blue TV Host
«Time taken per TV update reduced from 75 hours to zero.»
Roland Wüthrich
Head of Technical Infrastructure Services
and security office
dahlia
The story in a nutshell:
The dahlia Langnau residential and nursing home offers its residents a live broadcast of the weekly sermon on TVs in the living groups. With the previous TV solution, adjusting the TVs in the rooms after updates was time-consuming, as was setting up the TVs of new residents. dahlia was looking for a new integrated TV solution.
Residents of the dahlia Langnau residential and nursing home follow the in-house sermon live on TV, an important ritual enabled by Swisscom’s state-of-the-art technology. 10 a.m. on Friday is an important permanent fixture in the weekly schedule of dahlia Lenggen’s residents: they meet up for the sermon.
On this particular Friday, Pastor Roland Jordi gives a warm welcome to about 15 “churchgoers” in the recreation room of a living group by bumping elbows with them. Normally, the residents would now gather around in a large circle with the eight other living groups in the main room. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic and refurbishment, this is not advisable. In order to ensure that the other residents can watch the service, dahlia’s management team came up with something: the sermon is broadcast live on the TVs in all recreation rooms. For example, in the neighbouring living group some residents are sitting expectantly in front of the TV at five to ten – including former publican, Hermann Neuenschwander. “I found faith here in the nursing home. Pastor Jordi holds the best sermons; I get a lot out of them,” he says.
Turn on the camera and the live broadcast starts
Roland Wüthrich is the Head of Technical Infrastructure Services and a security officer at dahlia. He explains how the live broadcasts work: “It’s very simple. As soon as the camera is switched on, the live broadcast is shown in the recreation rooms on channel 57 of blue TV. We deliberately don’t encourage residents to watch it in their rooms, because it is important to us that they experience the sermon as a group and feel social proximity. Only people who are greatly restricted in terms of their mobility can stay in their room to watch the sermon.”
«It’s so much easier for us to set up new residents’ TVs.»
Who offers a low-maintenance TV solution?
The live broadcasts of the sermons are an important part of the nursing home’s TV offer. Roland Wüthrich explains that watching TV normally is at least as popular: “The television is a window to the outside world for the elderly residents. They are interested in what is happening – and they enjoy watching their favourite series and often also animal and nature documentaries.” He adds that they were no longer happy with their previous TV solution because the channel offer deteriorated and there were more channels with permanent advertising. In addition, Roland Wüthrich remembers that the technical service employees had to spend a lot of time on it: “Once or twice a year, we had to individually set up about 100 TVs with personalised channel lists again. We had to spend about 75 hours after each update. Once we didn’t have a particular update on our radar in time, and the TVs didn’t work any more! This caused real drama here. This gave me the final incentive to come up with a new solution.”
Huge burden removed from the technical service employees
Roland Wüthrich subsequently turned to the in-house electricity and telematics company, Lauenstein AG. They presented him with Swisscom’s blue TV Host. “The total package convinced us. The Swisscom specialists were responsive to our wishes. Together with Lauenstein, they did their utmost to ensure the on-time installation of our new TV solution including an Inhouse Channel for our live broadcasts.”
Roland Wüthrich is happy that the technical service employees were relieved of a huge burden by blue TV Host: “We now don’t even notice the updates any more because we no longer have to spend any time at all on them. We experience huge relief where the setting up of new residents’ TVs is concerned. They bring their own televisions with them. We simply stick a blue TV Box under our arm, connect it to the network in the room and to the TV using an HDMI cable. Then we turn it on and everything works straight away. We used to have to programme the channels individually – and often enough organise or even buy a suitable remote control.” What do residents think of the new TV offer? “They really appreciate finding all of the channels they are used to having – without any outages. And the fact that they can experience the sermon together, in spite of all the current restrictions.”