London, UK | September 1, 2011 – The international content distribution company, DSI | by Inverleigh, has today announced the launch of it’s dedicated in-flight division which will offer a range of programmes formatted specifically for in-flight entertainment scheduling.

The announcement follows the launch of Inverleigh Media Holdings’ distribution arm, DSI | by
Inverleigh in July 2011, which was promptly followed by launch of 14 new original television
series.

DSI’s in-flight division will deliver a selection of timeless, topical destination programmes and
documentary titles encompassing the genres of sport, lifestyle and entertainment.

The division launches with a number of sports and lifestyle titles available for immediate
acquisition, while further titles will be delivered in the coming months including a range of
Olympics related programs, spotlighting London as a destination as well as the build up to the
London Games.

Inverleigh Director, Matt Whytcross said, “We are delighted to be in a position to extend a
specialised service and product offering that will provide solutions tailored to the specific needs
of the in-flight entertainment market. The DSI team have long-term expertise in the supply of
content to IFE operators and look forward to presenting what we think is an exciting range of
new programs.”

The company’s website, www.dsi.tv contains a dedicated in-flight area featuring video trailers
and details for each of the programs in their in-flight division.

SEATTLE, WA. | August 1, 2011 — Alaska Airlines announced today that it will offer complimentary Gogo® Wi-Fiservice for passengers with Web-enabled smartphones or iPod Touches throughout the months of August and September 2011. The offer, compliments of the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature ® Card, is also available to customers who use a digEplayer, Alaska’s portable inflight entertainment system.

“Alaska Airlines’ Inflight Wi-Fi has been a hit with our customers and we’re excited to offer it free to those with smartphones throughout the next two months,” said Joe Sprague, the airline’s vice president of marketing. “Whether you’re a business traveler needing access to e-mail or just can’t wait to check your Facebook, free access to the Internet is a huge benefit.”

Gogo is now available on nearly all aircraft in Alaska Airlines fleet operating within the Lower 48 United States and specific areas in Alaska. Using Gogo, Alaska Airlines passengers with Wi-Fi-enabled devices can browse the Web; access online music, games, podcasts and webcasts; send and receive e-mail; and connect to virtual private networks while flying. The easy-to-use service provides passengers with full Internet access on any Wi-Fi-equipped laptop or personal electronic device at speeds similar to wireless mobile broadband services on the ground.

“We are extremely excited for this sponsorship since it’s the first free mobile offering on Gogo,” said Ash ElDifrawi, Gogo’s chief marketing officer. “Many smartphone users simply aren’t aware that you can turn your cellular phone service off on a Gogo equipped plane, yet still access the Internet through a Wi-Fi enabled mobile device and surf the Web, send email and access most of the features on your mobile device.”

Prices for Gogo on other devices such as laptops, iPads, netbooks or tablets start at $4.95 and are based on length of flight and device used. Gogo also offers 24-hour inflight Wi-Fi passes and monthly subscriptions. Customers can visit www.alaskaair.com/wifi for more information about Alaska Airlines’ inflight Wi-Fi.

Alaska Airlines’ digEplayers are available on flights longer than three hours. The price is $14 on flights longer than 4.5 hours and $8 on flights less than 4.5 hours and includes Gogo Wi-Fi access. Customers receive a $2 discount when they reserve a digEplayer in advance via the airline’s alaskaair.com website.

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, subsidiaries of Alaska Air Group (NYSE: ALK), together serve more than 90 cities through an expansive network in Alaska, the Lower 48, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico. Alaska Airlines ranked “Highest in Customer Satisfaction Among Traditional Network Carriers” in the J.D. Power and Associates 2008, 2009 and 2010 North America Airline Satisfaction StudiesSM. For reservations, visit alaskaair.com. For more news and information, visit the Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air Newsroom at alaskaair.com/newsroom.

New Platform To Offer Engaging Flight, Destination, E-Commerce, Video, Gaming And News Experience For Travelers In-Air, Online

ITASCA, Ill., July 15, 2011 – Gogo today announced plans to launch a new, in-air multimedia platform that will extend the company beyond Internet connectivity to offer passengers exclusive access to online services that include real-time travel information, destination content, news and information, exclusive shopping deals and social network integration. The platform will also give airlines the opportunity to offer passengers access to the latest movies and TV shows through Gogo’s new streaming video product.

