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Aviation History
2004
2004-09 - 1720.PDF
In-flight entertainment to go to Europe next February for installa tion on the aircraft. The i-5000 is the latest member of Thales' TopSeries family, which comprises three main subsystems - the i-2000 providing overhead video; the i-3000 in-seat distrib uted video system offering up to 66 chan nels; and the i-4000 audio- and video-on- demand (A/VOD) in-seat system with high-capacity servers for video, audio, games and web-based applications. TopSeries systems are flying on more than 30 aircraft, with customers including Japan Airlines, UK tour operator MyTravel Airways, Middle East Airlines and Royal Brunei Airlines. Also, Bangkok Airways has ordered the i-2000 for its A320s and Etihad Airways has selected the i-4000 for its new A330s. Although Thales has yet to secure a cus tomer for the i-5000, it hopes to announce orders at next week's World Airline Entertainment Association show following the conclusion of a number of competi tions, including Air France, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines and Qantas. After extensive testing of the i-5000, the system will have several years of in-service experience by the time customers start receiving their A380s in 2006, says Patti. Boosting capacity The i-5000 has a fibre-optic gigabit ethernet backbone, replacing the lOObaseT ethernet of the i-4000, signifi cantly boosting system capacity. "We took the opportunity offered by the high- capacity fibre-optic network to switch from analogue to digital delivery of broad cast video, with consequent improve ments in picture quality," says Patti. The system will provide A/VOD to every The latest seat on the aircraft. "Theoretically, the breed of IFE number of broadcast channels is limited systems will only by the amount of storage capacity of provide a the servers," he says. "A typical Thales A380 new customer will have 6.6 terabytes of storage. generation "We have exploited the internet-proto- on entertain- col connectivity of TopSeries to provide ment customers with powerful system and con- services tent management facilities." Games, shopping, SMS/e-mail, inter net/intranet and in-seat power will all be standard options, plus new interactive functions that Patti declines to reveal. Ethernet is a "clean architecture" that makes sense for IFE system use, says Patti, adding that it is becoming the standard ised architecture for networks throughout the world. Thales says reductions in size, weight and power consumption with the i-5000 compared with earlier systems have been www.flightinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 14-20 SEPTEMBER 2004 29
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