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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.
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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.
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?
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 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.
"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,
Pretty much the same way they keep your from looking at Penthouse centerfolds or playing porn on your mini DVD player. Social pressure plus, I'd assume, a polite (at least initially) request from the crew. In this case, it works. There's nothing new here in this respect.
.sig withheld by request
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...
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.
Video iPod - $250
Label Maker - $27
Scaring the crap out of unsuspecting passengers with the new "pilot's view display" and footage from the nose of a cruise missle - Priceless.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
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
... 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.
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.
not that it would matter, but: YES
According to this Dutch news site Air France and KLM said they were not aware of such a deal with them.
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.
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!
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.
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!
How to keep inappropriate content off seatback displays?
One word : Tasers.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
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?
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