RAVE ULTRA is the Third Generation RAVE System

During AIX we sat down with Zii and discussed RAVE and the next evolution of their full-up AVOD product dubbed ULTRA. Below is the fruit of that interview and several telecons since then! While at their booth, we were shown (and amazed) at the size, and we mean thinness, of the screen. You can see it in the accompanying image at the beginning of the story – iPhone thickness is not out of the question as one can see. The point here is the display, its accompanying storage, control and communication hardware electronics will not create seatback installation issues!

Next, let’s ask ourselves what problems airlines are facing today when it comes to their IFE and the burgeoning passenger expectations? On the passenger side, they want large quantities of (up to 4K) quality, varied entertainment. The airlines want to be able to provide content without a cumbersome system architecture that is laden with a multitude of boxes (which do not facilitate an easy and affordable upgrade path) that will not involve expensive certification and software development. Since the inception of RAVE by Zii, they have been dedicated to solving this problem as part of their design objectives. In fact, RAVE is an acronym that stands for: Reliable – inherently simple in its design; Affordable – committed to making IFE affordable for every airline; Very – modular, scalable, versatile; and Easy – to install, operate and maintain. In other words, RAVE!

RAVE ULTRA is Seat-Centric, not Server-Centric

Their third-generation, brand new smart system and display line, RAVE ULTRA, continues Zii’s commitment to Seat-Centric IFE and their dedication to everything RAVE has stood for from its inception. In fact, Seat-Centric, according to Zii, is the key to their dedication to ‘stress free IFE’ for their airline customers and is the third generation of that design. You may ask: Seat-Centric? How does that differ from a Server-Centric system? When Zii, formerly IMS, first addressed the issue of providing IFE to airlines they approached the problem from a different perspective than most traditional IFE hardware solutions – they elected to design a seat-centric solution, as opposed to a server-centric solution. A traditional IFE system has a head-end (consisting of several file and media servers) and multiple distribution boxes between it and the passenger display unit. “The larger (HD/UHD quality and increased quantity) content demands and logistics problems that the IFE industry is facing are amplified in the IFE Server Centric Systems, but not so with a Seat-Centric System,” said Harry Gray Zii’s Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “Seat-Centric IFE provides an elegant answer to onboard entertainment that is enhanced by its simplicity: A System Control Unit in the electronics bay connected via a Gigabit Ethernet backbone to each Smart Display at each seat – that’s it.” The bi-directional loop system architecture provides network stability and redundancy, so if there is a network break on one side of the data connection, the data communication is automatically routed through the other.  Additionally, since the entertainment content is stored at the seat, even if there was a total network failure, the passenger would have full access to all the content stored locally on the display.

RAVE ULTRA Delivers More for Passengers Because of the Cloud

In addition to locally stored content at the seat, the SCU also stores additional entertainment content enhancing the overall capacity of titles offered to the passenger.  RAVE cloud is flying today and Zii is further enhancing cloud capabilities by utilizing content file sharing between the seats thus multiplying the content capacity available to each passenger.  Because of the Cloud-based data gain, 10 Terabytes of capacity is dynamically available for content making it, perhaps, the IFE system with more data for each passenger than any system today. More data means more content and that means more happy users – it’s that simple!  It’s important to note that the content file is “transferred” (not “streamed”) to the passenger so there are no inherent network latency issues as compared to server-centric systems when streaming simultaneously to 300 passengers.   With the combination of locally stored and cloud content – passengers can enjoy HD/UHD entertainment and the airlines can more easily manage content loading without the long ground time.

RAVE System Features Two Main Boxes – SCU and Seat Display 

From a network and hardware perspective, operation via the use of Linux fast hardware is aided by Android developed apps that can be installed and played on each seat system and viewed on the RAVE ULTRA display. Content loading is fast, perhaps the fastest within the industry, via the SD card load-and-go process. Further, the SCU has 4 SD slots, so all it takes is replacing the SD cards with fresh content and the new content is loaded during normal operating times.  Content loading is accomplished in a matter of seconds (not hours).

