Hi Scott,
Some aircraft manufacturers (e.g., Connexion by Boeing) are providing WiFi capabilities to support streaming video to laptops at each seat, but the model that you've described would appear to be hard-wired to each seat, instead. I could be wrong about this, and some would argue that the physical layer used for a medium isn't even the issue today, within limits. Bandwidth to each seat is not the issue, either. It's the switching and bus speeds on the servers and switches that matters more. Likewise, the acquisition times necessary to schlep through a library of titles. During the Nineties, an organization known as VITA (The VMEbus International Trade Association) had a major hand in defining many of the approaches and technologies used on in-flight entertainment systems today. I'm not sure who has picked up the slack since then, if anyone.
AC Spark Plug had a division, if I'm not mistaken, that was one of the first to get into seat-to-seat multiplexing systems during the Sixties. It was TDM based using gate logic circuitry (a really big deal at the time), which was used as a means of replacing the tonnage of miles of cabling on aircraft frames with a signle pair of wires (with a backup, of course;) to each seat (one version actually used a bus architecture), used to control lighting, cabin signals to flight attendants (then called stewards and stewardesses), and one of the first multi-channel stereo audio capabilities to be offered on flights.
If you're able to gather more information on the state of the art of in-flight entertainment systems, in the cogent manner that you usually do, please post.
FAC |
