Vicarious nature walks, Yoga, institutional information will return

The day after Labor Day, residents at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center found with dismay that institutional television Channel One suddenly stopped working. They could no longer vicariously walk in the Snoqualmie woods in Washington state. They could no longer practice yoga with an expert instructor on a pool deck in the mountains, and they could no longer ignore the state-mandated information videos on the remaining channels.

Good news lies just around the corner, though. After the San Quentin Media Center — the organization responsible for maintaining the channels — completes its move to the new building, Channel One will return with more sub-channels, with new content, and with the familiar woodsy nature walk.

“Programming will return and be better than ever,” said Skyler Brown, the TV specialist at SQRC, who called the outage temporary.

The reason for the broadcast interruption had to do with the media center’s TelVue HyperCaster, a large rack-mounted device that until recently sat in an obscure back room of San Quentin’s Education Department. Brown dismantled the HyperCaster piece by piece and moved it to its new location for reassembly.

“The new building’s wiring is not yet fully installed,” said resident Media Center worker Tony Tafoya. “Once the wiring work is finished, we’ll broadcast again.”

Brown said he expected that to happen well before the official move-in date. That date would appear tentatively set for March 26, 2026.

The HyperCaster’s specifications said it packed a lot of punch: 11 terabytes of storage running on the Ubuntu Linux operating system. “It compares with the 1996 CRAY supercomputer the Pentagon used for nuclear bomb simulations,” joked resident Lee Jaspar, the media center’s HyperCaster programmer.

“The HyperCaster can handle broadcasting an unlimited amount of programming,” Tafoya said, adding that the unit “was not utilized to the fullest extent. Once we get to the new building, the movies will play no longer from DVDs, but from a hard drive, which will make playing a lot more reliable. Once that starts, the movies could potentially start at set times, instead of starting again right after they end, which will give residents a reliable time for watching them.”

Brown said San Quentin would soon hire a second TV specialist, an addition he highly welcomed. “The new TV specialist will let me spend more time on making sure the programming will change more frequently. Another worker will also make sure that we do more productions here,” Brown said.

David Rodriguez said he missed the nature walk with the solo piano music because it helped him relax. “It’s my favorite Channel One program,” he said, “I could zone out on that. We don’t get real nature here.”