However, the step change in the third-generation product is in the ULTRA Display itself. The smart display is virtually all viewable screen and is roughly 0.3” thick, resulting in a product that weighs a third of the current generation inflight displays. It is ruggedized with a poly carbonate lens cover and resides in a docking station inserted into the seat – it is not a portable and does not have an internal battery. ULTRA utilizes In-Cell touchscreen capability that supports multi-touch gestures, similar to smartphone devices today making it intuitive for most airline customers. Initially, there are four seatback display sizes – 27”, 17.3”, 15.6”, and 13.3”.

Integrated Bluetooth Audio is another feature built-in to RAVE ULTRA that supports wireless Bluetooth headsets at each aircraft seat; as well as, an integrated camera (another feature) that facilitates QR code scanning and payment options. Oh, and USB-A and a USB-C port all also feature options available.

RAVE Supports H.265 HVEC Compression Standards

The dockable display unit has a Solid State Drive with up to 1 TB of local content and its own IP address that provides passengers with access to 10 TBs of available content via the internal cloud. Further, the display itself is 4K and supports H.265 HEVC to facilitate the latest compression standards. “Seat content sharing is the next generation of IFE and it is being accomplished through cloud sharing,” said Harry Gray. Cloud content can be stored either in the SCU(s) or at another seat display. This provides passengers with access not only to their locally stored data but the benefit of a substantial amount of cloud-based storage. The evolution to this cloud-centric system for content truly allows Zii to keep RAVE content current with the latest storage and content demands. Check out the table below to see both where and how much content storage and access is available in the new RAVE ULTRA based on: Local data storage in memory, Cloud-based memory storage using the SCU, and finally with display memory plus the SCU memory and plus the neighboring seat data storage!

When a passenger requests content that is not resident in their seat display, there is a slight delay of not more than 3 seconds prior to viewing the content.  While the passenger is watching the movie the rest of the content is rapidly transferred (in typically less than 36 seconds) to their seatback and locally stored for the duration of that viewing. This floating cloud data solution is what makes RAVE a real winner for stored data entertainment that passengers will want, and while they may stay involved and engrossed with the airline entertainment solution, everybody wins!

RAVE ULTRA is THE Airline 4K Viewing Solution

The size of the display, the compression method and the number of languages all influence the amount of storage required for any given piece of content. High Efficiency Video Coding (H.265) is the video compression method used by RAVE. The following graph explains the amount of storage required on the RAVE system by a 2-hour feature length movie with 4 stereo language tracks:

RAVE ULTRA will be in BOSTON

RAVE ULTRA is in its finalizing phase and has garnered two committed customers.  It is in the midst of meeting head-strike requirements and in the certification process with a target of launch in 2019. “ULTRA is a revolution in product capability,” said Harry “And Zii is excited to continue facilitating airlines in enhancing their passengers entertainment experience.” The IFExpress team is looking forward to watching this product come to market and look for the next installation on the progress of ULTRA and Zii after APEX in Boston!

Consistent with RAVE philosophy, the ULTRA displays are backward compatible with the current generation of RAVE.  Airlines can mix and match displays on the common RAVE backbone.

---

OTHER NEWS

• TURKISH AIRLINES has introduced a wireless IFE system developed by Turkish engineers in cooperation with Turkish Technic and Havelsan; the system will be initially applied on 44 narrow-bodies, which have no seatback screen, via personal electronic devices.
• This note is only for those loving mathematical solutions and understanding the functionality of ECC (elliptic curve cryptography), but it  also really explains their value in security technology! A (relatively easy to understand) primer on elliptic curve cryptography | Ars Technica and (Very) Basic Elliptic Curve Cryptography – Good Audience

• Zodiac Inflight Innovation (Zii) is becoming a force in the world of IFEC 45 airline customers, over 550 aircraft in service, and over 650 aircraft in committed backlog

Singapore | October 24, 2016– Zodiac Inflight Innovations (Zii – a Zodiac Aerospace company) has in the past six months secured well over 200 new RAVE AVOD IFE systems to equip commercial aircraft, four new A350 customers, 150 committed B737Max aircraft, their first A380 customer as well as over 200 Global Express Connectivity equipped aircraft committed with the first installation scheduled early in 2017.

