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iPod Seat-Back Video Coming To Flights
cameronk writes, "Apple announced partnership agreements with Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM, and United that will let you display video from your iPod on the screen of the seat in front of you. Plus, the connectors charge iPods throughout the flight. This will be great for inter-continental flights where even my iPod Nano runs out of juice. I wonder how the airlines are going to keep inappropriate video (i.e. porn or even just movies like "Snakes on a Plane" or "Alive") from appearing on the seat-back displays."
Boeing: The world's largest iPod accessory manufacturer.
747: The world's largest iPod accessory.
Reality has a liberal bias
I wonder how the airlines are going to keep inappropriate video (i.e. porn or even just movies like "Snakes on a Plane" or "Alive") from appearing on the seat-back displays."
That's funny as I was wondering the same thing when Apple's press announcement appeared in my inbox. Of course the issue of other movies like those you mentioned should not even be an issue as it is content that the user has loaded on their own iPods (and you should not be looking at your neighbors content anyhow). As to porn and other questionable content, this really comes down to etiquette and if there are those on the flight that will display such content where others may see it (like kids), they are likely pissing people off for other reasons. All told, this is a great idea and I'd rather have to deal with other people's movies than having to listen to them talk on their cell phones (Please! FAA, Nnnoooooooo!) or worse. Flying anywhere is becoming more and more onerous these days and at the very least, having airlines support ways to charge laptops or iPods during long flights would be a huge benefit as Empower outlets are pretty hard to find on many flights in coach and sometimes even in first or business class.
I've had to deal with enough problems flying anyhow again and again and again and anything that will keep people quiet and minding their own business is a good thing.
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Just a hunch.
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You have to use a "special" FAA approved cable to connect to the video input of the screen as well as the charging unit. The airline will provide this to you for $5 which includes the rental price of the monitor.
So how long until we get ipod connectors for samsung's machine gun sentry robots? They could even use that song "let the bodies hit the floor" in the commercial.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Don't airlines already have the same issue with laptops? Those have approximately the same angle from screen to the eyes of person next to you, especially in coach. My guess is it won't be an issue. Perhaps if a polite request doesn't make you stop, they can disable your screen from the front?
Are you kidding? The last movie I saw on an airplane was the Shaggy Dog remake...
If I'm going to plunge to earth from a mile above, I want to make damn sure that I'm watching a movie I picked. Or at least, not Shaggy Dog.
"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."
Oh noes! Now we will have MPAA Air martials watching for dvd-screeners and cams.
Why would this movie, or Alive, or even United 93 or Twin Towers be inappropriate? it's not like I'm going to show it to a hysteria-prone man on the brink of snapping and hijacking the plane. If I have it on my iPod I know what it's about and I maintain full control to turn off the movie at any time.
Gee, it's not like watching it is actually going to make snakes appear in the plane. Plus, I don't think it'd be nearly as bad as depicted in the movie.
And when we crash, we'll go down grooving.
How are they going to? They better not, well the adult stuff I can understand because it is not private viewing, but I certainly do not see a problem with other movies.
Stop doing the thought police's work for them, we do not need protecting from ourselfs... just our government. And even then, it is more that they should feel the need to protect themselves from their citizens (if they are doing wrong).
Why would this movie, or Alive, or even United 93 or Twin Towers be inappropriate? it's not like I'm going to show it to a hysteria-prone man on the brink of snapping and hijacking the plane.
Yeah, it's no more inappropriate than watching "The Towering Inferno" in a crowded theatre.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
How about by /asking/ people not to? Or a little sign that says, "Please be aware of your neighbors and/or their children, and do not watch video that may disturb them." Sheesh.
Offtopic, but - who's up for a "no kids" airline? I'd definitely pay an extra $10 per flight to ensure there aren't any crying babies onboard.
The concern would be the potential un-parental approved watching of movies by children. There are many movies that parents do not want their children exposed to at a too-young age. Some things are not age appropriate and sometimes children fly alone on planes, or the parents catch a nap in-flight, etc. I think you get the point.
"Personally, I prefer to not divert power from the plane's engines.
MY GOD, I had NO idea that iPods use enough power to tax a jetliner's engines. Do they require 3 phase power, or will they work from US standard 120/240 volt split phase power? How much do they cost to run for one month, assuming 6 hours of use a day and 10 cents per KWh?
You can get on a plane, open up your laptop and play inappropriate video right now. I don't think this has been a huge problem so far, and I don't see how ipod-seat-back-video makes this problem any worse.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
I wonder how the airlines are going to keep inappropriate video (i.e. porn or even just movies like "Snakes on a Plane" or "Alive") from appearing on the seat-back displays.
