25 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILE Managing Content
are really flying a lot, it’s annoying to always have to pick your favourite movies or research the ratings of these films, or remember what you saw from the catalogue on the last flight, but didn’t get a chance to watch. This is not yet fully in the passenger’s hands.” LIVE TO AIR An aircraft’s on-board server also allows for the possibility of live TV, which is becoming popular in on-board entertainment. In the past, same-day TV packages have been available for passenger viewing, but live (or with nominal latency) TV broadcasts are becoming commonplace with streaming services. “For live TV, you do have the possibility of having an antenna on your aircraft and then streaming directly form satellite. But what we do is live TV over IP, so we get the IP signal and ingest and process it in the cloud on the ground and then stream it in an adaptive rate to the aircraft. A component in between, called smart traffic management, allows you to control how much bandwidth you would like to use for the live TV. Or control which channels you prioritise in case the bandwidth is not enough,” explains Schuster. “Also, you could have different quality levels for the different channels available and, depending on what is being watched on-board, send a lower or higher quality to the aircraft. The bandwidth is still an issue, of course. It’s limited and also expensive. The operator would like to limit these costs, so you need some control of that in between.” There are other tools that need to be in place to get optimum live TV streaming on- board an aircraft. “You need to have a mechanism in place that ensures quality on the passenger
MAKING THESE ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEMS PERSONALISED AND SEAMLESS IS NEXT, MOVING IT CLOSER TO YOUR HOME EXPERIENCE
side. What we do, for example, is have a software piece on the server that puts together the manifest again and makes sure that the player doesn’t crash. Because if the player doesn’t receive a stream due to some piece getting lost during the connection, then the player might crash. So, on the aircraft side, you need to make sure that you provide proper streaming to the player. You need to manipulate it, so it’s working at a better quality than you would expect it.” FRIENDLY SKIES The passenger accessing content on- board a flight is not interested in how the technology works. The important thing for them is a seamless experience with minimal friction. With the back-end technology maturing, airlines are focusing on the different types of connectivity products they can offer. Given the power and flexibility of a streaming server-based system, the types of offerings available for passengers are only limited by the in-flight entertainment provider’s imaginations. “The big topic right now is the connectivity products themselves,” says Schuster. “If the passenger wants to purchase Wi-Fi on-board the aircraft
they could just have that, but from that they might also be able to pick different packages. Maybe they just want to chat, or want to browse, or stream, or make calls. “We also build these kinds of portals into the whole software stack in many cases now, for full IFC (in-flight connectivity). In fact, the term you hear now more often is IFEC (in-flight entertainment and connectivity), because those two areas are so merged,” says Schuster. “They’re getting merged, because for a passenger, it is more convenient to have all the services in one browser or app than to have multiple environments there.” She adds: “What is important to understand is that our products are just the core base. We build custom digital platforms on top, so it’s always tailored. We always need to take a look at what the customer has as requirements, what the business mission is around that and what features and rules need to be implemented to make that possible. We’ve learned a lot over the years regarding how to build a product and what is important. We bring in our experience from the media world and try to help them with standardising and really focusing on the services they want to build.”
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