by EricL
David Benton wrote:I think Wifi for the LD service would be good , but generate alot of complaints when there's no reception. Do city folks even have a concept of areas without reception for miles?This would be a very good idea, IF executed right.
a better idea i think , would to be to install a hard drive server in every LD cafe/lounge car. Have all the amtrak info on it , a few games, a few free books, a few magazines etc. News service updated daily via reception when avaliable. Should be enough to keep most campers happy. Could have a lot of potential upsells, do a deal with the likes of Amazon, zinio, netflix etc, and have onboard sales via eftpos. Could even sell Kindles onboard.
A captive market, waiting to be tapped.
However, it does jar my memory towards, very short-lived "Dig-E-Player" (circa 2007). The basic idea was a replacement for the old lounge car movies with a portable DVD player that you could watch in your room/at your seat. It was a bad idea for many reasons, namely:
- AFAIK, you could only rent/return it at the initial/final terminals
- all it was was a movie player, not an interactive product like Mr Benton suggests.
- the base technology/idea, when rolled out, was already quite a bit behind its time. i.e., even many of the "luddites" didn't go for it.
- in spite of the rentals being done at the station, the "stock" of these devices (while onboard) was still in charge of the LSA - a discrepancy which represented an accountability nightmare
Maybe selling Kindles (or iPads, or Nooks, or whatever) would be taking the idea a bit too far. The price tag would just be too hefty for many folks to jump on it, and a rental system is kind of a dicey proposition as well. The idea of having this interactive "offline" content available for anyone to peruse on their own personal devices, though, is probably worth merit, and the implementation cost of such would be relatively low.
hey there guy