While I can accept some pretty wild conjecture (hey, I`ve posted it too!), IMO you guys are jumping to some pretty wild conclusions based on very little.

Gil - Okay, I acknowledge that Thales (or Panasonic, or IMS) may be interested in acquiring Wencor`s IFE business, or in acquiring its foundation (i.e., EDIG), seeing a viable competitor and wishing to eliminate/take advantage of it, the concept is pretty ``out there`` based on the dots you`re providing. Here I should state that your post to which I responded didn`t clearly come out and say that. I have read that the old, original IFE that was the basis of B/E`s original business was inferior to other offerings at the time, and that`s supposedly why they bailed and sold it off to Sextant. Sextant apparently fixed those problems and morphed into Thales. Is the current Thales product inferior to other current offerings (sans digE)? If so, why is Air Canada buying it? Why are other airlines buying it? Further, since they are obviously able to sell large quantities to major airlines, do they really see Wencor as that much of a threat? Are they also looking to buy out IMS and Panasonic? So, I acknowledge that anything can happen (hey, Wencor bought out APS!), it`s not obvious to me that this scenario may play out. Also, you`ve posted that sometimes you intentionally throw ``dumb`` things out there.... Finally, hey, we`ve been ``buds`` here for a long, long time!

Bankerson - So Thales whatever (which may or may not be directly connected to Thales IFE) owns a 2.7% equity stake in B/E. Hardly a dominate or influencial interest IMO. Assuming this outfit is directly tied to Thales IFE, could it simply be that they have pretty good visibility of what`s happening in the airline industry and demand for seats, and are just leveraging that visibility to make a few bucks? Seems that if the prospects look good going forward for new seats/seat replacement, an investment in the largest seat making company might be a pretty smart move.

As for groping for the Thai Air connection, there`s nothing there....

Screen sizes are different than digEsystem

DigEsystem is stated by Wencor as being for single isle applications, but the Thai aircraft is described is multi-isle

DigEsystem is not available yet

If EDIG sold any digEsystem, they have to put out an 8K

First run movies have been cited as being available via other IFE, and the Thai first run movies may not be American made, but Asian/European

I think you get my point....

Nothing wrong with looking for ``possibles`` out there and posting them, that`s what this forum is partly about, but sometimes you just have to let it go when there`s too much conflicting ``evidence`` (and hey, I`ve had to pull the plug on my conjecture many, many times!). There`s nothing wrong with you posting this stuff, it is appreciated. But please be prepared to back off at the appropriate time.

All that said, keep in mind that....

I KNOW nuttin`!

SGE