September 17, 2007; Toronto – HANDHELD IFE supplier e.Digital is showing new hardware here in the form of the Extended Range version of its eVU player.

eVU-ER is said to include new proprietary power management technology yielding 20+ hours of continuous video playback from a single battery charge. If substantiated in commercial service, this would represent a new industry standard.

Last week e.Digital announced an order from Air France, bringing to three its tally of major European customers: the others are Alitalia and Lufthansa. The latter is now offering eVU on its all-business-class routes between New York Newark and Munich, and between Newark and Chicago O'Hare and Dusseldorf. The player is also available to business-class passengers on Airbus A300-600 flights between Frankfurt and Cairo and Almaty in Kazakhstan. Service support is provided by Lufthansa Technik. 

The eVU graphical user interface (GUI) for Lufthansa offers several languages, including English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Russian and Arabic, and emulates the one used with the carrier’s embedded IFE systems.

Another recent e.Digital customer is Malaysia Airlines, which announced an order for eVU in May. The carrier is now offering 8in-screen eVUs to first and business-class passengers on several of its Airbus A330s operating on North and South Asia routes.

The company provided Malaysia Airlines with a customised passenger interface to maintain fleet-wide IFE consistency and has opened a technical support office in Kuala Lumpur.

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