The new platform will be a unique in-air experience that passengers access via their own Web enabled device on any aircraft equipped with Gogo Wi-Fi internet service. The new site will also be customizable to allow better branding opportunities for Gogo’s airline partners. The new platform will be available beginning in the third quarter of this year.

“This is the convergence of in-flight connectivity and entertainment. When we first started offering Wi-Fi connectivity, it became clear to us that we could offer travelers so much more to enhance their travel experience,” said Ash ElDifrawi, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Gogo. “Today, travelers depend on Gogo to keep them connected in air and, while connectivity remains at the heart of our business, we are thrilled to offer travelers this new form of entertainment at 30,000 ft.”

Over the last several months, Gogo has worked with design and innovation firm IDEO to define and build the new platform. Gogo engaged with IDEO to better understand the needs of travelers and the airlines. The next step was to determine how to best leverage its in-flight connectivity to address those needs.

Gogo has begun rolling out some of these new features including a new partnership with Gilt Groupe. Gogo’s video service will also allow travelers to rent movies and TV shows for viewing in air. Gogo currently has an agreement with major Hollywood studios and will feature recently released movies and hit TV shows. .

“The introduction of this new platform will enable our airline partners to customize in air, online experiences to reflect their brand; it will offer passengers an engaging travel experience; and it will give advertisers access to a very unique audience” said ElDifrawi. “It offers the flexibility to provide a robust set of experiences – such as travel information, movies, shopping and social networking – that’s relevant to each individual airline or specific journey. It also sends us farther down the path to making Gogo everyone’s favorite part of flying.”

State-of-the-art Media Integration Lab Facility Will Significantly Help Leading In-Flight Entertainment Hardware Manufacturer Support Clients.

Irvine, California – June, 2, 2011/PRNewswire/ – Donica International Inc, one of the world’s leading in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems manufacturers, today announced that it has set up a new operation in the US to provide comprehensive media integration services to its customers.

The new company, which is named Donica Inflight Entertainment Services Inc, will be based at one of the newest, state-of-the-art media integration labs in California. It will provide Donica customers with one point of contact for all of their media integration requirements including the encoding and encryption of movies, TV shows and audio channels for use onboard aircraft. With its new company and operation, Donica aims to develop and grow integration services around its hardware platforms.

The Donica range of Digital Media Reproducers allows for a plug and play replacement to ageing IFE video tape machines which are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain and source the necessary media for. In moving from an analogue video source to a complete digital source, video quality and sound improves significantly as does ease of use.

“With the imminent demise of the video tape onboard aircraft, we are excited to have created this new company,” said Guy Kennett, CEO of Donica International. “We look forward to providing our airline clients with the highest quality in-flight entertainment products and content for many years to come.”

This year we are going to do something different. The Hot Topic will summarize all we saw at Long Beach and then as the weeks roll on, we will dig deeper into the ones you need to hear about. Firstly, the thousand pound gorilla in the room was the Android operating system, the background chatter was Ka Band inflight connectivity, and the word on almost everybody’s lips was ‘iPad’ – not to mention that silly stand-up seat with the 23 inch pitch. Having said that, we will probably look into each topic separately, but for now, let’s press on. On the last day of the show, and after he left, John White announced his retirement from the Avion magazine. He exited without fanfare, we hear, to avoid all the “good bye’s”, so, here is a public one – Thanx John, for it was you who got us int this mess!

Next, our overall impression was, from a technical perspective, great. Some vendors were mumbling about the lack of visitors, but you can decide for yourself by looking at the show photo’s on Flickr. At almost every booth we visited, and we visited over 20, there was something we had not seen or heard about. We do this because there is a lot of innovation that gets overlooked or doesn’t warrant the benefit of a press release. Not to mention the newbies, characters, friends, and the just plain weirdos. After all, isn’t that why you read IFExpress? Lastly, we are sorry for those vendors we missed. Mostly, you were busy with customers and we understand that. If you feel that your product or service was slighted, send a note to ifenews@airfax.com and we will follow up with a telephone or email interview!

Astronics: Big with the power folks is a new set of USB seat power outlet concepts. They are also introducing a 225 VA ISPS with a USB power outlet at each of 3 seats as well as 110 AC.

