Decisionmark, a media technology company based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has teamed with Capitol Broadcasting, owners of WRAL-DT in Raleigh, N.C., to conduct a 30-day datacast experiment using the station’s online program guide.
During the period, WRAL-DT viewers can schedule, download and watch datacast content via the station’s TitanTV program guide, which was developed by Decisionmark. The prototype project seeks to make the datacast content more accessible for viewers.
This project “demonstrates viewer-friendly datacast content delivery, which is important in leveraging our digital content and increasing viewership,” said James F. Goodmon, president and CEO, Capitol Broadcasting.
For the project, WRAL is using its existing TotalCast application (developed by Capital Broadcasting’s DTV Plus division) and encodes a variety of programming and content made available at various times of the day. By clicking on an icon on the TitanTV guide’s “WRAL On-Demand” tab, viewers can capture available datacast content of interest to them. In addition, viewers also have the option of selecting available content that was previously aired, such as WRAL news and sports programming.
To access the system, WRAL viewers must have the ability to receive WRAL’s over-the-air ATSC (digital) signal: an over-the-air antenna; an Air2PC-ATSC-USB datacast tuner from B2C2 with custom code; the TotalCast software application; and access to the WRAL Web site and its TitanTV guide.
