Content, content, content!

Michael Childers
Managing director, content and media development group, IMS
Chairman, WAEA Digital Content Management Working Group

REGARDLESS of whether the platform is a 4.3in handheld rented in economy class or a 10.6in portable designed to slide into the seatback in a premium-class cabin, using in-seat power and looking very much like an embedded IFE system, the driver in IFE is content, content, content.

And despite a proliferation of new kinds of content enjoyed by consumers on new kinds of delivery platform, from high-definition media centres to user-created content on the Internet, in IFE on flights of more than two to three hours it is blockbuster movies that currently have primacy over all other kinds of content.

With this essential fact clearly in mind, IMS began its entry into handheld IFE by developing working relationships with major content providers. Their involvement at the development stage would assure continuing early-window content support as the devices entered the market and evolved into second and third-generation products.

Qualifying for early-window content support
IMS entered the handheld market with early-window content support from every major studio - a unique achievement, because qualifying for early-window support in IFE is not easy.

The average production budget for a Hollywood movie in 2006 was around $60 million, while its theatrical release cost another $36 million in prints, advertising and promotion. Typical IFE revenues are, on average, less than one per cent of that number. No content provider is going to risk a hundred-million-dollar investment for a one per cent return, so security against piracy and misuse is the highest priority.

Content security begins with encrypting the file before it leaves post-production and then never permitting it to reside in the clear anywhere in the delivery process. It means a secure supply chain, a secure device with no possibility of unauthorised access to the content stored inside, and digital rights management (DRM). And for those who believe that content security ends in Microsoft DRM: think again, it only starts there.

IMS contracted Microsoft Studios to assist in the development of IMS’ security and DRM. IMS engineers and Microsoft security and cryptology experts worked together to create a topology rooted in Microsoft DRM but enhanced to accommodate the unique conditions of IFE and meet the requirements of all the major studios.

Encoding
After security, the content provider needs to know that his content will look good on the handheld device. The quality of the display is a function of the compatibility between the encoding profile and the properties of the handheld device - the native screen resolution, the processor, the firmware.

An uncompressed digitised movie requires a lot of bits: one hour of film equals 4 terabytes – 4,000 gigabytes - of data. Every year Hollywood creates the equivalent of 3.5 petabytes – 3,500 terabytes. A two-hour movie showing at 24 frames per second (fps) at the cinema resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels equals 1.5 billion bits per second. Using a 30:1 compression ratio, the remaining data still requires a rate of 35-45Mbit/sec, leaving room for only about two movies on a typical portable.

Far more compression and a much lower data rate are therefore needed to allow portable players to hold a worthwhile selection of content. WAEA’s original 0395 digital delivery specification prescribes data rates of 3.5Mbit/sec in MPEG-2 format and 1.5Mbit/sec in MPEG-1, while its new 0403 specification sees the VC-1 and MPEG-4 codecs operating at rates around 1.0Mbit/sec as the future of IFE.

The basic codec and data rate are only the beginning, however. The handheld provider must make the playback device and the encoded content file work together to optimise system performance and provide a bright, sharp picture that plays smoothly, performs responsively and doesn’t overtax the battery.

IMS combines years of software engineering experience, working on many of the major IFE hardware systems, with a long history of content and data management. This expertise underpins its strategy of repurposing consumer off-the-shelf (COTS) devices to obtain the economies of scale associated with mass-market production runs instead of purpose-building proprietary platforms that consume significant amounts of R&D investment.

Content infrastructure design
Qualifying for and gaining access to early-window content is a necessary step towards building a successful content offering, but it’s not the only one. Also needed are a thorough working knowledge of content and media and their associated distribution processes. How many new movies do major studios release every month? How does scheduling around theatrical seasons impact IFE availability? Who are the money stars? Which genres work best? Which content providers are the most prolific? What is the best mix of new releases to classics and perennial favorites? How should genres be balanced? Which stars work best in which territories?

Answering these questions is often a matter of the media manager’s experience and good judgement. But some decisions must be based on facts – what passengers actually do when confronted by a choice of material. So IMS created a software program called CabinTrends to capture on the hard disc of every handheld device exactly what is on the screen at any time and for how long. At the end of every flight this passenger usage data can be offloaded to a secure Website for analysis.

The results from this analysis can be used in conjunction with the programmers’ knowledge to improve content selections and tailor them to the airline, route structure and even cabin class.