The same way they keep you from running up and down the plane mid-flight shouting "we're all gonna die!".
Besides, it's not even necessarily the passengers who rile up things. A few years ago I was on a plane waiting for take-off where the stewardess figured that the best solution to calm pre-take-off nerves would be to put on the radio through the cabin speakers. Much to her surprise, the song playing at that very moment was "killing me softly", and you can all have a guess which words came out of the speakers first...
I suspect that when the engines need the power, they'll take precedence. Sheesh, modern electronics do have a level of sophistication to them...
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Snakes on a Plane is an "airline disaster" movie of sorts. It might push people already apprehensive about flying over the edge, or it might end up scaring kids who happen to glance at the video, or the person watching might panic. It's not terribly unreasonable to keep such movies off the plane.
I'll wager they'll do it just the same way that they would handle a person that is playing inappropriate video on their 15" laptop sitting on the tray table in front of them. My guess is that would be to ignore it unless a passenger complains, then politely ask the viewer to turn it off.
Personally, were I a flight attendant, I would discreetly ask those around if it offended them. If it didn't, I'd ignore it.
The engines generate electricity much like the alternator in your car does. Yes, having a bigger alternator takes away some power from the engine. But if the engine is designed to handle the load of the alternator and still have plenty of power to do it's job, then there is no problem.
Power outlets and more TVs just require more juice than what was used in the past. People are plugging their laptops in and watching DVDs for entire flights. Charging a plane full of iPods seems rather trivial in comparison.
Anyone else just plain tired of Ipod monopoly showing up everywhere? What about those of us who have Cretative Zen Visions or other Video media players? Are we just screwed?
Stop catering to just one damn format.
I would just be happy if they made the seats big enough and with enough leg room so that I wouldn't feel like I'm packed in like a sardine. Anything else is just a way to distract us from thinking about how much flying sucks.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Um, dude, the screens are on the seat in front of you. They're on the back of the seat.
laptop use is slightly different. It's usually low enough and in a position that only someone sitting directly beside you or behind you (cracks in the seat) can see the crap you're watching. The screens on the seatbacks are up higher and at greater visability. I bet there's going to be at least one 733t dork who will feel it necessary to play a 0-day movie to show off his h@xor sk1llz.
this amount of stupidity usually requires a group of people
Not really. The iPod charger outputs a max. of 5v DC. Most laptop chargers output ~9-12v DC. Also, laptop chargers draw significantly more current than iPod chargers.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
... Microsoft to buy Quantas Airlines - Quantas will be first to have z00n wireless
This is a clever way for the airlines to bypass the MPAA's atrocious licensing fees for movies stored on the aircraft's entertainment system. If the airline doesn't 'own' the copy, they aren't responsible. I predict the MPAA will soon be having shit fits over this system.
What I've always found amusing is that CNN's "Airport Network" is really just CNN edited to not show any breaking airline disaster / hijacking etc. news. The end up subbing in entertainment, sports, and weather whenever there is breaking air-related bad news on CNN.
The poster uses "ie" to list inappropriate content for airplanes, but he is mistaken: instead, he wants "eg". "Ie" introduces an exhaustive list, or restates the category completely, whereas "eg" provides examples within the category. So, he gives the category as inappropriate content, and lists three possible types of inappropriate content, so he should use "eg".
The latin phrase for "eg" is "exempli gratia", or, in English, "gratuitous example", which is to say, an example which helps explain the intent of the sentence.
The latin phrase for "ie" is "id est", or, in English, literally "that is", which means you are restating the thing to make the intent clear.
I don't really blame the poster, who might not care about this distinction, a common mistake amongst Americans, but the Slashdot editors sure as hell should care, being that they are paid to provide that service. That's an old complaint, though, and it's fairly clear the editors don't care either.
Just as long as it doesn't lead to THIS!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
While "zoon" craters. I love it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's a nice thing to have, but would be far nicer if these manufacturers played nicely with each other and came up with standard connector and protocols for audio, video, etc. All the ridiculous proprietary formats are getting us nowhere (SOny, I'm looking at you). If you make one of these products, at least donate the patent on the format to the public domain to give some semblance of a willingness to compete.
pr0n instead of Monster, Inc.
According to this Dutch news site Air France and KLM said they were not aware of such a deal with them.
subsequent legislation to ban the playing of any movies with Leonardo DeCaprio or Shelly Winters has simultaniously been proposed!
