May 18, 2006 - THERE’S been a rare outbreak of transparency in the Magic Circle of handheld IFE, with digEcor announcing the name of the manufacturer that will pull its new digEplayer XT out of the hat. But elsewhere in the sector it’s still the same old razzle-dazzle as much is promised and little in the way of substance steps out from amidst the smoke and mirrors.

digEcor says digEplayer XT is on track for a summer release. To be assembled at the Springville, Utah, factory of parent company Wencor, the latest version of the successful first-generation handheld will be based on circuit boards made by manufacturing service provider Wolf Electronix, also based in Utah.

The XT design was produced under contract by Colorado-based Triad Systems Engineering. “The XT is not just an upgrade of our original DigEplayer 5500,” says digEcor product development manager Steve Hurst. “It’s a totally new player based on the latest and best components and software available. Production quantities should be available for delivery by mid to late summer.”

Thinner and lighter than the 5550, with a larger, eight-inch TFT screen, longer-life 10-hour battery and a larger 60Gb hard drive, the XT also features an integrated credit-card swipe, a USB 2.0 port and two independently controlled headphone mini-jacks. An optional 802.11a/b/g wireless capability will offer airlines a convenient way to upload new content and download credit-card transaction data and usage statistics.

The original digEplayer, introduced in 2003 and built by California’s e.Digital and a succession of Korean assembly companies, showed that the handheld model could work but was always dogged by manufacturing and delivery problems. “Deliveries were often late and when they did arrive some had problems,” says digEcor CEO Brent Wood. “We decided that the best solution was to manufacture the product ourselves. We’re already purchasing components and have started construction of the final assembly line.”

In another departure, digEcor will now make XT available to other distributors instead of remaining the sole source of supply. The move is probably related to the news that XT will be used in several sectors outside IFE, including Amtrak trains, cruise ships, ferries and buses. The company also says that hospitals in several countries are showing interest in the device.

This burst of straight talking is in stark contrast with the caginess of some of the aspiring handheld IFE suppliers.

London-based Mezzo Movies hopes to launch service in midsummer (Inflight Online, May 16) but is otherwise tight-lipped, saying only that hard detail of its turnkey offering will emerge over the next couple of months. AirVOD of Dublin and US company Global Airworks, which came from nowhere last year with their Mach 5 and Airplay respectively, are not returning calls. And Britain’s Watermark is being strangely reticent about the product it trailed at Aircraft Interiors in April.

Enquiries reveal that the offering is the work of Australian company AeroTV. A joint venture by Watermark and Perth-based digital content management and distribution company DCN, AeroTV was last heard of in 2003-04, when it was set up to market the lightweight, overhead IFE system of the same name. It seems that AeroTV has turned its attention to creating a handheld for Watermark to distribute. Other than that, however, polite requests for facts and figures have fallen on deaf ears.

Phantom Media of London is, for the moment at least, standing aloof from the handheld hurly-burly. Responding to suggestions elsewhere that its Bluebox, first dangled just out of reach at WAEA in Hamburg last year, is more a handheld than an ultra-lightweight embedded system, managing director Rick Stuart makes no bones.

“Bluebox is a fixed system and was always conceived as such,” he says. “What seems to have confused the issue is that if we wanted we could make it a handheld device. We haven`t done this because we believe it would compromised our offering, and there are already far too many players in a marketplace that logically could support only two or three players.”

Stuart does not however rule out the possibility of a handheld incarnation of Bluebox. “We’ve had many comments from prospective clients expressing disappointment that we’re not offering a handheld version,” he says. “But like everybody in this fast-moving market we are constantly re-evaluating.”

If its reluctance to cough up hard data is anything to go by, Phantom would fit very nicely into the handheld arena. For what its worth, this is how Stuart described Bluebox at WAEA last year: “It’s a low-cost, low-weight wireless-based AVOD system making use of the technology advances that have made handheld IFE possible. We’re aiming to track consumer electronic developments on the ground and minimise the airlines’ sunk costs. Our approach is one of constant evolution – we’re not going to lock airlines into ten years of spares support and growing obsolescence.”

He described a system based largely on commercial off-the shelf hardware and software and proffering the holy grail of revenue generation with its ability to support pay-per-view and other moneymaking applications. Fixed in the seat but capable of being swapped out in 50sec, the core unit would be treated as Class 2 (non-installed) equipment and thus more quickly and cheaply certificated. All the units would be centrally controlled by cabin staff over a WiFi wireless network.

Content on show at WAEA included gaming, the Worldview interactive 3D moving-map, and the As-Live Broadband News and Sports service. The last is a collaboration with BBC World and Real Networks. It is designed to deliver, as frequently as once an hour via the aircraft’s satellite or terrestrial air-ground communications system, 25min video news digests from BBC World, 5min multi-language audio news clips from BBC World Service, and highlights of leading sporting events from leading sports content provider TWI. Total capacity per unit for films, audio and games was put at 160Gb.

Phantom Media and some of its cousins in the handheld arena are planning finally to whip the wraps off their products to the acclaim of an astonished world some time later this year, that much is clear. But what will they have to show when the time comes? It had better be good, because markets will stand only so much teasing before they turn round and bite.