Becacause of competition We need EDIG to introduce the embedded system sooner than later

For sometime now IFExpress has predicted the second fiber optic IFE coming. Sure enough, at the AIX in Hamburg last week, Sicma Aero Seat unveiled their F.O. product. Sicma has been quietly working for the past three years on this hot development, the design of which is probably initially intended for Airbus applications. Working in stealth mode, Sicma evolved this hybrid offering as a result of seat integration challenges.

The Sicma system has four basic building blocks: 1) A 1 GB/sec fiber backbone, 2) a Seat Interface Box (shown in the picture) that taps the fiber optic network and supplies a 1 MB per second copper Ethernet signal to the display (combined with power), 3) The Seat Power Box (not shown above) supplies display power via the SIB, 4) A Smart Display Unit. The display unit is very much like a handheld or portable IFE system; however, it is embedded in the seat and we were advised it is a first generation unit manufactured in France. The unit contains a 200 GB hard drive that provides 160 hours of movies, 400 hours of MP3 music, 50 hours of short subject material with 30% capacity remaining. Presently, we understand that the system/seat has passed 16G testing and exceeds DO160C compliance. Weighing at 2.6 kilos per seat, the system is roughly half the weight of a standard IFE offering. The fiber optic network serves to provide a broadcast update of programming and real time content delivery to the seat display units – there is no head end server to speak of, but rather, the network acts as a method to update the content at each seat.

It is our guess that the Sicma product is designed to fulfill an Airbus desire to have a third offerable IFE vendor. By essentially taking a portable-like display and embedding it with a fiber optic network Sicma has developed a low to mid level IFE offering for Airbus. For more information contact Loic Bouet, Product