Mobile solutions offer special challenges; but, they also have unique opportunities. TAP's installation in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Trinity Railway Express solved the challenge and is demonstrating the opportunity.
The challenge is to have continuous, broadcast quality TV in an environment where receipt of a signal is intermittent.
TAP's technology is ideal for this, as the TV programming is played out of the on-board hard drive. We do not stream video. Rather, we use an external signal - existing cell-based wireless internet - to download and update files which, by the nature of file transfers, allows for periodic interruptions without loss of integrity. No right-of-way issues and no loss of signal quality.
The opportunity presented by a mobile platform is to further target messages by the GPS location of the train. In the example at right, produced as a demonstration for Chicago's Metra system, the passengers are automatically shown the next station in line and local ads for businesses in that location automatically are triggered. The Metra example also shows TAP's ability to work with custom-sized display screens - in this case, extra-wide and shallow to accommodate the car configuration.
