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Message: Lumexis Demos 1 Gigabit SystemTo Each Seat!

Lumexis Demos 1 Gigabit SystemTo Each Seat!

posted on Mar 13, 2006 07:24AM
Lumexis Demos 1 Gigabit SystemTo Each Seat!

If you thought wireless IFE was the hot setup last year, wait till you see what is happening with fiber optics, more specifically, the IFE system unveiled this week by Lumexis. The next big thing in IFE will be at the Aircraft Interiors Exposition and Conference in Hamburg, Germany in early April and you can catch a glimpse of the system at their booth (9B23).

What is all the fuss about? How about 1 Gbps (Gigibits!) per seat and an installed weight of less than 3 pounds per seat? The system consists of only two LRUs (server and seat display), connected by a fiber optic network. With final pricing that looks more like portable IFE hardware; Lumexis will surely raise the bar on price and performance! Other reliability and cost savings come from the elimination of the seat electronics box and all those zone and area distribution units! Their eventual 6 MCU server will connect directly to the seat display via a small F.O. cable to a small seat electronics module on the back of the LCD screen.

Doug Cline and Rich Salter are the two IFE gurus who are bringing the hardware to the demonstration phase and have been talking to airlines the last few weeks. We saw the demo in a Seattle hotel room last week and we have pictures from that demo on our website. The seat-to-seat videoconferencing capability was a first and we were amazed how easy Microsofts Net Meeting delivered an onboard conference. Touch screen controls on the seatback unit eliminate the need for any seat arm controls and an RJ45 (Ethernet) connector under the LCD display facilitates the laptop hookup. The bi-directional data communications network (TCP/IP) optically rides on top of the entertainment stream and thus allows separate, interference free connectivity to off-airplane networks or onboard intranets.

Each Lumexis server is capable of 70 separate entertainment streams and when this product comes to market, no doubt, it will bring smiles to vacation travelers and road warriors alike. In fact, we wont be surprised when the latest technology offerings from Boeing and Airbus start to realize the value of these types of IFE products, as interference and RF becomes more problematic in the new low HIRF environments. Also, the need to deliver noise free HDTV will be driven from ground-based standards, and demand and technology will necessitate Lumexis type solutions.

But we do not think the story stops there, with a Lumexis fat pipe on the plane we see many applications that may benefit from the network improvements, like security, like Bizjets (they are itching to get into HDTV and high bandwidth communications). The Lumexis system has legs and we are pleased to introduce our readers to it.

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