As the competition for inflight portable units heats up an entrant that has been around for a couple of years, AIRVOD, showed up at this year’s AIX with a new model dubbed “Crystal”. Here is a glimpse of the new Crystal specifications: 8.4” SVGA TFT LCD display, mag stripe reader, 802.11 capability, power over Ethernet, DRM and AES encryption, 80/120/200 HDD, MPEG 4/MPEG 3, weight is 1 kg, certification levels DO160D and UL1642.

In an interview with IFExpress AIRVOD’s CEO, Terence Bonar (see photo), told us that JetStar recently selected this product. Bonar stated that the unit is designed in Ireland and is manufactured in India. With 10+ hours of playtime the unit has an interesting SD card feature that would allow news and other informative updates to be loaded via the memory card slot. This may be the first portable that we have seen with this feature. Bonar went on to say that many trials are underway and that they are very confident about the future of their new product. AIRVOD has developed an easy user interface and we think there are other applications beyond the airlines that are interested in this product.

Bonar has worked out a good solution to battery recharge and content updating and his experience has been helped by his previous association with digEplayer. He states that there are 3,000 existing AIRVOD units in the field across 3 airlines and will be delivering the Crystal within the next few months for sale, lease, and/or revenue share. Additionally, with the new DRM features AIRVOD has been talking to the major movie houses and you can get a better idea of what is currently available on their portable units by logging onto www.airvod.com You can contact Terence Bonar directly at terence@airvod.com for further information.