The iPod - and the Walkman before it - in many ways replaced the boombox. No longer would travelers or commuters force their own choice of music on others. Exit audio pollution, hello visual pollution!
It seems people are increasingly ignoring those unwritten rules, not to mention the written ones.
I have to say, I really think the lack of courteousness is directly due to being crammed into a long, uncomfortable flight. Cram people into a box like an animal, and they're going to act like animals.
In other news, Australian airline Qantas has today solved U-Tube's problems related to sounding like YouTube by purchasing the "U" from their name. From now on, it's Quantas and -Tube.
WANRING: This warning is misspelt.
Incorrect. The newer, especially 5G, iPod spec states you can do anything between 12 and 30 VDC.
The reason for locking into the iPod is because the airlines will be buying equipment from the in-flight entertainment vendor that will include software to seamlessly interface with the iPod, ie, loading all the information of what you have on the iPod. They will authenticate and have access to iPod audio and video through the 30-pin connector on the bottom. The in-flight software will have a nice iPod-ish interface to access your device while your device sits in a cradle in the seatback in front of you.
Thats why it won't be universal, as you would have no way of knowing how to interface the UI in front of you with whatever device, format, size, filesystem, you had brought on board.
It would be theoretically possible to charge a laptop, very slowly, from this 30-pin header if you rolled your own interposer cable to translate the power over, but it won't output enough current to power your backlight at anything below very dim. If you were playing games of video, it wouldn't have a net charge from that cable.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
at least do it right: 1. Learn Latin so you understand the grammatical structure and meaning of the expression "exempli grata". 2. Learn how to spell: "i.e.", "e.g.". Without the abbreviating periods, the sequences of letters "ie", "eg" don't mean anything in English. "Latin" should be capitalized in English.
Only 10c/kWh? I knew we've been getting ripped off in Australia, paying some 15 or 18 cents per kWh, depending on where one lives. Oh, the kilowatt-hour should be abbreviated to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwh ...
WANRING: This warning is misspelt.
I wonder how the airlines are going to keep inappropriate video (i.e. porn or even just movies like "Snakes on a Plane [CC]" or "Alive [CC]") from appearing on the seat-back displays.
Yeah, we've only had portable DVD players for about eight years, so the issue has never come up before. I assume they'll put several viewing enforcement marshalls on every flight - that's the most straightforward answer, anyway.
-- Stop the violins!
I think your analogy is flawed.. While it is true that any AC generator could be called an alternator, this term is usually reserved for devices used in the automotive industry, specifically with internal combustion engines. A turbofan engine has much more in common with a gas-turbine engine, the output shaft of which is then connected to an electrical generator. Even still, this analogy is weak, as the primary use of a gas-turbine engine is to generate rotary power at the output shaft, while in a turbofan engine this power is put directly into increasing the airflow through the intake fan.
Your point however remains: the power requirements of a jetliner a large when compared to the power required to charge the passengers' iPods, and the vast majority of this power is reserved for thrust. Conventional turbofan engines are built with quite broad safety margins. I don't have a reference handy, but I'm sure the additional power requirements of charging these iPods would be negligible in most of the requirements calculations.
Aikon-
some terrorist plot to blow up 10 airplanes mid-atlantic using consumer electronic devices is busted last-minute.
Then flying will again suck even more.
every ten minutes when they announce that the beverage cart will be starting soon? That's one reason I prefer my own entertainment device: I decide when to hit pause.
I wonder how the airlines are going to keep inappropriate video (i.e. porn or even just movies like "Snakes on a Plane" or "Alive") from appearing on the seat-back displays.
I would imagine in the same way they keep people from reading hustler magazines on the flights - social humiliation and common decency. Besides, in this post 9/11 world, you *really* don't want to mess with flight attendants.
Personally I want my iPod powered by engine bleed. Integrated armrest micro-turbines.
Having flown recently in cattle-class, I think you'd actually need to have the display on the seat in front of the guy infront of you (say that fast). The seats are so close together that when the person in front of you leans back the measily 2-3 inches they give you, you won't have enough room to see your display worth a darn, or without needing a chiropractor. But as long as the guy infront of you keeps from reading anything you have a nice view of the seat in front of him.
My girlfriend already saw 'Alive' on a plane as part of the usual entertainment program on board a few years ago.
Funny thing is that she actually was on a flight over the Andes, from Argentina to Chile with a local airline.
