Color TV In Hospitals
 

In Kingsport, TN the principal hospital had no in-room TVs in the late sixties. I recall loaning my GE portacolor to a friend imprisoned there about 1968 or so. They kept you for a week or two for minor procedures then- it's out the door same day now.

I stayed in a hospital for a week in 1968 when I was 8 years old, and my mother rented a TV for me in my room. (That was how it was done there, the rooms did not have TVs "standard" in them.) It was some kind of maybe 23" B&W on a cart (or a floor model on casters maybe), with a wired remote control. I remember the "off" position was where UHF would commonly be, below channel 2, and I think maybe a couple of UHF stations were converted to unused VHF channels as was common on cable TV later. The channel-changing motor was really fast and only went one way, so if I missed a channel I had to go around again, including turning the TV off and back on. That was the first time in my life I had control of a TV set myself.

I was in the hospital at UCLA in the mid 70s, and they had a few Quasar II hybrid 22" color sets... Not in the rooms though. I was in a ward with 15 or 20 beds, and it had 1 of those Quasars. It broke once, and the custodian brought in a beat-up old Magnavox 19" B&W tube set while the Quasar was being fixed. Later, in visiting hospitals, I saw various TVs through the late 70s including swingarm-mounted Sony 5" color sets (KV-5100 modified for hospital use). By the late 80s, most hospitals around Los Angeles had 19" color sets for each bed. Northridge Hospital; one of the best in LA, now has mainly Zenith LCD sets at each bed. Glendale Adventist has Zenith 19" CRT sets.

Charles

When I had my tonsils out in the early 80s they had those swingarm 5" Sony sets. Very cool at the time...at least that first night. After getting "knifed" at 6am the next morning I didn't care much about that Trinitron!

I recall seeing Zenith System 3's (early 80's ones) in Coney Island Hospital, Brooklyn, NY circa 1995.

Bet they're gone now though (!!)

Yes same here, actually Marshall hospital uses system 3's and the Mercy Hospial in Folsom uses those too I believe, some big rooms actually have 27" sets still. Most look almost dead although, ping out of focus rasters. You can tell the CRT's are tired. They still have them though.

Back in the '80's, the hospital that we used had mid '70's Sylvania GT-matic hospital TV's. They were the type with the motorized one way tuner where UHF was the "off" position. The remotes were plugged into a socket by the bed. In the early '90's, I actually got my hands on two or three of these sets. They were heavy as lead and used, IIRC, the E08 chassis. They used a power transformer and a delta gun CRT. I think the same hospital had some E53 Sylvania's with a single knob motorized varactor tuner and inline CRT and some E32's with cable ready tuners. Sometime in the late '80's, most of these sets were replaced by 20" cable ready Magnavox sets. I think these sets were recently replaced by black box Philips hospital sets.

Some of the other local hospitals that I've visited people in had a mix of Zenith system 3's, Sylvania's, and RCA XL100's.

As far as hospital sets that I've had over the years; I've had E08, E32, and E53 Sylvania's, an early 70's tube type color RCA, a mid '70's 19" RCA XL100 with the stand up chassis, some mid '90's (junk) Zenith "new horizons" sets, and an early '70's GE 19" color (don't remember the chassis). All had the jack on the rear for the plug in remote control.

I once bought a used Sony KV-1310 set that had been modified by a California company for hospital use. It had two US-made isolation transformers added, and all of the knobs were changed to non-chromed versions, presumably to pass AC leakage tests. It had a whoppin' hospital grade three wire plug, and the ground connection went only to the Faraday shield on the isolation transformers and the center tap of the internal 300:75 ohm balun. The transformers were a tight fit, and had to be paralleled. It was about 8 years old then, but still sparkly-clean inside, with no yellowing of any labels. Great picture too.

I converted it back to normal for my use, and still have the two 300VA isolation transformers.

Cheers,

FindmKeepm, that Sony sounds great. Almost as if they liked the design (or Sony's reputation) so much that 'they' decided it was the TV for the job... But yeah they last just about til the crt is gone, so it is a great hospital set

Here's a question: When did society start getting picky about color TV? (hard to pinpoint a year)

Here in California, it seemed in the mid to later 80's that if you owned a Trinitron, you were high class. I know it seems odd but that's the way it was. I would say 1985 ish?
I've always had love for my RCA's and Zenith's.. Guess it's the midwest kid in me, being from Michigan.

Every horsepistol TV I've seen has been cut from the same cloth as Motel sets-but they MIGHT have been in a bit better state of repair than motel sets...A lot of 'em have had the same convergence/lousy pic issues as the motel sets did, but not as many impact marks, cigarette burns, etc...

I did time back in 1975 at a major hospital in NYC is a ward like that, with a sun room at the end, where someone brought in a beat up portable B&W set. The channel knob was missing, so we used a pair of forceps someone stole out of an operating room to grab the tuner shaft to change channels. Saw a rerun of Dactari (show about an animal welfare camp in some African 3rd world toilet).

Just today, I was talking to a friend who started repairing TV's in the early '70's. Come to find out that our hospital had RCA sets before they had those mid '70's Sylvania's. He said he worked on some of them and some were tube type and some were SS.

That tube type RCA hospital set that I had seemed to be better built, with a better quality PC board, than the consumer version of that set. It still had a good picture after I replaced the horizontal output tube (31JS6, IIRC). I wish I still had it.

You're probably a bit young to remember the Sony commercials that implied they "were" high class sets. One had an athlete showing off his crib, saying "This is where I keep my World Series trophy, my Golden Glove award, and.......this is where I keep my Sony"

They had a few like that, depending on what program they were associated with. We had a 19" Sony at the time (with the tuner below the CRT), and I remember my brother thinking we were S**T hot for having it.


Cheers,