I have several family members who would absolutley love to see my first baby boy be born sometime around July 4. Several wont be able to make it, due to illness, etc.

When my wife and I got married last year, we did it at the street corner of 4th and D streets in Anchorage. [url]http://www.furrondy.net/photos/Rondycam.htm[/url] My family thought that it was "slicker than snot" that I could allow them to attend by watching via the web cam there.

We toured the hospital where our child will be born yesterday and noticed they have cable television in every room. I have a cable modem (same company of course) and was wondering if it is possible to bring my laptop to the room, along with the modem, and establsih a internet connection fron the room? If we can, I could establish a web cam setup so that my family can view the birth, or at least the first moments of life outside of the womb.

Is this possible? Thought I would ask before I call the cable company and hospital.

Sounds like a great idea, but you will need to check with the hospital and cable company, as you suppected. Technically it [i]could[/i] work.


ByteTheBullet  (-:

You need to talk to the Hospital about their internet connection.  It's not going to be DSL or Cable, it's going to be some hardcore connection that you can only tap by hooking up to their LAN.  You know the cable that goes from your cable modem to your comuter?  You need to find a place to plug in one of those cables in your hospital room.  Even if you find  a place to plug it in you might not be able to get internet access, you have to talk to the hospital about it.

Odds are that you will *not* have data service through the hospital cable system.  Next step would be to look into your cellular provider as most now offer wireless modems for your laptop.  However, hospitals want you to turn off cellular devices.

Edited to add:  Most hospitals have secure/semi-secure LANs in order to protect personal and medical information.  While they'll have a burgeoning internal network, they usually have a limited amount of computers with connections to the outside world.

Troy has the best/most reasonable solution.  After all, you will want to spend more time with your wife watching the miracle of birth rather than dealing with your laptop, connection issues, etc.  

I think today's society of instant gratification has led people to expect to be around for all significant events in our lives.  When my parents were married, those who couldn't attend had to wait several weeks for copies of the photographs to be sent out.  

Take a video camera, record the event.  When your wife decides she wants to sleep, head home for a few hours and digitize/edit a few videos and then post them for your family to download.  Seeing the new bundle of joy a few hours after the actual event should satisfy even the in-laws.  If you need help, IM me as I've been doing digital video editing for about 10 years now.

Ditto on Troy's solution.

Besides, even if there is cable in the rooms, there's no guarantee it's digital service with the quad-shielded 75ohm cabling necessary for quality data throughput.

Hand-cam it and stream it. It's better than nothing at all.