We are still covering the press meetings with APEX Show vendors and will do so for the next few weeks to let our readers get a better feel for our discussions there – our goal is the help everybody understand their products and promotions…

Lumexis:
The Lumexis press release said it all best about their announced deal in Portland: Lumexis Corporation today announce that their Fiber-To-The-Screen (FTTS) In-Flight Entertainment system has been selected by Caribbean Airlines for installation on their fleet of B737 aircraft. “We are extremely pleased to welcome Caribbean Airlines as our latest airline customer,” said Jon Norris, Lumexis Vice President Sales. “In addition to continuing the in-service success of the FTTS system, Caribbean Airlines are the launch customer for FTTS Second ScreenTM which enables passengers to use their own tablets and smartphones simultaneously at their seat without interrupting the entertainment running in the FTTS HD monitors.” IFExpress understands that eight of their B737 will be initially involved. In case you don’t know the airline, Caribbean Airlines operates more than 600 weekly flights to 19 destinations in the Caribbean, North and South America and the United Kingdom. The airline’s fleet of 21 is comprised of Boeing 737-800, Boeing 767-300ER and ATR72-600 aircraft. Headquartered in Trinidad and Tobago, and with an operational base in Jamaica, Caribbean Airlines employs more than 1600 people. The airline is a member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Lou Sharkey, President and Chief Operating officer notes, “We are delighted to partner with Caribbean Airlines to bring to their passengers our award winning Inflight Entertainment system”. “Partner” is a good word here and we note, the key concept is to increase customer entertainment choice over their many worldwide routes. We understand the first install will occur in June of 2016.

The folks at Lumexis also stated that they have now developed their 4th generation FTTS system which, we note, features the Android Lollipop Operating System… the first IFE we know that does. This means, as one writer noted, “With Android Lollipop Google is making connectivity a big focus.” Improved connectivity is a big deal with the engineering folks and we see the second screen concept they are so proud of as a real passenger pleaser. However, as they also point out, the majority of airlines want seat back entertainment, but portable IFE is very well accepted as short haul solutions. And speaking of screens, the Lumexis team has developed full HD screens in their IFE offering with multi-touch pinch and zoom. Jon Norris notes that “… we’re talking to over 50 airlines at the moment who are interested in our FTTS line-it offering and considering the product… airlines are solidly considering Lumexis as the fourth IFE option on the B737.”

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APEX has just announced that vendor attendees at the APEX TEC conferences will now be charged a fee to participate. As this changes a long-established tradition of TECs being a benefit of membership, IFExpress asked APEX Technology Committee chair and APEX Board Member Michael Childers to explain the reasons.

IFExpress: After years of offering technology committee meetings as a member benefit, why are you now charging?

Childers: There are several reasons. One is that these meetings have, over time, evolved from simply working meetings of various TC Working Groups, to educational conferences attended by people who are not members of the Working Groups, and who are attending for information and educational benefits.

As attendance has regularly increased due to this kind of attendee, the costs of these activities have also risen. It is difficult to distinguish between today’s TECs and the Educational Meetings that we have around the world, and it seemed reasonable to begin to try to achieve parity between the TECs and the Educational Conferences by charging vendor attendees who come for information which is of value.

IFExpress: Are you saying that membership dues no longer cover the costs of these events?

Childers: They do not. Nor does the combination of membership fees and the sponsorships for the TECs cover all of the expenses. Plus, as a direct expense of providing technology leadership, APEX now employs a part-time Technical Director, Bryan Rusenko, who spends a lot of his time helping to plan and execute TECs.

In addition, APEX has now hired a full-time CEO, Joe Leader, and more of Joe’s time than you might imagine actually goes into industry technology and how that is communicated via the TECs. Financial management is a big part of Joe’s leadership responsibility, and he does not believe in association activities that do not pay for themselves. The Board has agreed to look at everything we do as an association and consider how such activities can pay for themselves.

But Joe also believes in delivering value and he has committed to us that he will leverage his extensive contacts to give us access to even better speakers and panelists at future TECs.  For example, Joe is directly responsible for landing a major technology company for our TEC program next month. (Come see!)

IFExpress: Haven’t a lot of the TC’s activities in the past depended on volunteerism rather than paid staff?

