Lumexis in just over six months will add a seat-centric element to its fibre optic-based 'fiber-to-the-screen' in-flight entertainment system to provide additional redundancy, and is preparing to improve the high-def resolution of its offering.
"In the next generation of monitors that are due out in June [2012], we've added in-seat storage for movies so that if we have a double failure, of [the] server or somebody cuts a fibre in the network or something - remembering we already have 99.5% availability with that system - we've added storage in the seat," Lumexis CEO Douglas Cline told FlightglobalPro.
Additionally, he said, Lumexis can narrow down the content to be offered in the seat-centric in-seat IFE unit to the 20 or 30 movies that it knows passengers will want to watch in a particular market.
"What we've put our proprietary technology around is we will sample the route. So, if you're flying from Los Angeles to Dubai and you've selected French as your language and all the people who have previously selected French as their language flying from Los Angeles to Dubai prefer these movies, we would download those. And so, on the very rare occasion that you might fail two units, then you would have the content be the most wanted [by passengers]," added Cline.
Lumexis' IFE system, which was launched by Flydubai and has attracted Transaero as a customer, is billed as being high definition, but the resolution is also slated to further improve. "It is high-def and we can go right now to 23in screens. Today it is 720p and in a year it will be 1080p for every seat in the airplane," said Cline.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
