airberlin selects revolutionary new inflight entertainment system from IMS
RAVE is an AVOD system that stores and plays back all entertainment content at the seat, providing unprecedented reliability and removing the ‘single point of failure’ scenario
IFE Express | [3-10-11] — Brea, CA | airberlin has chosen The IMS Company’s RAVE™ “seat-centric” inflight entertainment system for installation on its A330 long-haul fleet. The installation is scheduled to commence in the fourth quarter of this year. airberlin will utilize the 9-inch Seat Display Unit (SDU) at every seat from nose to tail, and the 12-inch crew panel.
RAVE™ is a new concept in inflight entertainment that improves upon traditional inflight entertainment systems by leveraging the best attributes of traditional AVOD systems with the characteristics of portable-player IFE. The c
The seat-centric inflight entertainment system differs from traditional “server-centric” systems in that each seatback display unit (SDU) contains all of the content, applications and playback functionality to provide the passenger with audio and video on demand—just like portable solutions. Unlike the server-centric model, which stores content in large disk arrays, RAVE stores content locally in SD (secure digital cards). In this innovative system architecture, the unit in the seat does not depend on large, complex networks and media servers to stream content. Any anomaly on a server-centric network can cause the entire inflight entertainment system to fail, or at least some number of seats in a zone served by a distribution box. But RAVE’s autonomous SDUs avoid the “single point of failure” scenario.
In RAVE’s architecture the system control unit (SCU) provides the interface to the aircraft Passenger Service System. It performs bulk content loads in the background while the current content is played back to the passenger via a separate SD card. The SCU also distributes video in real-time such as safety videos and boarding music via the fault tolerant gigabit Ethernet cabin network. But the locally-stored content at each seat is never subject to network failure.
The simplified network eliminates seat-boxes and provides slim, light-weight, low-power seat displays. The system is lighter and more reliable traditional inflight entertainment systems and costs far less. “We evaluated the systems available on the market today and chose RAVE because it provided the most reliable solution at the lowest cost to own and operate,” stated Thomas Ney, Chief Product Officer at airberlin.
airberlin’s RAVE™ system will have 9-inch high-definition displays with touch screens. The SDUs are fully interchangeable and easily replaced by a flight attendant in the event of service failure with no impact on any other seat. The SCU has 12 Terabytes of storage. The SDUs will have 128 GB of storage, upgradeable over time to 4 Terabytes of capacity.
RAVE™ gives The IMS Company an opportunity to apply more than 15 years’ experience providing IFE expertise to others by way of engineering services support to its own fully certified AVOD product with a system architecture that reflects its positive experience as the industry leader in portable media solutions. IMS is now the only IFE company providing a complete family of products that range from stand-alone portable, installed portable and fully certified AVOD solutions.
About airberlin: airberlin is Germany’s second largest airline and has a workforce of 8,900 employees. In 2010 alone, airberlin received over 10 awards for service and quality. The fleet comprises 169 aircraft with an average age of five years, making it one of the most modern fleets in Europe. The airline’s state-of-the-art jets are highly fuel efficient, which contributes toward a long-term reduction in pollution emissions from aircraft. As one of the major European airlines, airberlin currently flies to 163 destination airlines in 39 countries. In 2010, airberlin transported 33.6 million passengers. Airberlin has signed up for membership to the global alliance oneworld® and is expected to become a full member at the start of 2012. Airberlin has offered flights under codeshare agreements with American Airlines and Finnair since November 2010.