I have a hundred stories I could tell about the Europe trip, but I'll just post a short, easy one here because it's fresh in my mind.

Our trip back from Frankfurt to Philly was on one of the somewhat-newer Airbus A330 jets. I was amazed and impressed with their in flight entertainment. Each seat had a small LCD display embedded in the back, and there was a wired remote built into each armrest. Instead of being the standard "everyone watches the same crappy movie on crappy headsets you paid $5.00 to rent", it actually was a pretty amazing system.

Each display was essentially a networked media player. You used a web-based system with the wired remote to select from movies, TV shows, and albums stored on a server somewhere in the plane. The quality was very high, the audio was in full stereo, you could pause/FF/RW, etc. I noticed no hitches or glitches in the playback, despite the fact that a majority of the people on the plane were streaming content at the same time. VERY impressive.

Basically, no one needed to be bored during the flight. There was something to keep you busy the whole time. The movies were even pretty decent titles, although they were ones you probably already rented on DVD. I took in a couple episodes of Frasier I hadn't seen, a couple of movies, and an episode of a series called "Scrubs" I didn't know about that I really enjoyed. My only complaint about the content was that I would have wanted a few more feature films available. The titles were mostly ones I'd either already seen, or wasn't interested in watching. But that could be just because I was picky, they had several feature films available in different genres, including an entire section just for kids.

A neat feature was: when the crew needed to make an announcement, whatever you were watching got paused and the word "announcement" appeared in a bar at the top of the screen, and their voice came over the public PA as well as over your headphones.

The only problem is that it is based on Windows.

How do I know? Because mine crashed on me, of course.

Locked up in the middle of playing a film. No response to keyboard input. Another nearby user had the same problem at a different time. I spent some time looking for a hidden reset switch and trying key combinations to get it to reboot, no dice. Muttered a lot about having to troubleshoot locked-up computers even when I was on vacation. Finally got the Space Waitress to show me the secret key combination to reboot the thing: Press and hold the bottom three buttons on the telephone keypad (back side of remote control) while simultaneously pressing the EXIT key on the front of the remote.

After a few tries, this rebooted my station, and I got to watch the system boot up. Yup, I was right: Windows. You see some kind of a stripped-down NT or 2000 installation, with an automatic logon (password was one character long) and a batch file that pings a TCP/IP server and does some other stuff before launching into the web-based media player.

Thank God they didn't use it for the avionics.

[completely off topic joke]

Thank God they didn't use it for the avionics.

I remember a joke about a conference where a speaker admonishes the crowd of programmers by asking how many of them would get on an airplane controlled entirely by code written by their company. One man stands up proudly and proclaims, "I'd have no problem getting on such a plane." The speaker gives the man an incredulous look and says, "oh really? You must be pretty confident in your company’s coding practices." The man shakes his head and replies, "Nope. I know the plane wouldn't leave the runway!"

[/completely off topic joke]

I can't believe you'd never seen Scrubs. It's one of my favorite shows, right up there with Monk. Of course, it's actually a lot funnier if you see them in order, as there are many running themes. (Such as why JD has a penny phobia)

I like Scrubs, too, but I doubt I'd watch it if John McGinley weren't on it.

This isn't really related, but at the same time NBC was promoting the crap out of the first season of Scrubs, Fox allowed the much funnier but somehow similar first season of Undeclared to go unpromoted, and it faded away. Still pisses me off every time I watch Scrubs.

Wow! I'm impressed. This was in coach, too? When I was younger and flying more often, I got very frustrated with in-air entertainment. I always flew in coach, which of course had the one screen showing one movie. What was so bad about it was that, without fail, I would always get the worst movie showing on any flight. Seriously, I remember 4 flights in a row: I would hear an announcement about which movie was playing. I would cringe. I would look in the airline magazine at movies showing on other flights. I would have preferred and enjoyed any of the others.

For one of those flights the movie was about that girl who made friends with a monkey. I don't care what it was called. I actually watched it, though. The worst part was, on the flight back, they had shifted all the movies around to different flights, and I ended up with the same film again. Grr.

