In Flight Entertainment Systems (IFE)

[BCL]

Early front projection screens were horrible. The washed out visuals, clumsy pulldown screens, air tube audio, and limited content left a lot to be desired. The 1990's-era AVOD systems were a major improvement by comparison. These days it's the excessive advertising and forced freezing during every public address that annoys me.

I remember back in the late 80s and early 90s (before high def) I heard some AV shop employee claiming that a fancy front projector with a line doubler was as close to movie theater quality as possible. But now I've got just a basic 55" LCD and there is no way anything from the 90s that cost $25K to set up comes even close to the picture quality.

I do remember my first flight in a 747-400, and I believe that was a combination of front projection and CRTs popping down from the ceiling. I found a photo from Boeing of a typical armrest display from a 747-400. Obviously in first or business the additional legroom makes it difficult to see what's on a seatback display. There were a bunch of different ways to do this. I believe a lot of bulkhead seats also have displays and trays popping out of the armrest area, where they're stowed away under a hatch or lid.

But I still don't like a screen in the back of a seat. Personal devices are just better for that.

 

[MARC Rider]

Seatback displays are horrible, especially if the seat leans back. I know some can tilt a little, but it's not great. I always preferred the ones that came out of the armrest. These are often found in bulkhead or exit row seats. Sometimes in business or first.

This might be a matter of personal taste. I had no problem with a seatback display on my long international flight. On shorter domestic flights, I really don't care, as I can use my device perfectly well, and mainly what I look at is the free moving map, so I can assure myself that the hell I'm enduring will be over soon enough.

 

[adamj023]

Usually it's something like jazz music but sometimes it's set to air traffic control. The last time I was on a UA flight I was unsure how to bring up CH9 anymore. I think it only works with pre-2010 UA specific hardware.


Personal IFE systems include a substantial weight penalty that can push some flights into the red.


Early front projection screens were horrible. The washed out visuals, clumsy pulldown screens, air tube audio, and limited content left a lot to be desired. The 1990's-era AVOD systems were a major improvement by comparison. These days it's the excessive advertising and forced freezing during every public address that annoys me.

Disagree on weight penalty. The technology industry has evolved to the point you can have a very low cost, lightweight and low electrical usage system for creating a scaled down IFE system with low installation costs as well. Ad revenue would exceed these costs. In the old days there was a substantial weight penalty with extremely heavy CRT screens or projectors and large equipment needed just for having movies on board the planes.

I still remember the days of Pan Am and TWA flying 747 classics from NY to California. Now its all much smaller Boeing or Airbus jets with a lot newer and personalized IFE systems. Some carriers seem to be doing Wifi only like Spirit and American Airlines on some of their planes and routes but the reason is not due to weight penalties. It likely has to do with getting the jets into service more quickly and perhaps dissatisfaction by consumers with having the seatback IFE onboard.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I remember back in the late 80s and early 90s (before high def) I heard some AV shop employee claiming that a fancy front projector with a line doubler was as close to movie theater quality as possible.

I believe this was correct back in the analog home movie era, but it required precisely calibrated hardware, a special projector and screen, a carefully mastered Laserdisc, and a very dark environment.

Disagree on weight penalty. The technology industry has evolved to the point you can have a very low cost, lightweight and low electrical usage system for creating a scaled down IFE system with low installation costs as well. Ad revenue would exceed these costs. In the old days there was a substantial weight penalty with extremely heavy CRT screens or projectors and large equipment needed just for having movies on board the planes.

I agree that weight and volume penalties have substantially improved but fuel costs, passengers-per-area, and weight-per-passenger have also increased considerably, leaving a limited margin for IFE hardware. I'm not sure how much money can be made through advertising but industry articles make it sound like it barely covers the content.

Some carriers seem to be doing Wifi only like Spirit and American Airlines on some of their planes and routes but the reason is not due to weight penalties. It likely has to do with getting the jets into service more quickly and perhaps dissatisfaction by consumers with having the seatback IFE onboard.

I cannot speak about Spirit/Allegiant/Frontier but American had at least two subfleets with fully functioning AVOD. If expediency was the goal they could turned them off and covered them up but they spent time and money to permanently remove them. When asked about this AA's President specifically mentioned weight and efficiency.

 

[BCL]

I believe this was correct back in the analog home movie era, but it required precisely calibrated hardware, a special projector and screen, a carefully mastered Laserdisc, and a very dark environment.

I saw a setup under those conditions and it really wasn't that good. My two year old 55" 4K LCD is better in every way other than I can't project it larger. It also has way better off-axis performance than older flatscreens (plasma used to be preferred for that). And an iPad closer up is even better in terms of resolution and color rendition.

However, that was in the early 90s, and the technology has gotten so much better and so much cheaper. We still don't have those wall TVs in every home like in Back to the Future 2 (and where are those flying cars?) but video quality is just so much better now.

 

[adamj023]

I believe this was correct back in the analog home movie era, but it required precisely calibrated hardware, a special projector and screen, a carefully mastered Laserdisc, and a very dark environment.


