Public television station WHUT-TV, owned by Howard University, was the first PBS mobile test station. The station was one of nine that began airing ATSC mobile DTV service in May 2010 to a select group of consumers in the Washington, D.C., metro area as part of a consumer showcase, sponsored by the Open Mobile Video Coalition.
Some of the companies that made the implementation of mobile DTV possible at the station are finally revealing the role they played. WHUT-TV has had Myers Information Systems' flagship ProTrack TV, which employs a Programming Metadata Communication Protocol (PMCP) interface, in use at the station since 1996. In the mobile DTV showcase, Myers' ProTrack TV delivered schedule metadata to a server powered by Roundbox, which generated the actual mobile DTV stream. WHUT senior engineer Erick V. Wright said the integration of the two companies' technologies was "a smooth marriage."
Myers' ProTrack TV is a comprehensive scheduling and business management system for single, multichannel and multistation facilities and is actively used by more than 226 media outlets, supporting more than 1300 channels.
