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Hot Topic: Rockwell Collins New Digital Look & Feel 

The new Rockwell Collins logo portends the coming a digital mini-revolution in two of their flagship In-Flight Entertainment products – the venerable and successful Paves, now dPaves, product line and the newer Airshow 4200D map display products. But before we get carried away with hardware, there are management issues to update. First, industry nice guy, Tommy Dodson is now VP & GM of the Cabin Systems organization. As far as we can see, this is a new integration of parts of the Airshow, Cabin Management, Business & Regional organizations, obviously in a sensible attempt to reduce costs and focus management across somewhat redundant Rockwell product lines in the commercial and bizjet sectors. Next, Airshow and TV product manufacturing lines are moving to Mexicali, Mexico and Melbourne, Florida respectively. The other obvious news story (WAEA Conference) is the “digitalization” of the existing products.

New dPaves takes a sensible digital integration approach to the existing entertainment front end of their very successful, sing-aisle IFE product, and for all practical purposes, combines the features of the Airshow 4200 moving map display, a digital audio and video file server, and a background data loader into one small unit. The first two our readers probably understand but the background data loader may not be. While this feature is the basis for another Hot Topic, we will say that the device is designed to accept DVD media discs to be inserted into a player and then update the content in the background while the system is doing other things. By the way, dPaves is short for Digital Programmable Audio Video Entertainment System and it is installed on over 1000 aircraft with over 100 customers. It is important to note that no other changes need to be made to the existing IFE system to upgrade the front to get the benefits of over one hundred hours of digital video and audio content storage and delivery, all in a weight saving 4 MCU box.

Lastly, the Airshow 4200 has become the 4200D reflecting digital upgrades to the units’ audio and video outputs, integrated Ethernet control, A380 compatibility, widescreen delivery, and an Ethernet link for Data Connectivity. Essentially, the unit offers the same fit and compatibility of the 4200 with newer Ethernet connectivity. We must say, if you have not flown with the 4200 onboard, you have missed a quantum jump in map display graphics. Check out the displays on the downloadable data sheets below… and BTW, the new company slogan is “Building Trust Every Day.”

dPaves Data Sheet (PDF, ~320k)

Airshow 4200D Data Sheet (PDF, ~350k)
 

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4/25/2007 - 4/26/2007