Childers: They have, but technology has become such a large part of our industry that the increase in volunteers doesn’t cover it. In addition, we are facing the fact that IFEC technologies do not exist in a vacuum—we benefit from and are dependent upon open standard technologies that originate elsewhere.

Content management technologies originating in the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) such as the Interoperable Master Format (IMF); Movielabs, such as IMSC1-2 for closed captions; and the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) and its Common Format, are all examples.

But we now have to look beyond just Content Management and consider such questions as how would open data exchange standards impact the passenger experience. APEX cannot create those standards, but we must be sure that we align our own specifications with them and have a seat at the table when they are developed.

IFEpress: What are the registration fees that APEX is seeking for the TECs?

Childers: $350 for vendor members, and $450 for approved non-members. Airlines  and invited press get in free. Speakers, sponsors, and some active Working Group members are free or discounted.

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More News:

• A recent interesting announcement from Panasonic and Teledyne controls is one of the new data related options being put together for airlines but go beyond IFE. “The companies will combine Teledyne’s Wireless GroundLinkComm+ product suite with Panasonic’s Global Communications Service to provide cost effective connectivity during flight or at the gate. This enhanced offering will leverage both Ku-band service and GSM cellular, enabling aircraft operators to break free from the bandwidth limitations and high transmission costs associated with traditional data communications systems. When combined with Panasonic’s Weather Solutions application and Teledyne’s GroundLink AID+ solution, real time weather can be delivered to the flight deck, resulting in enhanced safety and increased flight efficiency. Paul Margis, President and Chief Executive Officer of Panasonic Avionics, said, “With this agreement, Panasonic and Teledyne will create a unique service that uses real-time data transmission to create operational efficiencies and reduced costs for our customers.”
• Think 40GBASE-T puts an end of the “copper twisted-pair party”? Nope, think lower. Here is a quote from the Tektronix folks: “But in November 2014, IEEE 802.3 put out a call for interest on 25GBASE-T, driven by the likes of Cisco, Microsoft and Intel who recognized 25 Gb/s as a more efficient, cost-effective option for switch-to-server speeds in cloud-based data centers. Hence the 25GBASE-T IEEE study group was formed.” You can read more here.
• Don’t forget Aircraft Interior North America Exhibition in Seattle, WA. November 4 & 5. We are going there to see the Schott In-Seat Illumination products that use LED’s and fiber optics… not to mention the Star Ceiling interior paneling. See you there. You can register here
• Be careful on a plane using your iPhone/Android phone and headphones because hackers have been able to use radio waves to control your smartphone via the “antenna” the earphone leads provide… and they can do it up to 16 feet away! Check it out
• If you are into streaming media, this 2 day event in Huntington Beach is for you: The Streaming Media West expo offers attendees a firsthand look at the leading software, hardware, and network solutions and services in the streaming media industry. Streaming Media West 2015 Registration | Online Video Conference and Expo

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Ron Chapman sent IFExpress a message and it said there will be a “GRRRILLA Gala” at NBAA! Stay Tuned, we will be there!

Last time we talked a bit about the aviation future based on recent activity at Farnborough and thus this week we thought it would be interesting to get a personal take on the aircraft interior.

So now, the question is: What can we expect in the future world of IFE, both in hardware and in content? We decided to ask two people who know as much about the future of IFE as anyone in this business, Rich Salter (hardware) and Michael Childers (content) and we chose them because in Rich’s case, the Lumexis Second Screen caught our attention and Michael because he has been on the forefront of movie sales, content development, captioning, consulting and so much more. Here’s what they told IFExpress about aircraft hardware/content future and their own environments:

Rich Salter, Lumexis’ CTO, had this to say: “Though we chose the name “FTTS Second Screen™” it also means “multi-screen” because that’s where the consumer and the technology is heading: to multiple screens in the home, office, and on the road as well. Today’s traveler wants to multitask on his/her larger embedded screen, laptop or tablet, and smartphone. But tomorrow’s generation (i.e., our young kids today) are even more into social networks and communicating (i.e., texting, tweeting, and posting photos) whenever and wherever with their friends and business groups alike – they are already adept at using multiple screens and running the app that runs best on each screen.

