January 26, 2005 - DEVELOPMENT of a new standard for file compression is to be accelerated following last week’s meeting of the group tasked with creating a new standard for the delivery of digital IFE content.

The Digital Content Management Working Group (DCMWG), part of the World Airline Entertainment Association’s Technical Committee, decided to try fix on one or more file-compression codecs ahead of completion of the main digital content management standards that it was set up to produce.

The new standards are designed to expedite the transition now under way from physical to all-digital “network” delivery of content from providers to their airline customers. They address the requirements of interactive multimedia such as audio/video-on-demand, digital rights management (DRM), encryption key management, and content delivery formats.

DCMWG has set itself the task of defining the codec standard within the next few months, even if the broader standards set takes longer to complete. “We consider that one or more existing codecs should form the basis of the standard,” says group co-chair Michael Childers. “That should allow us to move fast and give the industry some direction in the short term.”

Childers, a consultant with UK-based IMDC, has advocated MPEG-4 as the future of digital content management for some years, and this codec forms the basis of all of the group’s candidate technologies. They are MPEG-4 Part 2 Visual and MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC (otherwise known as H.264) - both of which are ISO open standards - and Windows Media/VC1 and DivX, which have some proprietary elements. Both Windows Media/VC1 and DivX are already being implemented in IFE: the former in IMS’ handheld Personal Entertainment Appliance (PEA), the latter in the APS digEplayer.

In the next few months DCMWG must decide whether one of the four meets all the requirements of IFE better than the rest and can be standardised. If none does, the group may choose to select at least two to ensure that all requirements are covered.

The first draft of the full set of standards was presented at last week’s meeting by editor Pierre Schuberth of Rockwell Collins Airshow. Interested members of the industry are invited to supply their comments to Schuberth (paschub@rockwellcollins.com) by February 15. A second draft will be produced for the next DCMWG meeting, expected to take place before the end of March.