"Anyone supplanting the Disney headsets (which I saw a number of when I was there six months ago..shortly after their introduction)?? No, didn't think so...'
why would anyone need to supplant something for which there is no profitable market. It was a one-time shot that EDIG did below cost so they could put out a PR. Why would a legitimate want to "supplant" that?
The whole headset thing is a perfect example. They were going to be EVERYWHERE according to the touts on this board. There was no limit to their applications, museums, amusement parks, tourist spots all over the world were going to have them. Disney alone was going to order enough o cover the "low burn rate" and the maintenance and refurbishment fees were going to be gravy. Fast-forward a year and where are we at? Not a single reorder from Disney, not a single order from anyone else on the entire planet, and not a single dime of profit to EDIG? But oh yeah, about 20M new shares are out there.
Not to mention that the headset project was going was touted as giving EDIG the "in" with H-P, only to have H-P reject EDIG for the competition when it came time for their MP3 player and not another dime of bsuiness has been booked from them since.
" anyone else have portable IFE on ANY airline big or small? No, didn't think so..."
Why do you limit your question to "portable" when airlines are rejecting EDIGs solution for other alternative everyday? If EDIG sells a couple thousand "portable" units at a loss, but 99% of the installed IFE isn't portable, what then? Would EDIG be a success?
Most of the airlines dabbling in "portable" are doing so as a stop gap until they get other solutions or are such small potatoes that they are barely worth a mention. 1500 units to Alaska so far, a couple hundred else where, big deal. We know the tests are done, but the orders are not exactly rolling in, are they? And besides, this was posted 2 weeks ago, but how were you to know?
"Posted by: Med.rare
In reply to: None Date:5/14/2004 10:45:07 AM
Post #of 63532
Competition has arrived in the handheld IFE world. Content is not as early release as APS though.
UK holiday carrier offers handheld IFE
May 12, 2004 - ANOTHER handheld IFE supplier has shown its hand with the announcement that British holiday airline First Choice Airways (formerly known as Air 2000) is making portable video players available to its premium passengers.
Manchester-based First Choice, which serves more than 60 destinations worldwide with a fleet of 32 Boeing 757s and 767s and Airbus A320s and A321s, is offering premium-class passengers on its long-haul flights the free use of individual interactive digital video and audio players from Archos of France.
Paris-headquartered Archos specialises in mobile multimedia products for consumers and businesses. Its Video AV300 device with up to 40Gb of storage combines an MPEG-4 video player, MP3 player and digital camera in a palmtop package. In the aircraft the device can be hand-held or placed on a stand.
Content management is supplied by Manchester-based IFE Services. In the First Choice implementation, passengers have access to up to 40 hours of programming in six channels: lifestyle, comedy (including British hits Absolutely Fabulous and The Office and US favourite Friends), kids (The Simpsons), sport, drama and factual programming.
First Choice has no plan to offer early-window films on the system, though premium passengers do have access to some early-window content on the overhead screens in their cabin.
The service is now being promoted through travel-agent briefings, First Choice brochures and inflight literature. Cabin crew issue the players by seat number and name and collect them again at the end of the flight.
"The players are robust and we have put them through rigorous testing," says Sue Blanche, First Choice general manager for inflight services and sales. "Content is not downloadable in flight, and since we previously provided Sony Watchman video players on a similar basis, there is no extra workload for cabin crew."
First Choice has no revenue-generation ambitions for the new service. "This is purely an added-value offering for our customers," says Blanche. "It will take us through to the launch of fully interactive seatback entertainment on our long-haul services in summer 2005."
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