ACS: Aircraft Cabin Systems rolled out their new thin line of LCD aircraft displays. Looks to be 33% slimmer than the standard size and ACS offers 4 sizes up to 42″.

AirCell: We got a good AirCell update from John Wade. Over 1,015 aircraft jets installed with paid sessions going up each month and no peak in sight. The bizjet market is smoking and the order from NetJets (approx 800 in fleet) is certainly a big deal!

Carlisle: Cable maker, Carlisle, displayed their usual offering of aircraft cable assemblies and we were interestingly challenged to pick out the ones made in their offshore factories. Their latest Ethernet product looked no different than their other products and we were a bit surprised to find out they were made in their Dong Guan (Shenzen) factory. The company controls the process, quality and sourced materials – their AS9100 certification is proof.

digEcor: Brent Wood and Adam Williams laid out their new inflight shopping portal “Mill Creek Shoppe” and demo-ed the L-7 player (Lafeel) with a great built-in mouse. Watch for new advertising co-op features that support independent advertising suppliers. Oh, and we thought their flying monkey was great fun!

Goodrich: Recent acquirer of TEAC, their show entry featured their V01HDD player that has a Blu-ray drive for more storage via DVD disk. We noted a terrific Electronic Flight Bag device on the table but it was a bit early to tag an IFE application with it. Alas, sad news for IFE as Al McGowen is now Mr. Military.

IMS: The RAVE system is now ready for prime time and the final product (powered hot-swap and all) has quite a few features that looked VERY airline friendly. Rumor has it that a few customers have stepped-up to the plate already. Joe Renton pulled us aside for a sneak peek that their new COTS re-purposed player, and yes, it is built by IMS. Check out Flickr.

Inflight Peripherals: The Geoff and Claire show was a hit again this year, and yes, they had a contest to assemble one of their inset headphone jacks. The ‘wall of shame’ told the whole story with one entrant blowing away the competition with a speed around 10 seconds.

Interact: Seldom do we cover content providers, however, this year, we hope to do a Hot Topic devoted to these folks. We like their focus on customer support and regional content in providing audio and video programming, creative content/content management, and encoding services.

Airbus KID-Systeme: Perhaps the biggest effort we saw at KID was their integrated seat power program with Recaro. We saw the production prototype and here is a picture of the inseat-power-supply-that-mounts-in-the-seat-beam.

Live TV: After looking at the Iridium satcom hardware for 2 days, we finally got the story on the LiveTV Aero OpenPort system. Using the 66 satellite constellation, they have found a way to deliver 128K continuously to the aircraft. Don’t scoff, this a PERFECT blackberry data solution, served in the airplane via Wi-Fi. Here’s the clincher, they can demonstrate offering it as a freebie! BTW, Mike Moeller gets our nod as the best pitchman at the show!

Lumexis: The F.O. IFE company out did last show record by bringing a COMPLETE wide-body IFE system, up and running to the show. Some 243 seats worth of IFE (fiber-to-the-seat), and 2 small servers (4 MCU each). This is the low calorie IFE winner, and frankly, we do not expect the hardware to return to Irvine!

Mezzo : Dave Sampson, CEO, shared his new COTS Personal Media Player with IFExpress.

SmartJog: Wow, did Christiane Ducasse and Jodynne Wood knock our socks off! Smartjog is THE purveyor of digital content between IFE entities. By placing a Smartjog server/hub at each end of a communication line, security and daft integrity is guaranteed. These folks are suck a household name that they have become a verb – “Just Smartjog it to the customer”. Hot Topic territory for sure.

Panasonic: The Cool Room is back! What more can we say? A lot, in fact. Too much to cover it here. Suffice it to say, we saw all the bells and whistles in the CR, got the lowdown on Ku and Ka Bands, sat in the integrated seats, played with the Android IFE system, watched a 3-D interactive product, and visited the Panasonic App store. We promise a Hot Topic on each of these topics as there is NO WAY we can do it here. As an afterthought, there is no one that can throw a party like Panasonic – thanx!

Thales: Winner of the Best Innovation Technology with their TouchPMU, the folks we met with were justifiably proud of their tethered handset-entertainment player-controller. A perfect product for single aisle player and on twin aisle planes, it is a great controller that can be used to control entertainment or games on a bigger screen. Oh yes, there was an app on that – the OS is Android. Thales demonstrated a very flexible integrated seat that is in an very mature state (orders on the way) and a novel LCD/mirror display. What a bizjet product!

