Raleigh, North Carolina buses get on-board DTV
By Donald Melanson 
posted April 14th 2009 5:21PM
posted April 14th 2009 5:21PM
Planning to hop on a bus in Raleigh, North Carolina anytime soon? Then there's a chance you could be treated to an added distraction during your trip, as the city has just rolled out its first CAT bus equipped with mobile DTV, which looks to be one of the first projects resulting from those MPH tests that took place last year. This little bit of magic also comes courtesy of a little help from LG and Harris Corp., who are supplying the displays and mobile transmission equipment for the pilot program, which will be expanded to five buses by August, with another 20 planned for the second phase that'll run though August 2010. Of course, your viewing options will be somewhat limited, with a simulcast of local station WRAL apparently the only channel on tap, along with some weather information and, of course, a healthy dose of advertising.
[Thanks, Dana]
[Thanks, Dana]
Wow, that'd be awesome!
Are you guys sure it's LG tv? I don't think it's very clear from the picture.
Did they mean "LCDTV" or "HDTV" because I have never heard of DTV...
DTV means digital TV.
I prefer my forced ads on buses silent and static.
dtv?
These things wouldn't last a minute in NYC transit.
we don't need tv's EVERYWHERE kthx
Here in the GTA (Areas surrounding Toronto, Canada) our bus system, Viva, had HDTVs and free WiFi. For some odd reason though they started removing them from all their buses.
And by "removed" you mean "stolen"?
These are for the R-Line buses only. I don't think they are on the CAT buses (yet).
At first I thought this was in Japan. I was thinking, no way the US would have something this cool already.
I Attended NC Sate Univ. in Raleigh and could tell you from experience that they need to work on more buses. Mass Transit in that area is awful, try puttting GPS on them like the Wolfline So you can at least track the one bus per hour.
This is just a warmup for the telescreens.
looks like the recession hasn't hit North Carolina yet.
YEAH! GO RALEIGH! I'm from Raleigh.
Why display the weather channel? If you need to know what the weather looks like can't you just look out the bus window.
Damn I need to take a ride and check em out !! How come i never saw one of those yet ?!
I call shenanigans on this -- not that the buses have TVs, that Raleigh has buses. I lived in Raleigh for the longest 6 months of my life and I don't recall seeing any freakin' buses.
I live in Raleigh NC. I didn't even know we had buses. This town is so far behind the times, it's scary.
hooray for tvbgone!
I believe the PACE buses in Illinois have flatscreens as well. I'm not sure about Chicago's city buses though. I don't have a problem with them as long as people don't intentionally damage them.
I'm from Fayetteville NC, I wouldn't mind the TVs if busses came with them!
We technically do have a bus service called FAST that has existed for the 10 years I've lived here... in those 10 years I've seen buses less than 10 times total. Not that anything can even go fast with our ridiculous layout of stoplights every 200-300 feet set to different timings that cause routine quarter mile backups.
Of course, I'm biased, I'm from State College PA and lived there for 13 years and you are never more than a 5 minute walk from a stop, with most stops getting busses every 15 minutes and rarely more than 5min late. + they all run on natural gas and are nearly silent compared to other busses :)
I live in Raleigh, NC and I also to NCSU. I rode both line. Wolfine is better but only cover the college area but CAT goes all over the city. It will probably more than $1.00 now to ride it. Thanks as a student I dont have to pay for it. yes.
The only decent bus system in Raleigh is the Wolfline at NCSU, but it only has to cover a small area around campus. Other than that there are not enough CAT buses running for people to use them, but there aren't enough people using the current ones to buy new ones. So instead everyone just drives.
I've been on busses before and they do not look like that.
my first response was what? bus in raliegh they must be thinking about durham data... they are the only group to go from pre downtown duke hspt or uni to rtp..ral downtown is shit
So you can watch ads in the bus too.
We already have tv's in buses and trains here in Hong Kong. All I can say is that they are soooooo annoying. I just want to get on public transport and relax, sleep, listen to music. But with these things blaring out so-called useful information for the masses, it's anything but relaxing. I absolutely hate these things.
While I don't ride the CAT buses, I see no reason for the fare to go up. These screens aren't funded by tax dollars.
P.S. I don't ride the wolfline anymore either :P I have a C-parking permit ;)
what's the point? to get them stolen?
theyd get beatin down and broke in baltimore, we hard niggas. No it would def get STOLEN
BMore We Go Hard
Reminds me of the adverts on the buses in the film "Children of Men";
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VnIrXmdYhY (around 2:00, or just watch the whole thing :/)