Patent ID: 9602570
Date: 2017-03-21
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. An aircraft content distribution system comprising: a server installed in an aircraft that includes a plurality of passenger seats; a plurality of clients, each client of the plurality of the clients being configured to output content to a respective display device associated with at least one of the passenger seats; and a processing resource for distributing a plurality of items of content to the plurality of the clients, each client is configured to transmit at least one message to the server representative of portions of the items of content that are present or not present at each respective client, and the processing resource is configured to determine from the messages portions of the items of content that are missing from the client, and to distribute the missing portions of content to the plurality of the clients via a wireless local area network (LAN) according to a multicast protocol that is at least one of connectionless or unreliable, each client is configured to monitor whether each respective client has received substantially all portions of the content and perform a synchronization process with the sever and, independently of whether one or more other of the plurality of the clients have received all portions of the content and independently of whether the processing resource is continuing to distribute missing portions of the content, each client is configured to enter a local control mode in response to having received substantially all portions of the content and on completion of the synchronization process, each client comprises a processor and a storage device for locally storing the plurality of the items of content, for each of the plurality of the clients, in the local control mode, a user can enter a series of interlinked menus on the respective display device and said user can select one of the locally stored items of content and the processor of the client is configured to launch a media player application for playing the selected item of content to the respective display device for display in response to the user selecting one of the locally stored items of content from the interlinked menus, regardless of whether the processing resource is continuing to distribute missing portions of the content to other of the plurality of the clients, and wherein the processing resource is further configured to distribute all of the missing portions of content to all of the plurality of clients.