Zodiac Inflight Innovations is quietly becoming a force in the world of IFEC. Zii first hit the IFE scene with their revolutionary new Seat Centric IFE system in 2011 and just five years later they are growing with over 45 airline customers, over 550 aircraft in service, and over 650 aircraft in committed backlog.

Zii has added to their basic AVOD system (“RAVE Centric”) a wireless IFE system (RAVE Wireless) and a line fit Ka-band connectivity system (RAVE Broadband) that is available on all Airbus platforms including the A350 XWB and A380. Today, Zii is able to offer airlines a complete IFEC solution complete with all of the advanced features including 2nd screen applications and a truly personalized experience for passengers. Zii is line fit on the Airbus A320, A330, A380 and A350 and is working to become line fit on Boeing aircraft and is adding standard seat pairings with all of the major seat suppliers.

“We like to think of ourselves as different and disruptive” says Larry Girard, Executive Vice President for Zodiac Inflight Innovations. “We are disruptive by design; our seat centric architecture has fewer LRU’s, it’s simple to operate and maintain with unprecedented availability and no dark flights – ever. Coupled with a common software platform and standard parts, we are commercially disruptive as well.”

Zii has this year added an aftermarket support package to round out their portfolio of products. With RAVE Care, an airline can tailor a support package to its specific needs for a fixed price per month per aircraft. RAVE Care can include everything that an airline needs to maintain and operate their IFE systems, including spares, repairs, customer abuse and even content integration. Included in RAVE Care is a software guarantee that means airlines never have to worry about the cost of updating their Passenger User Interface and features over the lifetime of the system.

“Our RAVE systems are much easier to maintain than traditional IFE systems which allows airlines to maintain their own aircraft without the added expense of paying a traditional IFE provider for support” says Matt Smith, CEO for Zodiac Inflight Innovations. “Zii is a company that is different by design; our focus is always on putting our customers first. We want to be a company that Airlines want to work with; customer focused and innovation driven, we relentlessly pursue our core value of RAVE – Reliable, Affordable and Very Easy. It’s more than a name, it’s who we are.”

And their operational performance seems to bear this out. Zii’s on-time delivery and repair turnaround time performance is over 99%. The RAVE system reliability is over 99.5% and we are told that commercially RAVE is the most affordable system on the market today

• World leading airline chooses RAVE for retrofit

AIX Hamburg, Germany | April 5, 2016– Zodiac Aerospace has announced at the Aircraft Interiors Expo that Air France has selected Zodiac Inflight Innovations to install its ground-breaking inflight entertainment solution as well as Zodiac Seat France seat for all classes. Air France has selected RAVE(TM) Centric IFE and Zodiac Seats for the upcoming retrofit of their Airbus A330 fleet – 15 aircraft in total.

“The world’s leading airlines are selecting Zodiac Inflight Innovations solutions, which shows how much momentum we now have,” said Larry Girard, Executive Vice President at Zodiac Inflight Innovations. “Airlines love RAVE™ Centric IFE because it is reliable, with a significant cost savings over traditional and is highly easy to maintain. RAVE Centric is very easy both to install and for the cabin crew and passengers alike to use.”

The RAVE™ Centric IFE interface mirrors the usability everyone is used to on their smartphones and tablets, from capacitive touch, high resolution screens to app-based functionality. Content includes on-demand movies, TV shows, music, radio and a moving map just to name a few. It includes an integrated USB charger, so there is no need to fear dead phones as well as traditional “PC Power” for passengers to be able to charge their laptops. On top of that, passengers’ personal electronic devices can be paired with the seat-back screen, so passengers can use their PEDs for interaction with the seatback display.

“RAVE™ Centric is an embedded modular inflight entertainment system”, continued Girard. “It provides airlines with a wide range of choices for different cabins including screen size, passenger control units and we are constantly staying on top if not ahead of the latest trends. Uniquely, each seat is independent, so a failure – and they are very rare – in one seat will not impact another. More importantly, our dockable seat display means the crew can quickly replace the seat display during the flight.”

