Oldest Smart TV in the world?

[Dave Rice]

Putting the digital signage into the nick today there was one existing screen we were told to use.

It was in a custom built chrome frame with a sheet of black perspex on the front. On that was a large “logo” of the Clifton suspension bridge and the words HMP Bristol.  The bottom half had a window behind which was a flat screen. Sort of like this.

 

They said they got content onto it via a USB stick, so we thought it must be a smart TV with a media player. No problem, just plug our HDMI lead in and off we go. We could see the mains lead going in the bottom and a USB stick next to it but nothing else. So we could see the chrome frame was held in by 3 screws each side, took the first ones out and the frame hinged rather than came off. So undid the bottom ones and slid the perspex out.

What greeted us wasn’t a TV in a case. Well it sort of was. What we were looking at was clearly the flat panel from a TV with no case around it screwed onto a sub frame. Then above it I noticed (and heard) an AMD matx motherboard with one of those low profile HSFs spinning at top whack. Next to that was one of those snail shaped “blowers” and next to that an ATX PSU. Below that there was an HDD mounted (somehow) to the same back board. A VGA cable disappeared behind the flat screen. On unscrewing that we could see the electronics of a TV mounted to the same backboard. It’s a shame I couldn’t get a photo of it.

So we thought fine, we’ll just run the HDMI cable into the guts of the TV and turn off the PC. Unfortunately after powering everything off none of it will power back up again. God knows how long it’s been there running 24/7 and never turned off. The staff were amazed when they saw it and had no idea. No-one had any idea how long it’d been there but there was no HDMI on the motherboard, just VGA, and it turns out none on the flat screen either, just DVI. So it may have been a monitor rather than a TV.

Anyway it’s all coming down tomorrow and a 42″ TV going up in it’s place. But how strange, a PC and flat screen deconstructed and housed in a custom case which is then hung on the wall. I’m amazed it never over heated as there is only 1 vent (behind the snail blower). I have no idea what o/s or software it’s running nor how the USB stick features in it all.

[doctoryorkie]

I wonder how much power it used. :wacko:

Will they let you keep it to dissect Dave?

Laptop T420 i5 8GB SSD 2x Spinners Optimus GFX
HTPC 5350 8GB SSD 2x Spinners Antec 300
Desktop 2700K 16GB Revo x2 GTX570SC Antec900
Server N54L 8GB SSD 6x Spinners HD6450

[Dave Rice]

I’m going to ask, but I’ll hopefully have some time to have a better look today.

[Richard]

I wonder who cobbled it together after we all thought that HMP would not have the staff or skills. I wonder if it was a commercial job or one of the ‘trusties’ in the workshop?

[PlaneMan]

That’s mental.

Please keep us updated.

[Bob Williams]

When my 23 yo gson was 14, was when I found out that he had quietly become a networking genius. He was offered by his large technical academy, work with a company setting up a college-wide TV/educational network in the summer holidays. He jumped at it and got on with the techs he was working with very well, which IMO was when he began to really progress out of his Aspergers shell. I picked him up and took him home: one evening, about halfway through the project, he was still working across the other side and I spoke to the project manager. He told me that my then 14 yo gson had suggested modifications which not only worked, but took me to their Portacabin and showed me the improved networks, on several whiteboards and the manager’s laptop. I recognised gson’s tiny but clearly legible printing and began to realise that we had someone special in our family.

Aparently the modifications resulted in less cabling and reduced power demands. He also advised them to fit an alternative server to the one they planned. The manager wanted to offer gson a job as soon as he left college. They kept in touch, but when gson left, he had found a job with a local company. I used to pick him up from college every evening (mum being at work) and always had to wait, as his dedicated tutor would be shoving something new and extra-curricular into his head. I would look at the two TV’s in the reception area and think, I know who set that up. Big pride! I don’t know what they paid him, but I do know that the manager visited his mum and gave it to her. It was used to add to investments she already has for him: his only use for money is to keep him in rent, utilities, food and Games.

Nowadays he can lose my head when he talks about his work, but he has everything in his flat networked and streamed.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Dave Rice]

Unfortunately my oppo got called out to a gale related emergency so we didn’t get onsite until 11 so had no time to poke around.

But someone had turned up who knew about the system to get the existing PowerPoint presentations off so we could use them on the new. The reason we couldn’t power it up was a hidden push switch, which when pressed did the business. He put a keyboard and mouse in the other hidden USB ports and copied the presentations off to the USB stick. All I could see was it was XP running Office. Of what vintage I don’t know, but the presentations needed a bit of work to run properly on W10 / PP Viewer 16 not least of which was converting to 16:9 from 4:3. So the flat panel could well have been pre widespread 1080P kit.

I still don’t know any more about the hardware except it’s AMD and judging by the shape of the HSF mount at least AM2. The southbridge has a big “AMD chipset” logo on it which probably all points to Jetway (or similar second tier) M2A 690G type mobo.

No-one knows it’s origins for sure, but it’s rumoured to be an in-house job by an ex-employee, definitely not a lag.

[Bob Williams]

Your current work makes you sound like Dave the Tomb Raider! :yahoo:

Must be interesting though. :good:

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Dave Rice]

We do get some interesting projects to work on, largely because we’ve got a reputation for lateral thinking.

Big companies have certain ways of doing things and rigidly stick to them even if they don’t fit. Sometimes, like this one, you only find out on the job but we are flexible enough to change the solution to fit the new problem if we can.

[Robin Long]

Just with Dave saying about the hidden power switch reminded me of these

 

I wonder if you’ve found a larger variant of this, from memory it ran an XP variation and crashed an awful lot.

Cheers Knight,

RIP Spike09 Your Missed
If I'm not here, I'm there.

