Kontron's portable IFE unit lands launch customer
LOS ANGELES-- One of the most recent entrants in the crowded field of portable, streaming IFE is going through first deliveries to an undisclosed airline as the industry gathers for the APEX Expo.
The Cab-n-Connect P100 from Kontron was launched in at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg last spring. The company describes the unit as a “small form factor portable streaming inflight entertainment system” designed for the low-cost carrier market. One unit has the capacity to support up to 100 passenger devices. The battery-operated version of the system can last more than 10 hours. A minor plug-in modification can also give the P100 the ability to work the aircraft’s electronics. The unit has a capacity of up to six terabytes of fixed content and two terabytes of removable storage.
Kontron is manufacturing the P100 at its facilities in Germany and Austria and the company expects to go into full production of the P100 in the next few months.
The Germany-based company participated in this year’s FlyingLab Lufthansa flight from Munich to Los Angeles. Shortly before the start of APEX, Kontron announced it will be providing flight hardware for a European airline for open-architecture IFE and IFE&C systems. The airline has selected Kontron's ACE Flight™4608 high-performance avionics server, Cab-n-Connect™A100 Cabin Wireless Access Point (CWAP) and ACE Flight™Removable Storage Drives (RSSDs). Kontron systems give the airline the platforms needed to deliver wireless IFE and streaming video-on-demand, TV, games and other entertainment choices with the ability to add additional services and applications.