Hot Topic: Bizjet First To Incorporate iPod’s

True to form, it looks like the world of business aviation has embraced the use of personal carry-on entertainment devices in an effort to give their travelers their choice of entertainment options. Look at it as a BYOE IFE System concept – Bring Your Own entertainment source, and the airplane will deliver a viewing platform. The folks at Flight Display Systems now provide front panel inputs to their successful FD932DVD entertainment player so business jet passengers can bring their own DVD’s or use their iPods and PSP players. This is interesting on two fronts. Firstly, business people with iPods are not an abnormality – not if over 60 million have been sold. Secondly, the concept of choice has a new paradigm modifier, “personal” choice! This basically means carrying your own entertainment is here to stay and the airlines will probably have to deliver the same accommodations to their passengers in the upcoming years. Announcements to this end have lately appeared in print but it looks like the business jet IFE world has delivered the first strike.

Flight Display Systems has just announced their solution the personal choice problem – the FD932DVD-04B. While we usually focus on airline IFE, we thought our readers might like to a glimpse into a logical evolution into what commercial airline passengers might see in the future. The new FDS product has been modified to support that “personal” choice and you can expect more bizjet IFE with the same refinements. "We redesigned this product with customer entertainment choices in mind," said David Gray, President of Flight Display Systems. "The iPod and MP3 integration made sense considering the wild success of Apple's iPod. Now we have a low cost IFE solution to easily bring MP3s onboard any business jets." The FD932DVD-4B is sold through a network of avionics dealers around the Globe. Local avionics dealers can provide more for more information or you can download the link at the end of this story. For orders outside of the United States, we are told, DAC International is the distributor.

A company spokesperson noted, “Flight Display Systems was founded in 1999 by David Gray. The company focuses exclusively on the business aviation retrofit market. Every day, thousands of aircraft owners enjoy the great value and high quality of Flight Display Systems products. Located in Alpharetta, Georgia (30 miles north of Atlanta), Flight Display Systems manufactures over 40 cabin entertainment products for business aircraft. This includes Moving Map displays, aircraft cabin LCD monitors from 7" to 42", wireless audio systems, DVD players and Flight View cameras.” FDS has sold over 1,000 of the FD932DVD-4 (previous model DVD player). Customers include Gulfstream, Raytheon, Cessna, Embraer, etc. He also said, “The previous version had limited iPod/MP3 support. We have now added a dedicated input/output jack for auxiliary input on the FD932DVD-4B. This is the major improvement to the upgrade.” A company spokesperson said, With two dedicated inputs on the FD932DVD-4B, we have created an A/V center and the FD932DVD allows passengers to bring their own entertainment sources (PSP’s, laptops, etc.) and watch them on the aircraft cabin monitors. Customers love having the freedom to carry-on their own source equipment to share on the cabin monitors during the flight.” We could have not said it better. (Ed. Note: Check out the bizjet hardware prices, they will make airlines salivate!)

• FD932 Data Sheet
• FAA PMA Awarded on Upgraded DVD, Wireless Audio and Moving Map
   

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