Rockwell: New kids on the block, Joel Otto and John Darvell talked up the Digital Paves (D Paves) but would not talk to much about the Android OS that others were exploring. We think the next IFE show will bring some Rockwell surprises and they may first show up on the Bizjet side.

VT Miltope: What’s not to like with the ‘OEM supplier to the aviation industry’? As a platform agnostic, peripherals and system supplier, Bob Guidetti told IFExpress that they have been spec-ing and supplying connectivity products for B787, A350 and B777 aircraft and now have a MIMO Wi-Fi WAP.

Honorable Mention: We cannot let this opportunity to go by without mentioning 2 of the “little guys”. Sitting off in one corner was Plane Bill and in the other G.U.E. Tech. We loved both these companies for different reasons. Plane Bill, the Italian software innovator showed us a fistful of Android apps, specifically designed for airlines. After getting infused with Android platforms by all the big players, here sits Plane Bill, with some of the most innovative software we have seen. They even developed an app that an Android Smartphone equipped Muslim can use to find Mecca directions for prayer. On the other hand we really do not have a clue what G.U.E. Tech does. Having said that, we know that it has something to do with 3D rendering engines, game software, and generally computer graphics. Hey, any company that authors a video game called “Lurking Horror” cannot be all bad! What was so doggone impressive was the enthusiasm of it’s CEO, Max Lingua, and his complete love for what he does. Please visit their websites and send some business their way – they are gems!

Brea, CA (November 16, 2009) – For the third consecutive year, The IMS Company, a diverse technology solutions provider focusing on communications and entertainment solutions in the aerospace, government and travel markets, has been named to the list of “100 fastest-growing private companies” in tech-heavy Orange County, California, by the Orange County Business Journal (OCBJ), IMS chairman and CEO Joseph Renton has announced.

“In view of the overall economic downturn, and the severity of the inflight entertainment and communications sector in particular, we are pleased to continue being among Orange County’s fastest-growing,” said Renton.
Earlier this year, IMS expanded its operations with the acquisition of FlightDeck Resources, a leading provider of Electronic Flight Bag solutions to commercial airlines, corporate aviation, air cargo and aircraft fleet operations worldwide. With that acquisition, IMS created “IMS FlightDeck” as an operating division along with IMS Engineering and IMS Entertainment, said Renton.

The company expanded its In Flight Entertainment and Communications (IFEC) product offerings in 2009 with the announcement at the WAEA Conference and Exhibition in Palm Springs, California, of a light-weight, low-cost embedded IFEC system that “leaves the head-end-centric architecture behind” says Renton. Called RAVE™, this system is architected so that all content, applications and playback capabilities reside at each seat rather than at the head-end.

IMS also recently announced a new generation of embedded data loaders utilizing solid state technology that offer significantly faster content load speeds, increased storage capacity, and the ability to interface with multiple IFE systems. “Migration from the Removable Hard Disk Drive (HDD) to Solid State (SD) media is definitely paradigm-changing,” says Renton.

IMS continues to be a key engineering solutions provider on complex programs such as Joint Tactical Radio Systems (JTRS), On Board Network Services program, for 787 and 747-8 aircraft and highly specialized engineering for numerous unmanned vehicle platforms.

Founded in 1996, The IMS Company is an entertainment and communications solutions provider in the travel industry and a systems and software solutions provider to the aerospace industry and the military. Organized into three business units, IMS serves more than twenty commercial airlines with portable entertainment, wireless communications, and content management services via IMS Entertainment. Via IMS Engineering, the company provides advanced systems and software engineering support in the development and deployment of the latest in inflight entertainment, cabin avionics, and media distribution systems, as well as engineering services and software development services to unmanned vehicles and software-defined radios. The recent acquisition of Flight Deck Resources resulted in the creation of a third unit, IMS Flight Deck, which provides Electronic Flight Bag and other solutions for the flight deck. IMS has expanded into the provisioning of content services and hardware solutions for business aviation, rental car, rail passenger, and related markets reaching the traveling public.

For more information see: www.imsco-us.com.