Airbus is a rather diseased company from a business standpoint, but they do make nice planes. Some people like riding them even better than Boeing aircraft. My brother flies to the Far East a lot, and he usually prefers to go the "wrong" way around the globe with a stop in Europe, just so he can fly on Airbus for some (or all) of the trip.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If you are anywhere near as tall as it sounds like you are, you should probably request an exit row.
Not only do you get lots of leg-room, but your display monitor is on this little flip-up arm, which you can tilt to just the angle you want.
Also, if there's an emergency, you get to decide who lives and who dies!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm on track to fly about 100,000 miles this calendar year, maybe more. I almost never go to the movies, largely because I know I'll see them all on planes. It's gotten to the point where I'll see a movie on an intercontinental flight one week, the be disappointed by it being on other flights in subsequent weeks, since I've already seen it.
(In-flight magazines also get really old, really fast, when you're doing several flights on an airline in the space of a month.)
Being able to bring a bunch of my own video on my iPod - and charge it to boot - sounds like a great deal to me. I've been flying one of Continental/KLM/Air France's partner airlines, so I hope that one will get on board also.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
It's not the inappropriate videos we should worry about... it's the new undercover MPAA air marshals who will be watching out for anyone allowing other passengers to see any movie that they haven't paid to see. There will be a new MPAA box for you to deposit $5 into on your way off the plane if you watched the movie on the screen of the person next to you... The marshals are watching, you'd better pay up!
Apple says this will start in "mid 2007". The first A380 is scheduled for delivery in October 2007, assuming they don't have any more delays. (It has slipped several times, and for over a year; it's like Vista...)
But the first A380 will be for Signapore, which is not one of Apple's 6 launch customers. The first A380 going to an iPod-integration airline will be Emirates, which gets its first A380 in 2008, followed by Air France, in 2009. None of the other 4 Apple partners are A380 customers.
To compare, *all 6* of Apple's launch customers are 747 customers, and several of them have been for decades.
So no, he's not forgetting Airbus. This won't be on an A380 for a while.
I doubt they'll even do that. The iPod Dock Connector has pins for video and audio out and serial in, so I'd imagine that they will just display whatever the iPod wants on the screen and provide the same form of input from the remote control that existing iPod remotes do.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
As does Air France. Google's English translation here.
For example, how long is it going to take to get everyone on and off one of the A380s?
According to what I've read, the 380 can board both decks simultaneously via separate bridges, as long as you set up the terminal to take advantage of both entrances.
So yeah, you've got 555 passengers in three seating classes, but half of them will go in through another gate, so it should, in theory, board faster than a 747.
As for baggage handling... I find it hard to conceive of how anybody could handle baggage loading and unloading more poorly than the typical American airport. It would probably be faster to just make everybody walk their bags out on to the tarmac and hand them to a porter before climbing a portable staircase up in to the plane.
At some airlines, it's so bad that you can be the last one off the plane, walk for 10 minutes to the baggage claim area, and still be forced to wait a half-hour or so for the little chute to crap your bag out onto the carrousel. What were the baggage people doing when the plane was just sitting there at the terminal for the 15 minutes before they let you out???
To make matters worse, by allowing large-ish carry-on bags in overhead bins, you guarantee that every... last... person will stand in the middle of the aisle, blocking everybody else from boarding and de-boarding, while they monkey around with a small suitcase they can barely hold over their heads, let alone manipulate into a tight-fitting compartment. At a half-minute each for a few hundred people, that adds up to a lot of wasted time. But getting rid of that "feature" is not an option, because checked baggage is such a major pain in the ass that anybody on a trip for a long weekend or less is going to want avoid checking a bag entirely by hauling their entire lives with them on to the plane.
If I owned an airline, everything would be structured around making sure you got your bags back right away. Then I'd bolt the overhead compartments shut, and allow nothing in the passenger section bigger than a laptop bag unless you buy another seat for it. Flight attendants would consider it part of their job to forbid people from standing still in the aisles while people are trying to get in and out of the plane.
Get in, get out, grab your bags, and be driving out of the airport less 10 minutes after the plane touched down on the runway. That would be my idea of a perfect airline. Bus terminals do it every day (although on a much smaller scale). Why can't the airlines get this right?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Its called capitalism. Apple has approached them with a joint marketing deal most likely.
I was thinking about how MS might want to work a similar deal to allow people to use their Zunes on airplanes, but then I realized that the airlines might not want people running wireless devices of any kind on an airplane.
It seems like this is a huge win for Apple, as the iPod has no embedded wireless features that might screw with the plane's electronics.
Does anyone know if people will even be allowed to use Zunes on airplanes? Or is there a setting to turn off the wireless capabilities while on airplanes? And will people actually find and use that setting?
