Friday, 18 November , 2005, 09:37

Bangalore: The DSP(digital signal processing) IP licensing company, Ittiam, which has designed i-Pod-like portable media players for OEM customers, is now developing digital on-demand inflight entertainment (IFE) systems for a new generation of aircraft. Today in Sify Finance

Peter Drucker

Says Srini Rajam, CEO, ``On long haul flights, many carriers are looking to provide `on-demand` inflight entertainment, where songs, movies, sports, video clips and games are streamed from servers to suit each customer`s requirements. The content could be from a variety of sources and Ittiam has seen demand for such systems from a couple of companies looking to overhaul the analog IFE systems on their aircraft and differentiate the services that can be offered``. Ittiam has also licensed its portable media player to more than 20 OEM Asian and American customers, says Rajam, adding the PMP reference design has features from which customers canchoose a combination that suits their requirements.

The company is also working on developing video over Internet Protocol, which uses 802.11n, a future standard that will allow greater security and multiplicity of video channels to be handled. This is suited in home use for personal video communication, since the medium permits CD-quality pictures and is also applicable in corporate video conferencing situations across an organisation`s locations, even from a desktop.

802.11n is capable of handling up to 400 MBPS of data, which lets multiple video applications and channels. Ittiam is working with a Korean customer to deliver video over WLAN though the technology is still in the patent stage, Rajam said. | Read more Finance news. |

DSP IP is a multi-billion dollar industry and the royalty/licensing stream is picking up, he added. Royalties account for 5 per cent of Ittiam`s revenues, but the share is expected to go up to a third of revenues by 2008 - the scaling is in sync with the royalty model for revenues as customers scale into mass production with successful products.

The company is working with Microsoft on the concept of a portable media centre. Apart from American and Asian customers, Ittiam is seeing traction in `the key market of Israel