Gang...

I opened my mouth and suggested our Neuro practice put a plasma in the waiting room to annouce research opportunities and provide other information to our patients, and now I have been tasked with looking into it. I see these type of things all over, so it can't be that hard to do. I just don't know where to start. I assume the plasma must be hooked up to a computer somewhere which is running power point or something like that in a continuous loop. I am just wondering who to contact about this... a computer vendor....or a Tv. vendor...I just think installing it might be tricky. Any suggestions or basic info on how to go about making this happen would be appreciated. Do they have T.V.s capalbe of runing a slide show, say if I loaded it through a USB...or will the T.V. have to be connected to a computer somewhere?

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

Hook it up to a DVD player, I think that's the cheapest and the easiest solution. In other words, go see a tv vendor.

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

Right, well the "slides" will be changing weekly if not daily, based on what sort of study recruitment we are focusing on. I dont' want to have to burn a new CD daily if I didn't have to. Are there any other options available?

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

There are TVs that have media card readers and hard drives built into them, with the former being much more common than the latter. You could just pop the images you want to loop on a memory stick or something and you'd be good to go (although you'll want to be sure that the TV has a slideshow feature for the media card reader -- some do, some require you to manually change them).

Personally, I'd use a TV that also has a computer monitor input and just hook a PC up to it. That way, you could even just use the Windows slide show feature if you don't want to put a lot of effort into it, but it gives you enormous flexibility if you decide down the road that you'd like to do something more elaborate or dynamic.

My $.02.

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

[quote=toasty;441087]There are TVs that have media card readers and hard drives built into them, with the former being much more common than the latter. You could just pop the images you want to loop on a memory stick or something and you'd be good to go (although you'll want to be sure that the TV has a slideshow feature for the media card reader -- some do, some require you to manually change them).

Personally, I'd use a TV that also has a computer monitor input and just hook a PC up to it. That way, you could even just use the Windows slide show feature if you don't want to put a lot of effort into it, but it gives you enormous flexibility if you decide down the road that you'd like to do something more elaborate or dynamic.

My $.02.[/quote]

amen

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

Like mentioned before,Most plasma screens have VGA inputs so your best bet is a computer for your source. That way you can actually hook it up to a network and update it from your computer at your desk if you want to. Try CDW as a retailer, they carry everything you would need to make it possible.

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

Have a look at this...

[url]http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/wireless-vga.html[/url]

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

I bought myself a 32" LCD 1366x768 display the other week... hooked my PC in to it and played GTA3: Vice City on it.

Wow, is all I can say.

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

Thanks for all the advice. I realize hooking it to a computer would be the easiest thing to do, only problem is that there is no where convienent to put the computer as the TV is to be mounted onto a wall in our patient waiting room. I suppose its possible to put it into the ceiling or something. However, the wireless VGA connection might just be the trick! Thanks for everyones ideas.

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

I see this sort of thing in dozens of hospitals across the country. Why don't you just inquire and find out from them about how they do it? I'm sure it can't be too difficult since this is really quite common. Yes, I'm serious. They have slides that are updated every week as well.

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

^ I did ask around, but no one who I asked with knew anything about it. But thats fine, I got people at Tweeter to do a demo for our office so they should be able to set us up.

Re: Plasma Display in a waiting room

^^ That sucks that no one was of any help.