Rockwell Collins yesterday announced the arrival of Venue, its next-generation, high-definition cabin management system.

“Venue will take the passenger experience to a whole new level by mirroring a high-end digital home-entertainment environment in the airplane,” said v-p and general of cabin systems Tommy Dodson. He also no

Select features of the system will be available as early as the second quarter of next year, with deliveries of the complete system to begin in the first quarter 2009 Venue has already been selected by Cessna for its Citation CJ4, scheduled to debut in 2010.
According to Rockwell Collins, Venue is designed to replicate the home-theater experience, with key features that include:

• A real-time, uncompressed high-definition distribution system that enables 730 or 1080 progressive scan quality video from devices such as Blu-Ray DVDs and Xbox 360 game consoles.

• A digital, high-definition entertainment device that integrates a wide variety of capabilities, including Blu-Ray DVD (also compatible with standard definition DVDs), CD and MP3, audio and video jukebox, integrated 3-D Airshow moving map, games and front-port USB input for media files.

• A new line of in-seat and bulkhead displays capable of true wide-screen, high-definition.

• New OLED-equipped switch panels featuring programmable soft-buttons and an intuitive, icon-based graphical user interface.

• A variety of iPod and iPhone integration solutions that allow passengers to plug personal devices into the cabin management system and distribute audio and video throughout the cabin, and remote control at the seat through a virtual iPod menu.

Venue incorporates a software architecture that is database driven, allowing quick changes through the use of a new cabin configuration tool. In addition, redundant process through an Ethernet control backbone assures backups to keep the system performing.