The closest I've come to that system, Tony, was business class on the way back from Japan. But that was just a selection of stations playing one of 4 or 5 movies. Of course, once I watched them all I enjoyed about 5 hours of the GPS screen

When I flew to E3, it was on an Airbus plane (Can't remember the model), and every seat had the LCD screen as described here. Was a bit less complex, since they kept this plane in the US, and used a DirectTV system to drive it all. They had about 30 channels, and gave a free preview during takeoff. To get service for the entire flight, you simply swiped a credit card through the reader on the screen and became $3.00 poorer.

I didn't use it myself, since I brought my laptop with some video content on it ahead of time. But definitly things are getting better for coach flyers.

Thank God they didn't use it for the avionics.

You mean something like this? My understanding is that it is based on Windows NT.

--John

BA have started installing internet access points in their aircraft (flat $15 per flight). They plan to roll it out throughout the fleet, even in economy. That'll be when I switch from United.

Rob

To get service for the entire flight, you simply swiped a credit card through the reader on the screen and became $3.00 poorer.

Oh, that was the thing I forgot to mention. We didn't have to pay a thing, it was free. We didn't even have to pay for headphone rental on this flight. The headphones, a pillow, and a blanket, were all already sitting there waiting for us when we boarded.

And yes, this was coach class.

On our other airbus flights (the two domestic flights were on A319 and A321 jets), they had multiple LCDs, about one every four rows, drop from the ceiling, to show everyone the same movies. We were one row behind first class on one of the flights and I got to see what the difference was between first class and coach: Their LCDs had the brightness and contrast adjusted properly, ours didn't. It was easier to watch the FC screens from a distance than to look at the one directly in front of us.

Although on those flights we had to rent the headphones. Only the transatlantic flights had free headphones. I don't understand why the same airline would charge for headphones on some flights but not on others.

On the domestic flight out, I figured out that the headphone jacks were standard 1/8" jacks and I could use my own headphones, but there was a catch: There are two mono jacks instead of one stereo jack, so if you use your own headphones you only get half the audio, and only in one ear.

But since I got extra Seinnheiser headphones at the empeg meet, I had three pair on the domestic flight back. Since they are earbuds, I plugged one set into one jack, and one set into the other jack, and hung only the working earbud from each set in each ear. Perfect stereo sound for the inflight movie on the way home. (Too bad the movie was a yawner.)

BA have started installing internet access points in their aircraft (flat $15 per flight). They plan to roll it out throughout the fleet, even in economy.

Nifty. I'd like to see pinouts of the "Air Power" connector they have on the armrest on the Airbus planes and get a multi-voltage adapter to connect to it. I don't care about hooking up a laptop, but certain portable and semi-portable MP3 players I know about could benefit from the extended playback time.

I can't believe you'd never seen Scrubs. It's one of my favorite shows, right up there with Monk.

The best gag in the episode they had on the plane was:

Main character is voice-over narrating the show's intro as the camera follows him down the hall. "...you start to think of Death as just another co-worker."

He stops short, confronted by the Grim Reaper himself, and a much smaller Grim Reaper standing next to him holding a clipboard and a pen.

Reaper: "My daughter is selling Girl Scout cookies, would you like to buy some?"

Main character (nervously): "Sure, put me down for three boxes of those mint thingies."

(etc...)

So now we know to bring a dual mono1/8" phone plug to single stereo 1/8" stereo jack adapter the next time we're on an Airbus. Cool.

I hardly ever use the earplugs/headset, but I think on most planes it is the dual mono plugs. I think it was when I flew Air Gabon (Air NoBag), they had the dual mono plugs, but when you were finished flying you could cut off the extra plug and remove some plastic from the remaining plug and voila, you had a normal 1/8" stereoplug for your walkman/discman/whatever.

None of the times I have flown internationally, did we have to pay for headsets/earplugs. And this was in cattle class.