For high res movies, an embedded screen with fiber optic interface will always provide more capacity than streaming wireless to handheld PEDs, because no matter how much bandwidth the latest wireless standard provides, there is always another generation of higher resolution video content coming along (i.e., HD, Ultra HD (4K), 8K, etc.) that needs even more bandwidth (i.e., a bigger “pipe”). The fiber network (like the one to many homes today) enables the HD content to all the seats in the plane, and the future technologies for embedded screens will allow them to be thinner, lighter weight, and lower cost, with higher resolution and more touch gesture control and other human interfaces added.

As for passenger-owned devices, there’s going to be many screens brought onboard to compliment the main screen and make up the whole IFE system of the future. For example, “wearable technology” is now really beginning to gain momentum – I would not be surprised to see small flexible video screens begin to show up on the shirtsleeves of passengers just like the Apple iWatch and Google Glass are now creeping into our lives.

Content users are already using multiple screens simultaneously to consume different kinds of content, says Michael Childers, a longtime content management consultant, APEX Board Member, and chair of the APEX Technology Committee. “According to my friends at the Second Screen Society, watching videos on tablets and mobile devices has increased 719 percent since Q4 2011 and 160 percent year-over-year since Q4 2011. 73 percent of TV Everywhere views are on a second screen. 35 percent of first screen time is second-screened, of which 1/3 is with related content. 11 percent of the second screen experience is to interact with the TV, 14 percent involves social media related to the first screen program, and 24 percent is ‘discovery’—seeking additional information about the first screen content.”

During this year’s Academy Awards telecast, U.S. TV network ABC made major advances in second screen by including an enhanced viewing experience in its “Watch ABC” viewing app, said Childers. Users who opened the “Watch ABC” app during the Oscar telecast were given the option of going “Backstage”—sponsored by Samsung Galaxy—to enjoy a number of “companion experiences” that included video clips of the arriving stars, live camera feeds from alternate locations, and different camera feeds of the red carpet.

Oscar host Ellen DeGeneres set a second screen record by tweeting live during the telecast, including the famous selfie centered around Meryl Streep, said Childers.

Of course, live events and sports lend themselves to multiple screens, but what about second screen content in pre-recorded content and IFE? “Second screen has come to the movies,” says Childers. “Last year Dutch director Bobby Boermans incorporated a synchronized second-screen app in the storyline of his movie, appropriately titled App. Moviegoers were asked to download a free app before going to the theater, and were advised to leave their devices on their laps while watching the film. When second screen content was available, members of the audience were by their vibrating phones,” he said. There were 35 moments in the film where second screen content enhanced the viewing experience, but the movie was complete on its own for viewers not interested in carrying their PEDs into the theater.

The app for App utilized embedded watermarks and a digital watermarking technology from Civolution that was developed to prevent illegal downloads, said Childers.

More and more films are being made with second screen content, or just frame-specific metadata that can be used to create a second screen experience, said Childers. “With more and more people bringing smartphones, tablets and notebooks onboard, there are many new opportunities to use these devices to complement and enhance the IFE,” he said. Disney has been very active in second screen linking the movie to the viewer’s device through an audio cue, manual synch, or with a visual sync indicator. Disney released a second screen version of it classic Bambi on its Diamond Edition Blu-ray Disc back in March of 2011.

Devices such as Kindle Fire HD 2nd Generation, Kindle Fire HDX, Amazon Fire TV, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 are all equipped with a second screen window that opens an Amazon Instant Video app, but second screen isn’t just limited to those devices, says Childers.

Among the content enhancements coming to IFE, says Childers, are closed captions for the deaf and dynamic subtitling. “Interestingly a university in Spain developed a closed captioning system for movie theaters that involves downloading an app from Japan that enables smartphones and tablets to display captions that are synched to the image on the movie screen.”

So there you have if from the experts’ mouth, but if you want a good second screen infographic, check here.

