Blast! IMS explodes into Web content provision

August 29, 2005 – IMS INFLIGHT, creator of the PEA second-generation handheld, has announced Blast!, an IFE content provision service based on daily network delivery of Web-based news and entertainment.

The Californian company will soon start delivering to at least two airline customers daily packages of news and other programming based on the large amounts of video and other content now being made available on the Web by leading television broadcasters such as the BBC and news agencies like Reuters and the Associated Press.

An airline subscribing to the service will be able to select a content package via an IMS Web portal. Blast! offers eight categories of content: world news, country/regional news, sports, business, science and technology, health and style, travel, and entertainment

IMS will use Web services tools such as its own video search engine and RSS feeds to aggregate the required content from virtual archives around the world. The fully encoded, integrated and licensed content will then be delivered to the aircraft at the gate via IMS’ own virtual private network – which could include wireless links and the company’s onboard Terminal Data Loader – before being cached in the aircraft server for delivery to the passenger via the in-seat IFE system or loaded to portable devices like PEA.

“Blast! exploits the increasing amount of video being pushed over the Internet,” says IMS content management consultant Michael Childers, “as well as Web services tools like RSS feeds and increasingly powerful video search engines. We see Web services as a lower-cost alternative to physical delivery media on the ground and satellite broadband in the air.”

RSS - standing for Really Simple Syndication - is a format for gathering and distributing and gathering content from sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazines and blogs. Web publishers use RSS to readily create and distribute news feeds that include links, headlines and summaries. The Christian Science Monitor, CNN and CNET News are among the many sites that now deliver updated online content via RSS.

Other enabling technologies include efficient codecs like Windows Media, which makes it possible to deliver high-quality video at a data rate of 300-700kbit/sec, and XML-based based metadata, supporting the distribution of content over the Internet by automated measures such as RSS feeds. Blast! is designed to be usable on any on-demand IFE platform, whether embedded or portable, and eventually on passengers’ own digital entertainment devices.

“Blast! reflects the significant migration of news from television to the Internet that is now under way,” comments Childers. “In the USA CBS has become a 24-hour news service via the Internet, while CNN commits 30 new video stories a day to the Internet.” Another contributing trend is the emergence of content suitable for audio (and soon video) pods. “The broadcasters are all now producing short segments of news for consumption on cellphones, PEDs and other devices.”

A typical Blast! package, current to 30-60min before take-off, could comprise the top five or six video news stories of the day, one to three minutes in length; two dozen shorter segments; and 18 or 20 text-based headline news stories. “We will also offer sports highlights from the previous 24-48 hours on a daily or multiple-times-daily basis,” says Childers, “along with business news, weather, technology, entertainment, health and style. We expect to offer recaps of episodic TV shows that passengers may have missed the night before, as well as previews of new shows that have not yet premiered.”

The emphasis will be on short segments, made available to passengers via a pick list on a Web-style graphical user interface. “The look, feel and selection of content is based on the needs of busy travellers who want to stay in touch but who may have limitations on their time, even in flight,” says Childers. “We believe that the Blast! format, a supply of short content segments that are timely and manageable, lends itself ideally to the travelling environment.”