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    So you will need to mount a dish on your bed and be close to the right window.

    Please post some photos when you have it up and running ( with a good looking nurse)
    What happens if I press alt + F4?

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    One regional NSW hospital has a coin operated system that you allows you to enter the bed or unit number on the pad,coins go on a slider and it prints out a reciept and your TV is then enabled for the period you have paid for.
    One western Sydney hospital has a warning screen as you tune thru the channels telling you if you 'Stop and watch', you will get billed.
    I cant remember now if the family member who was in hospital just 'surfed thru' or did watch any of the 'Pay for View' channels but we got a bill for doing so.
    So, ASK and/or READ because its not overly cheap if you havent budgeted for the cost.

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    i was in hospital i ipswich qld the other week, and then tv lady was, i though, a bit up her self. so i dicided i didnt want to pay what is effectlvly a months basic package for a week of crappy television. the only channels they had worth watching was nat geo and somthing else. all i wanted was FTA, so i experimemnted, i had a friend bring in a male to male coax lead, connected it to the outlet in the roof, plugged it in to the back of the tv and bingo, all channels working. the box you see at the back of the tv, i think, is nothing more than an x-10 tyle electronic swich with an ID (home autimation gear)

    the lady wheels around a trolly, with an eftpos terminal and a laptop./ after she processes payment, she transmits back to another computer (i think internet related) and this triggers the box on the tele to reconnect the signal feed.

    every morning as she came around, she always turned the tele on to make sure i wasn't cheating.

    you can do 2 things, if your hospital is near the tv stations transmitters, bring with you a small black and white tv and pick up the locals over the air.
    OR bypass the box with your own cable and if your not imobilized, pull the plug about the time she comes around, most dont look.
    heres what i did in pics.
    this is my cable mod from the roof socket to my bnw tv
    channel 7 via the distributio system
    the exorbinent rates they charge (not transferable,you pay a month nd leave in 2 weeks, too bad, gets turned off n ext patient has to re-pay
    these are the channels on the system, i found they had another box connected but no valid card, i think this would have been discovery or somthing
    Last edited by voltare1; 03-03-09 at 05:58 PM. Reason: making thumb nails work

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    $38 for 5 days that is wrong. wonder if the mobs even have a transition license for the locals.

    also, if you plan on being there for a long time, get a netbook or just a reqular notebook, and either obtain a 3g phone, or usb 3g modem and a prepaid virgin kit, seriously, having the internet on is a good way to kill time. virgin prepaid internet sim kits can be had from many places like woolies or dse, for $2, and a loop hole makes these come with 300 or 500 mb of prepaid data at the moment.

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    Quote Originally Posted by voltare1 View Post
    $38 for 5 days that is wrong. wonder if the mobs even have a transition license for the locals.
    You're not wrong. My motherinlaw is in a public hospital/rest home and they want to charge her $5 a day to watch it. The TVs in there are dirt cheap chinese 53cm CRT pieces of crap that would have cost the company well under $100 each as a bulk buy.

    It's a bloody disgrace that this has been inflicted on people in public hospitals who, in many cases, don't have the funds to pay for it...and they don't have an option to watch FTA channels other than using this 'service' or being able to bring in their own small TV which will have trouble getting a decent signal with all the electrical interference that exists inside a hospital.

    My motherinlaw is a serious battleaxe, but even she doesn't deserve that.

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    thats just it, they should be setup to receive the local fta for free and if you pay, u get the pay channels too, but this wont happen, 1 the systems needed to perform selective disconnects are not cheap, and 2 there is a few bussinesses set up that rely on the closed market system *aka where else are you going to go. there are magazine / news paper trollies, tv lady etc.

    if she has a window bed you may get tv reception to work. if you dont have a small black and white, buy one from crasy clarks/sams warehouse about 30 bucks. if it doesnt work for you (reception weak) take it back.

    i just have a hard time dealing with companies that pray on the lack of choice, sadly when i had mine running, i never saw the tv lady, i was keen on an argument based on, yes its a rental tele but im using my own, even if i am borrowing your antanna connection.

    should have seen my bed, i had a coax cable from the roof looped over my pull up handle thing, in to the back of my tiny tele using a pal to mini jack adaptor, power supply for the tele plugged in to the wall, another one for my eeepc and a lead from that to charge my phone.

    before i set it up i said to the nurses what i was going to do and they didnt say i couldnt do it.

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    oh and if you are having xrays done and you want a copy, normally they charge 12-15 bucks each, but because alot of them are done digitally these days, ask one of the staff to print them to a local printer, paper copies are easier to see than the film jobs,

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