Mr. Pierre-Olivier Kerbec from Air France stated, “Air France has watched RAVE and Zodiac Inflight Innovations grow over these past years and have noticed RAVE has caught up with its competition. RAVE Centric provides all of the expected features that a premium carrier expects from an IFE system and is backed by the creative and responsive team at Zodiac Inflight Innovations. We can hardly wait to experience RAVE on our A330s.”

Zodiac Inflight Innovations

Perhaps the biggest Zodiac (Zii) news we discussed was the announcement in June of the Zodiac selection by Airbus for high bandwidth connectivity and they note that Zii was chosen as a Buyer Furnished Equipment (BFE) for the Airbus High Bandwidth Connectivity (HBC) solution. Zodiac Inflight Innovations is supplying aircraft equipment, and other terminal hardware. As Lead supplier, Zodiac Inflight Innovations will manage the integration of the system and facilitate the Inmarsat Global Xpress service directly. The current scope of the HBC program covers the Ka-band system for A320 single aisle family, the A330 long range family and the A380 aircraft. Larry Girard, Executive Vice President at Zodiac Inflight Innovations states: “The end result will be that airlines will be able to have different HBC options on multiple aircraft types, while providing a consistent service to both passengers and the airlines day-to-day operations. As the Lead supplier, Zodiac Inflight Innovations’ role is bringing together all the components for the High Bandwidth Connectivity program, including our own, and matching them to the Airbus process.” Zodiac Inflight Innovations is providing an ARINC-791 compliant radome, adapter plate, skirt seal, antenna, as well as other terminal hardware. The radome and adapter plate have been designed to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate other Ka-band antennas, minimizing the work required for future HBC systems. This makes Zii the only IFE connectivity vendor across the current Airbus aircraft platforms – that’s a big deal! Twenty five airlines around the world with over 200 aircraft in service are already using Zii Inflight Entertainment which includes their RAVE Centric AVOD system and their latest RAVE Wireless streaming entertainment system (system diagram). Today, some 250 people work in Brea, CA (Zii’s home) and we expect to see more sale troops in the near future. Success at Airbus include line-fit on A350, A330, & A320 families. Further, we expect some events with Boeing soon. On the retrofit side, Zii told us that they have a ‘variety of suppliers’ to provide turn-key installations from hardware to certification, including long term support.
From a hardware perspective, Zii has a new supply of screens available that include 10.1”, 11.6”, 13.3”, and a stunning 18.5” screen. We note that the last three are 1080p devices! And yes, all are dockable units. We also note that they are not streaming to each seat – there is a 1.5 TB storage in the seatback electronics so content is downloaded prior to display and we note the quality is beautiful. As Harry Gray, VP Sales & Marketing, noted: “Storage in the STU cloud and at the seat delivers stunning and reliable inseat display images.” We agree.

