HARRISBURG, Pa. — Amtrak’s Keystone trains between Harrisburg and New York will offer free daily movies, TV programs and Internet access over seat-back video screens in what is believed to be a first for passenger rail service in the United States, the Harrisburg Patriot-News reports.
The media service, which will start Oct. 15, will be provided by NRoute Communications of Philadelphia in partnership with Amtrak and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. It initially will be offered on one 50-seat car on each train and expand from there.
Seats with the free service will be available to passengers who get them first.
“Think of NRoute as a new media channel for travelers,” said Carlos Garcia, chairman and chief executive officer of NRoute Communications. “Passengers can tune in for work or play, and advertisers gain access to a captive audience eager to see what’s new on the display before them.”
Airline passengers on some international flights have had seat-back screens for a couple of years offering a way to pass the long hours watching recent movies or TV sitcoms, and not just the programming picked by the airline.
Garcia said Keystone passengers will have 40 hours of movies and half-hour sitcoms to choose from daily. He said the system can be updated daily to keep the offerings fresh. Movies will have ratings of PG-13 or G. Passengers may use their own headphones or buy or borrow them from Amtrak.
The system will even work when the trains pull into Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, he said, although cell phones often don’t.
Passengers initially will be able to send, but not receive, e-mail, Garcia said. That will be phased in and will require passengers to create accounts. Some of the TV programming will come from the Home & Garden Network and the Food Network, among others.
The NRoute system uses high-speed wireless communications technology to track and beam digital content to moving passenger conveyances, be they trains, planes or buses. The system makes use of Global Positioning Satellite technology that the carrier also can use to track the location of the train, for example, and communicate with the crew.
For advertisers, the use of GPS technology means that messages can be tailored to specific geographic areas the train is passing through. Restaurants and theaters in New York City, for example, could target passengers heading for the Big Apple, who could then use the Internet connection to make reservations or purchase tickets.
NRoute was founded by Garcia in Alabama in 1999. It originally was a military contractor, set up to develop ways to send high-speed Internet signals to aircraft. He moved the company to Pennsylvania after it developed a version of the system for civilian mass transportation and state government expressed interest. PennDOT has provided a research and development grant to NRoute.
Garcia has a background in starting technology companies. In the early 1990s, he started a company called DiAccounstics that marketed music-synthesizing software.
PennDOT confirmed the arrangement with NRoute Communications, but department officials who have worked on the project were unavailable for comment Wednesday.