In-flight entertainment: Bring your own device trend surges
The world’s largest airline, American Airlines, has decided to remove in-flight entertainment screens on its new fleet of Boeing Co. aircraft.
“We know in-flight entertainment is important to our customers, which is why we’ve committed to offering free, streaming high-quality movies and music, and to investing in fast satellite-based internet access and power at every seat across our domestic fleet”, the airline said in a statement
The airline reasoned that over 90 percent of its passengers now carry mobile phones, tablets, and laptops with them on-board. Video screens will remain on airplanes used for international flights, and on some single-aisle ones used for specific flights.
"Entertainment and connection options like these are the future of in-flight entertainment, which is why we’ve decided that our new Boeing 737 MAX will arrive later this year without seat-back video screens,” the airline said in a statement.
With the increasing popularity of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, passengers are opting to use their own portable devices onboard aircrafts instead of high-resolution seat-back devices.
For airlines, these moves mean more investments into secure and reliable IFE systems that enable passengers to use devices they’re already comfortable with.
Not all airlines are on-board with removing the seat-back screens. Delta, one of American Airlines biggest domestic competitors are doing both - keeping their IFE video screens and providing the possibility to use their own devices if they so choose,
“Providing seat-back entertainment in addition to the ability to access content via mobile devices on-board is something Delta is choosing to invest in while competitors remove options,” said a Delta Air Lines spokesperson to The Verge.
“Our customers tell us that flexibility is important to them and we will continue to listen to them.” In order to cover the full end-to-end media workflow for wireless and in-seat IFE systems, choosing the right content management system becomes paramount. The CMS solution has to support specific industry requirements in both connected and disconnected environments (e.g. on-board an aircraft). Work with cloud and on-premise data centers and cover a plethora of synchronization and delivery scenarios for content and services.
Content Management for Wireless and In-Seat IFE Systems
Axinom CMS is an extensible content management system designed to cover the full end-to-end media workflow for wireless and in-seat IFE systems.
It’s the first full-featured content management solution for the worldwide aerospace market that enables both cloud-based and on-premise deployments for a wide set of connected and disconnected consumer scenarios (e.g. on-board of an aircraft). Based on industry-standards, it fulfills the highest requirements regarding security and reliability.
With workflows delivered in source code and a unified API, Axinom CMS provides an open development platform allowing customers to expand to platforms that may not be considered part of the in-flight entertainment ecosystem today and to connect and organize services on-ground and on-board of the aircraft.
Furthermore, the ability to provide studio-grade DRM protection in offline environments and cover different usage scenarios on-board is one of the core requirements for modern IFE systems.
Secure Content Store for Early Window Hollywood Movies
Early window movies have a set of stringent requirements concerning data security in order to safeguard content copyright. This is to protect the content from piracy.
We work closely with leading Hollywood studios to build secure content stores for premium video content stored on on-premises data centers and in the cloud. Our multi-DRM service conforms with the highest security standards - such as Microsoft PlayReady SL3000.
It gives customers the flexibility needed to rapidly launch VOD and live streaming services and deliver them in secure and flexible IFE settings to the widest range of consumer devices.
Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X/macOS and the majority of popular client devices – tablets, mobile phones, game consoles, and Smart TVs are all supported.
It’s the first multi-DRM product that can operate in a disconnected fashion enabling premium video on-board more than than a hundred different aircraft makes and models.
Content Synchronization and Delivery
Today’s services in an aircraft have several challenges. Networks can be slow and unreliable, bandwidth can be changing or costly, data can be personal and critical. A world with ubiquitous connectivity will never exist.
Traffic quotas, allocated bandwidth, availability of connectivity, storage space, computational power, data security, privacy, and many other resources and requirements cannot be taken for granted.
Axinom CDS is built to transfer data fast, securely, and reliably in any environment. Be it on-board servers and devices exchanging entertainment content and services with the management platform in the cloud.
It’s a robust solution that manages all aspects of synchronization. Including utilization of different pipes (LAN, WiFi, 3G, LTE, satellite networks), managing interruptions, prioritizing important data, controlling data transfer cost and more.
Axinom provides a set of core products (Axinom CMS, Axinom CDS, and Axinom DRM) designed specifically for the aerospace industry. The set includes management capabilities of different connected services, various assets, crew members and passenger data
All this is backed up by proven aerospace industry-specific architectures and technologies allowing customers to build the next generation of digital platforms for management and delivery.