Stig

Best I had was a flight from Toronto to LA. I was in a bulkhead seat , and there were individual LCD screens embedded in the wall. I don't remember if we could select our own video content, but it did have free video games. Luckily for my ego, the kid sitting next to me was too young to be any good -- I kicked his ass at the tetris-clone game.

None of the times I have flown internationally, did we have to pay for headsets/earplugs. And this was in cattle class.

Same here. Maybe I've just happened to fly with the right airlines (BA, NZ, Delta, United, American) but I've never had to pay for in-flight entertainment, even in economy, even on US domestic flights. Mind you, the actual standard of in-flight entertainment has always varied with the age of the aircraft: CRTs in the ceiling in 737s, LCDs in seat backs in Airbuses and 777s. I've never seen video-on-demand in seat-back LCDs, though, only channels.

Peter

I've never seen video-on-demand in seat-back LCDs, though, only channels.

AOL. I'm looking forward to it

With reference to Tony's usual Movie issue, I make a point of _not_ watching anything that I haven't already seen, unless it it something that I wouldn't even be likely to rent. I find that the airline censorship can often ruin the film, and the interruptions and 'quality' of sound are just nails in the coffin. Case in point, the first time I saw "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was on a 'plane and they completely cut the bedroom scene where Hugh Grant gets stuck in the bathroom. Which was possibly the funniest scene in the entire movie.
I treat airline movies with the same respect as TBS Superstation (Which is admittedly harsh on the airlines), I only watch to pass the time if I'm bored, and not to see a new movie.

I find that the airline censorship can often ruin the film, and the interruptions and 'quality' of sound are just nails in the coffin.

Oh yeah... forgot to say. Each movie had a small intro screen which showed whether or not it had been edited for content. Most of them said "unedited". They had some Sex in the City and Sopranos episodes that I watched (even though I'd already seen them) which were completely unedited.

Wow. Looks like VOD has enabled the airline to look at where their responsibility ends. (It's obvious that they'd have to edit 'R' rated content when it's on a big shared screen that parents have no control over.)

Which airline was this?

Which airline was this?

US Airways. Their page describing the aircraft is here, and the page describing the on-demand video system is here.

Edit: If you follow their links that list the individual programs, that list is very curtailed. They had about ten times more stuff on the system than they list on the web page.

Nearly ten years ago, I worked for a company which was developing this on demand content streaming. We saw back then that there was huge potential for the airline industry but were more focussed on the hotel industry. Although back then we had this enormous IBM system sitting in the server room, dedicated to content streaming. I think we had enough hardware to pump out a massive 6 independant streams.
I left becuase it was run by a bunch of business tools too focussed on the bucks they could make and making all kinds of rash promises about what they could deliver without seeing if it was actually technically possible and then getting upset when things went over budget and over time.
ah, those were the days.

I left becuase it was run by a bunch of business tools too focussed on the bucks they could make and making all kinds of rash promises about what they could deliver without seeing if it was actually technically possible and then getting upset when things went over budget and over time.

That defines most of the companies I've worked for in the past. In fact, I think a clause to that effect might even be in their mission statement somewhere.

My understanding is that it is based on Windows NT.

I am affraid you are right, and they are becomming frighteningly popular on newly certified designs...

Some 15 or so years ago, when I flew intercontinentally quite a lot, mostly on European carriers (KLM; SwisAir (R.I.P.) and Lufthansa with occasional Thai or SIA), they used the same 'double mono' jacks for (free) headphones. On one flight the damn thing was miswired so that I could hear right channel of program #n in left ear, and left channel from program #n+1 in right ear. Video was typically projected on a screen from a 3-CRT projector; on SIA's 747-400, on upper deck business class, the screen was blocking entry to the loo: one had to duck, almost crawl under it .

Video was typically projected on a screen from a 3-CRT projector; on SIA's 747-400, on upper deck business class, the screen was blocking entry to the loo: one had to duck, almost crawl under it .

Funny you should say that. On our outbound transatlatic flight on the 767, they had the big video projector screen, and while the movie was playing, it blocked one of the overhead bins from opening. Someone wanted to get something out of one of their bags, and couldn't. It was rather funny.