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rankings/stateelectric ityprice.htm
I currently pay about 10 cents per kilowatthour (it varies). US residential electricity rates averaged about 10 US cents per kilowatthour in 2004. Hawaii was the most expensive at over 18 cents per kilowatthour. In 1980 I paid just over 1 cent per kilowatthour in Sacramento, CA (SMUD).
Auckland to Heathrow = approx 25 hours, depending where they refill the plane's tanks.
Of course you might be able to recharge the Nano while you're waiting the couple of hours in the transit lounge, depending on the lounge.
Well, at least in Canada, the baggage handlers generally are unionized and work for the airport, not for the airlines. So as an airline you don't have much influence over what goes on there.
It was a joke :).
There is always going to be the guy who wants his slasher picture and to hell with you.
Or the Little Blue Haired church lady or evangelical who thinks you are going to hell because it's something on Cartoon Network -- take your pick.
99% of what I watch would offend at least half of the people on any given plane.
>> I think a better option is to use technology. Flat panels have been working hard to make the grills on their screens thinner to increase the field of view on the displays. It should be easy to reverse the process, and make a thicker grill so that anything 5 degrees or more "off axis" will not be seen.
So nobody in the seat next to you can see.
What can we do for the people behind you? Or the kids who want to peak? Perhaps add a paralax, or create a focal length to the screen -- though this would be a bit trickier. Not so hard if they adopted real 3D screens that have been designed.
I suppose you can make the grills deep and thin, and angle them at a region 2" to 8" wide (range for the two eyes in a moving head) so that any view beyond or closer than the "sweet spot" will have most of the view obscured by tilted grills -- so two feet behind, someone would see only a vertical strip comprising 10% of the screen.
Either that, or bring back the liquid crystal glasses that flash in sync to the screen -- or just put a privacy screen between seats (cheapest of all).
>> Anyway, technology is going to introduce an annoying situation, so technology must be tasked with solving it. Otherwise granny is going to have an issue with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (of course, so would I).
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
If it's pr0n, they'll tell you to put it away, just like they would if you were "reading" Hustler, or something like that. Otherwise, they're most likely not going to bother. Nobody complained when I watched Airplane! on a flight back east earlier this year. :-)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
As for cramped, that's simply so because given a choice about paying more for more space, people tend to, in practice, go for less-space-but-cheaper nearly all the time, atleast aslong as they're actually paying for it. (business-trips is another matter, apparently the extra space/service is worth it when your company is paying....)
I actually prefer to be able to travel, be it in a tin can, then to not travel at all. Here in Brazil the air tickets are simply too expensive relative to the salary people get. I don't mind being in an uncomfortable chair for 10 to 12 hours so I can see Europe. :-) I only wish I could do it more often, I only did it once. :-P
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
iBlinders - similar to the kind they use to block a horse's peripheral vision.
There's discount-airlines doing Brazil-Germany now, from 149 euro. Look around. (no idea how much money 149 euros is in terms of working-hours at brazilian salaries)
We must realize that this will not stop at iPods. Necessary adaptors will emerge, and people will be bringing their Wiis and XBox 360s onboard Boeing craft in no time. But wait, it doesn't have to stop there. In order to impose any form of content control, the entire system of iPod-to-screens will need to be centrally wired. That means dozens of iPods, all on a central network. All you really have to do from then on is bring your laptop, an enormous external hard drive, and the right cables, and you're in business. The selection of movies and music will be nothing short of impressive. And if you get bored with that... well... who says you can't hack a 747?
149 is around R$412.00 witch in terms of movies tickets in the weekend (cost R$16.00) would account for 15 or 16 theater trips. This money would also buy you the hole collection of the hitchhikers guide to galaxy (5 books for R$79.60) 5 times. Not sure if this helps very much to get the grip of the buying power of 149 here. The price we would pay is correspondent to 162 movies or 32 Douglas Adams collections.
Some funny facts about Brazil air travel:
(*) Mulatas is the Portuguese for a girl that is mixed from black and white, they have a very dark tan. But it also means a Mulata girl that dances the samba in several shows that appeal mainly for the foreigners or as we say "gringos".
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
I look around the Web and what you see is a massive inventory of user genertaed content and then a much smaller inventory of good, indie content. Apple needs to be an advocate of these great spots -- like "PS3 vs. Wii" or "modern man: what do you do with the load". Both are hilarious and a step above the voyueristic stuff that has long since gotten a bit old. Apple...take the lead