Method of distributing audio programming to passenger entertainment systems, and apparatus

Apparatus for distributing audio programs to passenger entertainment systems on-board a plurality of aircraft, comprising in combination:

• means for encoding audio data including a plurality of audio programs to produce compressed digitally coded audio data;
• means including first computer storage media for storing said compressed digitally coded data onto said first computer storage media;
• central facility transmitting means for transmitting the stored compressed digitally coded data from a central facility to a plurality of local facilities;
• local facilities receiving means for receiving the transmitted data at the plurality of local facilities;
• local facilities storage means including second computer storage media for storing the received data at the respective local facilities onto said second computer storage media;
• local facilities transmitting means for transmitting the locally stored data from the respective local facilities for being received by aircraft locally situated with respect to respective one of said local facilities transmitting means;
• aircraft receiving means for receiving the locally transmitted data by the locally situated aircraft;
• and
• aircraft storage means including third computer storage media resident in the passenger entertainment systems for storing the aircraft received data onto said third computer storage media.

A method of distributing audio programming to a plurality of passenger carriers, comprising the steps of:

• providing audio data including the audio programming;
• encoding said data to produce compressed digitally coded audio data;
• storing said compressed digitally coded data at a central facility;
• transmitting the stored data from said central facility for being received by a plurality of local facilities;
• receiving the transmitted data by said local facilities;
• storing the received data at said local facilities;
• distributing the locally stored data from said local facilities to passenger carriers locally situated with respect to respective ones of said local facilities;
• and
• storing the locally distributed data onto computer controlled storage media in said locally situated carriers.