I just got back from flying several different airlines throughtout the world. I flew Thai airlines, Asiana, United, Emirates, and Aer Lingus (who lost my luggage coming to the states and still waiting to hear where my two suit cases are.) Judging from my real world experience Matsushita (Panasonic) is the leader and has the foot hold in IFE. The two 777 and I think 320 (large airbus) that I flew had the Matsushita IFE with the embedded system that had a controller that looked like an old Nintento controller with a card reader, video game joy pad on one side and a telephone on the other side. The movies and TV shows were not on demand. I think on demand viewing is one of the biggest assets of the digeplayer. I like the ability to control what I watch when I want to watch it. I spent most of my time playing card games like blackjack and poker for most of the trip. I think inflight gambling has huge potential. This potential needs to be pursued. The rest of the IFE on my other legs was just pre programmed movies and tv shows shown throughout the cabin. I think I would have been happiest with a digeplayer mostly because of the on demand feature. I usually nap on a plane and it makes it difficult to watch an entire movie when I do. Also there is the problem with clueless flight attendants or very busy FA who don`t have any idea on programming. For example flying from Dublin to Chicago on Aer Lingus they started off with a movie then went on to show stupid sitcoms for about 3 hours then decided to show another movie with an hour to go in the flight.

On another note Matsushita/Panasonic has a handheld device too I wasn`t aware of until I went to their website.

http://www.mascorp.com/