Finally joined Twitter! longr79

[Dave Rice]

No, it’s about a metre square and clearly “home made”.

Weighs a ton.

[Robin Long]

was just a, though, nurses used to get annoyed with me as I had found the button and every time it crashed I reset it myself as opposed to waiting for 3 hrs for a technician to press reset!

 

Cheers Knight,

RIP Spike09 Your Missed
If I'm not here, I'm there.

Finally joined Twitter! longr79

[Richard]

Robin Long wrote:

Just with Dave saying about the hidden power switch reminded me of these I wonder if you’ve found a larger variant of this, from memory it ran an XP variation and crashed an awful lot.

I knew one of the founders of the godawful Patient line. They charged a fortune but to the best of my knowledge never made a profit. They negotiated an exclusion clause that required hospitals to prevent the use of mobiles to avoid competition, but as you say that damned things only worked when they wanted to and not usually when the patient wanted them to do something. Are they still in business or use?

Edit, I checked, yes they have changed the name, now a US owned and managed shark-bunch. Still charging a fortune with frequent complaints about what many see as chiselling charges.

[Robin Long]

Hospitallia or something, I have not been in a hospital since, other than for checks so not had to experience ward life.

Cheers Knight,

RIP Spike09 Your Missed
If I'm not here, I'm there.

Finally joined Twitter! longr79

[Bob Williams]

Last time I was in hospital for more than a day, was Grimsby and they had these dumb things at every bed. I rejected the use of it and just kept my phone, I was informed that I could not use my phone and I asked for a reason. Along came some Admin bigwig who read me a long spiel about interference with hospital equipment. I blew this argument apart by pointing out that (a) modern phones do not cause interference and (b) about six feet behind him in the corridor, was a surgeon (mine) using his mobile. One admin bod, performing a good impression of a goldfish. :wacko:  🙁

I knew I had made a good decision when I witnessed two patients having daily problems with these ridiculous pieces of junk. After being told by said admin mouthpiece that I would not be able to watch TV or phone home, I said that I was about to have an operation that would kill my TV interest for days, and he would not be capable of parting me from my phone. I retained it. :good:

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Dave Rice]

Fecking Microsoft.

The original plan was to use VLC to play content on the screens, but I found out they were never going to have more than one presentation and always going to use PowerPoint to create it.

Simples! Use PowerPoint Viewer. There’s an option in PP 2016 to set the presentation in kiosk mode (full screen and repeat) and with timed slides that would work a treat. Plus I could set it on start up to always play a file called default.pptx so if there was a power failure no intervention would be need. The box powers itself back on and automatically starts the presentation.

Mocked it all up on my laptop last night and it works a treat. Get onsite today, copy PP Viewer and the pptx files to the media PC. Fire it up and it’s not running full screen and won’t repeat. Test my laptop again, it works. Look at the media player it doesn’t. It’s the same bloody software and the same bloody presentation running on the same bloody o/s.

No internet access so take ine of the media players out of the rack and bring it back. Mock up everything in the workshop using a different PC in case it’s my laptop. Same result.

May be I have an old version of PP Viewer or something, but why does it work on the PC and laptop but not the media server? Go back to Microsoft and the download page definitely says “Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer lets you view full-featured presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and later versions.” But I notice another link on the google search page to “View a presentation without PowerPoint”.

This says:

“PowerPoint Viewer is a free download from Microsoft.com. (It was created in conjunction with PowerPoint 2010, but it can also be used to view newer presentations created in PowerPoint 2013 and PowerPoint 2016. However, if a presentation uses a PowerPoint feature, (such as an animation) introduced after version 2010, that feature can’t be shown by PowerPoint Viewer.

You can open, view and print presentations using PowerPoint Viewer, but you cannot edit them. All transitions, videos and effects appear and behave the same when viewed using PowerPoint Viewer as they do when viewed in PowerPoint 2010.”

and

“PowerPoint Viewer opens supported presentation file types only if a version of PowerPoint is not installed on the PC that is being used. If PowerPoint is installed, it opens the presentation and PowerPoint Viewer is not used.”

So the presentations are created in PP 2016 and use the kiosk feature which 2010 didn’t have. My PC and laptop have Office 2016 installed on them, so even though it appeared to be using PP Viewer it wasn’t. It was using PP 2016 code in the PP Viewer shell.

Barstewards! I’m not adding £330 to the bill to install PP 2016 on the three media servers. Save the presentation as an mp4 file, use VLC to run it and set the media PC up to autorun default.mp4 on start up. Works a treat and was Plan A.

Arrrgggghhhh  :wacko:

 

EDIT – I forgot, on the same page it says “PowerPoint Mobile If you are using Windows 10, PowerPoint Mobile is installed on your system. It is a slimmed-down version of PowerPoint in which you can view and edit .pptx and .ppt files. To find PowerPoint Mobile on your computer system, go to the Cortana Ask me anything search box next to the Windows Start button on your computer desktop, and type the name PowerPoint Mobile.”

Oh no it isn’t installed, it must be downloaded from the store. Not possible on an isolated PC with a local account.

 

[Robin Long]

It just goes to show how interconnected to the internet everything is these days.  But it’s typical M$ take something useful and make it U/S I take it Impress could not be used/do what they want it too.

Cheers Knight,

RIP Spike09 Your Missed
If I'm not here, I'm there.

Finally joined Twitter! longr79

[Dave Rice]

Maybe it could but they have limited ICT knowledge and they know PowerPoint.

Believe me it’s a struggle even showing people how to use TightVNC to remote onto a PC and transfer files from one to another.

[Ed P]

LibreOffice Impress?

[Dave Rice]

I have my solution using tools they already know. PowerPoint save as MP4 file, VLC to run it.

I did have a look at Impress a few years ago and compared to PowerPoint it’s very crude.

[Author]

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