Components of the supply chain
The content-delivery supply chain involves four general functions:
• Content acquisition and licensing
• Encoding and integration
• Digital rights management (DRM), encryption and key management
• Logistics

One thing a handheld provider needs to decide is which of these components to offer in conjunction with the hardware, and which to leave to others. In the handheld sector the various providers’ business models range from the provision of hardware only, to the provision of all of the components except logistics as a turnkey service, to various combinations in between.

As a content and data management company with experience in supply-chain automation and integration, IMS elected to bundle content acquisition and licensing, encoding and integration, and DRM, encryption and key management into an end-to-end turnkey solution. The company believes these functions are interdependent, so that performing them as an integrated package increases supply-chain efficiency and content security. Dividing these functions, on the other hand, tends to increase costs and diminish content security.

Airlines sometimes assume that they will save money by licensing content for portables and embedded systems in parallel, but this is not the case. As the handheld market has matured, so have its content pricing models. Licence fees for handheld devices take no account of service provider: no single provider has any pricing advantage over any other, regardless of whether the licence applies to handhelds only, embedded platforms only, or both.

Economy is one of the key principles underlying an efficient and secure supply chain: the fewer parties there are, and the fewer copies there are of any piece of content, the better. However, from time to time an airline may have a reason for wanting to involve its content service provider (CSP) in the supply chain. When that is the case, it is IMS’ policy to work with the airline to integrate the CSP in an appropriate way.

The broader content set
While early-window movies remain the staple of IFE, a compelling content set needs to include other things. Perennial favorites and classic movies should complement the blockbusters, while popular television content like sitcoms and process dramas complement the movies, and high-quality documentary and lifestyle content complements them both.

IMS has established content relationships with, among others, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, Learning Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Kids, BBC World, History Channel, Biography Channel and A&E, as well the providers of sitcoms like The Office (both the British and North American versions), Friends, Spin City and Two and a Half Men, and process dramas like Without a Trace, CSI, Law and Order and Boomtown.

Consideration of passenger demographics is important when, for example, deciding whether to include special content for children from the Disney library. Destination-specific content is in demand, and airlines also look for content in the local language, with many airlines requiring multiple languages to appeal to a diverse passenger base. Handheld platforms must meet the same requirements as embedded systems in this respect.

IMS offers content in French, Italian, Portuguese, Latin Spanish, German and other dubbed languages in multiple tiers, as well as Japanese, Chinese and other subtitles. The company uses separate text files for subtitles, giving passengers a choice of seeing or not seeing the subtitles without having to board two complete video versions of the file - something current embedded systems do not do.

The typical content set also includes dozens of audio CDs, music videos, interactive games, and sometimes audiobooks and Flash graphics.

Content sets for handhelds vary across a wide spectrum between two extremes. On the one hand there is the fixed set that is uniform across all airlines. While this approach has the advantage of driving down fixed costs by spreading them over more users, it will inevitably tend to ignore the specialised requirements of a specific audience. At the other extreme is a completely customised content set that may be perfect for a single operator but which requires it to bear all the fixed costs.

Balancing the content set to ensure sufficient customisation for passenger satisfaction while using enough common content in order to contain costs is the approach advocated by IMS and favoured by most airlines.

Refreshing content daily
The ability to provide time-sensitive content is of increasing importance. This means not only daily news but also content that is “currently relevant” to what is going on in the world. The old paradigm - determined largely by the logistics of the supply chain - of refreshing content on a calendar-monthly basis is now giving way to a cycle that reflects IMS’ ability to access the aircraft every day.

IMS believes that the content set of the future will contain daily news and information, weekly news and information, and content that is time-sensitive in a variety of ways. Arbitrary refresh cycles will give way to demand cycles supported by new ways of delivering content to the aircraft, and by metrics software that measures what content is being viewed the most. And some of this content, such as the news, will be available in both linear broadcast and on-demand formats.

The supply chain for IMS’ Blast! Web Services-based daily and multiple-times-daily news service differs significantly from conventional arrangements based on physical delivery. Blast! pushes dozens of video news stories and over a hundred text news stories to the airport four times daily, and more frequently when there is breaking news. Supplied by major wire services like Reuters, AP and Agence France Presse, these on-demand stories cover world and national news, sport, business, lifestyle and entertainment topics.

One of the tiers of Blast! is a service called SkyStand - electronic delivery of dozens of newspapers around the world in electronic text and audio formats.

Blast! is delivered to the airport, and even the aircraft itself, via a virtual private network (VPN). This Web Services-based content delivery network does not require expensive satellite transmission or large volumes of tape duplication.

While high-quality hardware, successfully repurposed for the airline cabin environment, is essential, successful IFE provision also depends on compelling content, which in turn demands strong management skills and sound relationships with content providers.