Next, we contacted the folks a APEX and asked for a few comments for the “not to be missed” APEX Annual event in California and they told IFExpress the following:

“We can already tell that this is going to be one of our most impressive shows to date. ‘Early Bird’ registration is higher than it’s ever been, and we can feel the excitement growing. We expect more than 3,500 APEX and IFSA members from more than 100 countries – not to mention hundreds of airline representatives eager to see what’s new in the passenger experience.” – Dominic Green, chair of APEX Events & EXPO Committee

“APEX EXPO is different from any other show serving the industry because it’s driven entirely by people working within the passenger experience industry itself. These are individuals who clearly love what they do and that’s demonstrated by the energy and passion exhibited on EXPO floor, and at the educational and networking events.” – Russ Lemieux, APEX executive director

“Our educational sessions are generating a lot of buzz. We’ll hear about the connected journey from IATA, and Cisco will discuss the exciting ‘Internet of Things’ movement that could revolutionize not only the passenger experience but also our everyday lives.” – Lauren Beneri, APEX program director

Be sure to remember that Disneyland is nearby!

The folks at digEcor have a new President of Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Mr. Paul Thorpe. He will call the United Kingdom his home and direct activities from there. His background includes a stint in sales and marketing n the business aviation world, and management roles in aviation and IFE. His last posting was with Rockwell as Sales Director of Northern Europe. Welcome aboard Paul!

And lastly, Gogo announced recently that it has received regulatory approval to provide Ku-band satellite connectivity service for aircraft flying over the eastern and western regions of Russia. This approval is granted based on Gogo’s agreements with AltegroSky and RuSat to provide Ku-band satellite service.

Situation – Email between IFEXpress and Lumexis’s Rich Salter:

IFExpress: We just read about something called “Second Screen” and we understand it is a Lumexis development? What’s the story?

Rich Salter: We had a big coming out for it at AIX, and will feature it at APEX too… In fact it is a 2013 Finalists for the Passenger Choice Awards at APEX this year.

IFExpress: I guess we just missed it….

In an effort to catch up on Lumexis’s Second Screen (™) concept, we contacted Rich Salter and asked about the product, but first, a few words about what it is. The concept is so simple, you are probably using a similar concept at home while watching TV or reading this email. Sitting in front of almost any work or household screen (TV, computer, whatever) you probably have another connectivity device for checking mail, tweets, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. In other words you are multitasking, because you can. The beauty of the Lumexis Second Screen feature is easy to see. Along with using the installed IFE system like you normally would, a flier could be using an iPhone (or tablet, etc) checking weather, flight progress, just as if they were on the ground. We conjecture that what really happens when a flier screen multitasks during a flight, they pay less attention to the flight itself and a lot more attention to what they are watching on the IFE or doing on their PED’s because there is simply more going on while doing so. Gone are those ‘I wonder when this trip will be over’ moments. We like this idea a lot and it should be quite a boon to fliers… if the airline has a second screen feature installed.

Interestingly, there are two types of Second Screen content solutions proposed according to Lumexis – one is a display of traditional IFE content from the embedded IFE system, sent over wireless, to the passenger device, the other is new Second Screen content for passenger devices that is being developed for the at-home market. A combination of this one-two punch is what makes the second solution so effective. Below are some are some further Lumexis Second Screen content/operational possibilities that go beyond the two aforementioned information/entertainment categories:

• Remote control of the main screen

• Moving maps

• Food & drink menu/ordering

• Duty Free offerings/ordering

• 30+ Lumexis games

• Passenger surveys

• eBooks

• Five day weather forecast for airline destinations

• Daily news

• Daily comics

• In-seat yoga and meditation

• Airline informational webpages

• Advertising (changing daily)

• Custom downloadable apps

We understand that the offering can include information about movie scenes showing, Tweets from other passengers about the shown movie, and even advertising of products shown on the IFE movies. The beauty of the Lumexis solution is that it keeps content on the main screen at the same time, offering PEDs more on their second screen. Further, by not streaming movie videos to the PED, Lumexis Second Screen preserves precious PED power. Further, we suspect that the Wi-Fi WAP’s may be able to serve more passengers with lower data bandwidth requirements under the Second Screen no streaming situation. Lastly, the the passenger does not need to download a plug-in or app, their solution is browser based, it runs on html – nice!

Jon Norris, Lumexis VP Sales, told IFExpress, “We are very excited about this new development and we have not seen other IFE vendors offer such a feature and we will be gauging the feedback at the APEX event for airline interest.”

Be sure to check out second screen applications at APEX as we expect more to come.