SITA OnAir

SITA OnAir demonstrated how the passenger experience is being transformed by their e-Aircraft concept. They discussed the key developments based on the advent of the global high through-put satellite link, GX Aviation. In fact, they showed how the increased connectivity affected 6 key ‘audiences’ (aircraft included) for the improved data rates: 1) Passengers benefit from a richer, more interactive infotainment experience. At the Expo they launched their latest inflight portal for passengers, 2) Cabin Crew can now personalize passenger interaction with real-time information available at their fingertips. Also, they demonstrated their latest CrewTablet developments, 3) Cockpit Crew can also deliver a safer, more comfortable journey to passengers thanks to live weather updates sent directly to EFBs, 4) Flight Operations can enhance passenger safety by tracking aircraft wherever they are in the world using AIRCOM FlightTracker – and a number of airlines have already signed up, 5) Aircraft transmits maintenance requirement data, ensuring teams are waiting at the gate to keep turnaround time to a minimum, 6) And finally, Air Traffic Control enhances both safety and efficiency by streamlining communications between pilots and air traffic managers. SITA likes to call these ‘nose-to-tail’ solutions and they told IFExpress that there is an airline evaluating all these functions in real time today. One of the SITA OnAir prophets is Francois Rodriguez, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer and he told IFExpress: “It is all real and being deployed and we are working with airlines to enable them all with nose-to-tail solutions.” If you are curious about the joining of the two companies and their resultant efforts, their website sheds a bit more information on their combined strategy: “On January 1 2015 , SITA and OnAir formed SITA OnAir as part of the SITA Group, to help airlines realize the full potential of the connected aircraft. The core of the new business organization is SITA’s proven knowledge of airline communications and IT, and OnAir’s expertise in supplying in-flight connectivity. By bringing  together  SITA’s and OnAir’s industry leadership and expertise;  in ground and inflight connectivity, cockpit data services and air traffic management solutions, aircraft communications and infrastructure solutions, as well as application development for both passengers and crew, SITA OnAir sets the benchmark for true nose-to-tail solutions. SITA OnAir provides the complete range of products and services an airline needs to realize the full potential of the connected aircraft regardless of fleet size, route structure or aircraft type.” And lastly, SITA OnAir demonstrated a passenger App that interacts with passengers during their entire flight, As an example, they use beacon technology to connect with the passenger on the ground and continues via a hand-off with them in the air. You can find out more about SITA OnAir here and check out their e-aircraft portfolio. Stay Tuned.

Jetpack

One of the more interesting small companies that we discovered last year at AIX, was Jetpack from England. They were at APEX this year and while we noted their independent programming collections, they abound in a lot of technology and gadgets that they have developed for airlines. While we don’t know how successful they have been, their Director of Technology, Ed Pleydell-Bouverie was one of the most interesting fellows at the show. He told IFExpress: “We have developed iBeacons, a Portable App Distributer that uses Raspberry Pi computer, augmented reality glasses, and a lot of ‘specialty devices’ for airlines.“ Perhaps his best comment that summed up their charter was, “We do oddball stuff.” Yes you do, Ed, yes you do!

BAE Systems

The anti-hacking surprise award at APEX goes to BAE Systems and if you have never talked to Dave Kingston about the subject – do so! We met Dave last year when we talked about their power supplies for inseat applications. As head of Business Development, he had our complete attention and for the first time, we heard a lot about anti hacking on commercial aircraft via the connectivity systems. We got the crypto discussions when they mentioned their content encrypted entertainment programming. The IntelliCabin devices can download encryption Apps that allow their DRM players to send out first encrypted entertainment without worry of copying or data intervention. It seems that they had to prove to the studios that the player Apps do not corrupt, omit, or scramble transmitted movie frames; as a result, some of the major Hollywood movie houses have approved their solution. This is a big deal. Dave told us that they have been working the issue for 18 months, and focusing on a solution for the last six. The reason BAE Systems can do what they do is buried in their $26 B military business that dwells in cybersecurity, military contracts and technology in general. They consulted on the security problem with movie content, accessed their practices and evaluated their network security. In fact, the tech folks there simulated attacks and looked across the whole air and ground IFE and content systems. Dave told us that currently IntelliCabin is not on a connected aircraft, but from a total security point of view, they will have to simulate more attack scenarios that include passenger attempts to load malware on devices that talk to the streaming source of content in the air and ground via their PEDs. This is big stuff and BAE Systems is a leader now in this technology. Obviously, this will make their products more marketable, especially in the near future when these critical and non-critical domains are attacked. Dave summed it up perfectly: “Our Wi-Fi is now the equal of an embedded system.” Their App software knows what device it is running on, it adjusts to that device, the user interface adapts to the device (This is a very nice function), and the system constantly adapts to the streaming content, including the adjustment of the device controls. As far as we know, no one else does this ‘cloud adaptation’ of content streaming. BAE Systems has come a long way and their focus on security will pay off, especially when the studios get a look at their solutions.

---

Involved with security in your company? You might want to read this.

---

If you are an engineer, or you like science and engineering, you must go see ‘The Martian’, you wont Be disappointed. Sir Ridley Scott is a genius.

---

Lastly, Ron Chapman noted recently that future inflight connectivity users might have a frequent ‘FFLYA’ in their future. Oh, look it up!