We think the title of this Hot Topic says it all but there might be a bit more to this story. You can read most of the particulars of the recent appointment of Harry Gray but we thought a picture would be nice...and a few words from Harry. We asked Mr. Gray why he joined the IMS staff (besides the obvious entrepreneurial environment) and emphasized the company's' response speed: "IMS seems almost ideally sized to ensure customer responsiveness, i.e., we're small enough to respond quickly and promptly not only to general market requirements, but also individual customer needs, while being large enough to ensure having the resources available to back up our delivery promises. Particularly in the portables space, the choice to go with COTS-based solutions versus proprietary solutions is an essential part of that responsiveness. This certainly gets the latest technology in the hands of the airline customer sooner and since consumer expectations in IFE are driven by their own experience with COTS products, managing those expectations are far easier when COTS is the basis of our offering!"

A second driver Mr. Gray talked about was product innovation: "Once we have established that products like our portables leverage COTS, we must then creatively administer these technologies to provide innovative differentiation. For example, our optimized encoding profiles result in a superior content display on our devices. They really do look better and we were the first in IFE to leverage Web Services technologies to cost-effectively deliver multiple-times daily news to the aircraft without expensive satellite delivery infrastructure, and to use Web-based versions of content like "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" to enable the use of chapter stops to provider the user with on-demand segments within the broadcast. Consumer portables do not necessarily offer innovation in Content Applications, whereas this is clearly an area where we differentiate ourselves positively from both the consumer experience and our competitors."

Rounding out the interview with Harry, we asked about the other side of his life outside work and he told IFExpress, "I have been married to my wife Betsy for 22 years and we have two children, Spenser and Jordan." We should note that Jordan is quite a baseball player and in on the US National Championship team. Equally interesting, Harry is a team coach and also enjoys coaching little league and competitive travel baseball and has done so for the last 10 years. We probably shouldn't mention but note that if you have not attended one of his roast pig parties, you have not been to a party!

Editors Note: As chroniclers of portable IFE, IFExpress observes that IMS is now serving three major US carriers...American airlines on 3 fleets (767-300, 767-200, MD80), US Airways in business class, and Northwest Airlines in business class. As the portable market begins the first round shakeout, IMS and digEcor account for 90% of cumulative sales in the portables space and that everyone else is hoping to be number 3. Linked below are a couple of interesting Power Point presentations that should give the reader who desires to dig deeper a bit more information about the world of handheld IFE and, as an example, the fleet dispersal plans for American Airlines portable IFE.

Group complains about HBO shows on Delta
The Wichita Eagle

Making connection in the clouds
Asia-Pacific Broadcasting

BA offers AVOD on-board
Travel iAfrica

Boeing spares no detail streamlining innards of new 787
ElPaso Times