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Boeing Eyes In-Flight Live TV on Your Laptop
cobravenum2 writes "Boeing is planning to add live television to its Connexion by Boeing service during 2005, The television programs will be delivered across the Connexion network, which uses satellites to provide high-speed data connections between aircraft in-flight and ground stations linked to the Internet. The service entered commercial use earlier this year and provides a 5 megabits per second shared downstream and 1 mbps shared upstream connection to suitably equipped aircraft. You'll be able to view up to four channels of live TV over your laptop."
I dont think this is very practical. Planes are limited in the power supplied to the seats. Many modern and future laptops draw more power than the plane supplies (or at least the airline allows). Most planes restrict you to 75 watts. So unless you want to use your battery (which has its own limits) you are restricted to how long you can view this. Many airlines also make you remove your battery before you can use power from the plane.
Secondly, does anyone really need live TV via their laptop - it would seem using installed lcd displays is a whole lot easier.
Plane <--> Satellite <--> Ground station
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Inverters can be had for about $30 (after MIR) although, for today's power-hungry laptops, my $30 inverter is strong enough to charge the battery while the laptop is shut off, but overdraws when the thing is actually turned on.
Inverter will either plug direct into the plane's +12vDC socket, or use an adapter (about $10) to get a standard +12vDC car-style socket from the plane's socket.
Song has a partnership with Dish Network, and provides 24 channels of TV to the screen in the headrest in front of you. They also provide trivia, music (broadcast and create your own playlist (for a fee)), as well as movies (for a fee), and games (for a fee). The fees for the pay-per stuff are reasonable, but there's enough free (trivia and 24 channels) stuff to keep you busy the entire flight.
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The passengers on the flight are subject to the laws of the territory it departed from until the flight lands... Meaning though the flight needs permission to overfly a country, that country doesn't get a say about the things the passengers are doing until the flight lands...
Gravity Sucks
JetBlue advertises that they offer 36 channels of DirecTV. Screen at every seat. For free. Right now. No need to bring your own equipment.
What is the current rate for headphone rental on airlines?
American sells you a headset for $5, and encourages you to reuse it on your next flight. It was $2 last month, and $1 in March. Their seats have the same adapter as most personal stereos, and they allow you to bring your own.
They're not live. Next time you take a flight, pay special attention to the equipment area up front as you're getting on the plane. You'll probably pass by a big rack of VCRs (!) that handle all of the on-board TV programming. You can also tell that it's done by VCRs by seeing the distinctive static pattern whenever they pause the thing for announcements and the like.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Back around 1998 or so, when I was still at Boeing, the Commercial Avionics department had built, and was experimenting with, a prototype system that would provide Dish Network service to every seat.
It was pretty amazing stuff. For the antenna, they had a rectangular slab about five feet by three that contained the electronic equivalent of hundreds of individual "dish" antennas in a phased array. The idea was to give each seat the equivalent of its own dish so that each passenger could be watching a different channel.
This monstrosity was designed to be mounted on the top of the fuselage, about mid-body. It was aimed electronically, based on latitude/longitude info gathered from the ADIRU (Air Data Inertial Reference Unit), a 'black box' that contained (among other things) an inertial navigation computer.
The idea was to have a six-inch LCD active-matrix panel in each seat back, with the audio piped over one of the existing channels in the aircraft's audio entertainment system.
The entire system was a marvel of engineering, and I consider myself fortunate enough to have watched the prototype undergoing testing. Unfortunately, I don't think it ever made it into production -- the costs were just too high.
Now, though, perhaps the idea will be revived...?
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies