http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/news/2007/082207-worldbeat-singapore-airlines-puts-a.html&pagename=/news/2007/082207-worldbeat-singapore-airlines-puts-a.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/082207-worldbeat-singapore-airlines-puts-a.htmlTo make flying more enjoyable for its passengers, Singapore Airlines Ltd. is adding bigger screens, more in-flight movies and a PC, running Red Hat Inc.'s distribution of the Linux operating system, in every seat on its newest planes. (...)
KrisWorld, Singapore Airlines' in-flight entertainment system, is a main focus of these efforts, offering on-demand movies, television shows, games and music to passengers. Now, the airline aims to raise the bar, rolling out a new version of KrisWorld that improves significantly on existing systems and hints at what passengers can expect to see on the Airbus S.A.S. A380 and The Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner, when these aircraft enter service. (...)
The latest version of KrisWorld is based on Panasonic Avionics Corp.'s eX2 in-flight entertainment system and was jointly developed by the two companies. The system consists of a central Linux server that connects to a network of PCs installed in every seat on the aircraft. The KrisWorld software offers an improved user interface and each economy-class seat is fitted with a 10.6-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) screen that offers resolution of 1,280 pixels by 768 pixels. (...)
The heart of the KrisWorld system is the main server, which is equipped with "terabytes" of storage capacity to hold the content that's made available to passengers, Tong said. When passengers choose to watch a movie or listen to a CD, the content is streamed from the KrisWorld server to the seat's computer, which has 40G bytes of local hard-disk space and is based on a Via Technologies Inc. processor. (more at link)