I agree that weight and volume penalties have substantially improved but fuel costs, passengers-per-area, and weight-per-passenger have also increased considerably, leaving a limited margin for IFE hardware. I'm not sure how much money can be made through advertising but industry articles make it sound like it barely covers the content.


I cannot speak about Spirit/Allegiant/Frontier but American had at least two subfleets with fully functioning AVOD. If expediency was the goal they could turned them off and covered them up but they spent time and money to permanently remove them. When asked about this AA's President specifically mentioned weight and efficiency.

American Airlines added a denser Oasis configuration with less seat room for economy which is why they didn’t cover them up. They wanted to profit more by getting more revenue on the plane, ie shrink seats for economy and get more profit on upper class revenue. And this revenue would have been substantial for them. So implement quickly and bypass Seatback IFE. To their credit though, more planes do have upgraded Wifi. The original Gogo wifi on mainline was poor from what I’ve heard and it since has moved over to faster satellite based systems. Gogo still is used on regional flights.

From a consumer perspective, an AA flight without seatback IFE is fine on a shorter flight as you can just stream from tablet, laptop or phone and get live tv or other content. On longer flights like international or longer domestic I believe they have the seatback IFE. Jetblue started seatback IFE without having internet on board so no wifi back then But that has since been added. Wifi is a lot more flexible for content.

 

[jis]

Apparently United passengers spoke loudly and wanted seat back screens, and United is obliging in a nig way...

https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2021/06/28/united-next-embedded-ife/
Apparently this will be in addition to streaming services as they are over WiFi.

 

[west point]

Inflight entertainment systems = a pain in the a**! Our L1011s had a multiplex system designed in the 1970s. Every seat, movies and entertainment channels, FA station, and others had an encoder with every reading light, air vent, movie control and other items had a receiver. You can just imagine the problems. Let it get out of sync ( easy if too many requests at same time ) and your button might change someone's vent channel somewhere across the aisle.

The movie projector was real 16mm film. Imagine the film on about a 30 inch cassette that was inserted into each of 3 projectors. The soundtrack was on the film as standard. The sound exciter light was always burning out so I quickly picked up spares to replace burn outs. As well if the sound became garbled our guys quickly found out that an artist' brush inserted in the sound lens would brush away the accumulated dust and tobacco smoke.

Resetting the system was easy but I always defined a trip without more than one trip to the cabin every 45 minutes as a good trip.

 

[BCL]

The movie projector was real 16mm film. Imagine the film on about a 30 inch cassette that was inserted into each of 3 projectors. The soundtrack was on the film as standard. The sound exciter light was always burning out so I quickly picked up spares to replace burn outs. As well if the sound became garbled our guys quickly found out that an artist' brush inserted in the sound lens would brush away the accumulated dust and tobacco smoke.

Ah - 16mm. Good times.

I'm from an era where we still had 16mm film used in schools, and the standard projector was a portable Bell & Howell machine that folded into a box the size of briefcase. We had a library of films, although often they were 20-25 years old. My dad rented one a few times and showed some films on the wall at home. But a lot of old reels were scratched up and sometimes repaired with missing segments.

 

[Dakota 400]

Ah - 16mm. Good times.

I'm from an era where we still had 16mm film used in schools, and the standard projector was a portable Bell & Howell machine that folded into a box the size of briefcase.

For many years when I was teaching, I used a 16 mm Bell & Howell projector. Good times? Not always. When the film started to "chatter" as it went through the projector and I couldn't get it to stop. (Most of the times, I was successful, but there was a couple of inopportune times when I couldn't.) And, then, there was the time that for some reason as the film was going through the projector and something in the projector started to cause the film to split down the middle. That happened when I was a student teacher; my supervising teacher was rather unhappy with me that morning.

 

[jis]

MODERATOR'S Note: Slight nudge back to inflight entertainment systems

 

[Dakota 400]

I often have difficulty in using In Flight Entertainment systems. I can get something started OK, but, then trying "to surf" the system to see what else I might want to watch: often, I am unsuccessful. During a Singapore Airlines flight, the system kept freezing. The Flight Attendant for my section tried each time to get it back up; twice, she was successful. The final time, it just wouldn't work. After we landed at Hong Kong and the flight resumed, it came back on. I set it to the program I wanted (the map showing the flight path/details) and left the darn thing alone.

 

[BCL]

For many years when I was teaching, I used a 16 mm Bell & Howell projector. Good times? Not always. When the film started to "chatter" as it went through the projector and I couldn't get it to stop. (Most of the times, I was successful, but there was a couple of inopportune times when I couldn't.) And, then, there was the time that for some reason as the film was going through the projector and something in the projector started to cause the film to split down the middle. That happened when I was a student teacher; my supervising teacher was rather unhappy with me that morning.

You didn't sense the dripping sarcasm?

And yeah I remember when the film broke and even was spliced on the spot just to get it to work. I think I might have seen it at least once where it got stuck and started melting the film when the heat of the projector bulb was too much when it wasn't moving. I could certainly feel the heat putting my hand near the projector. At least at school the projector cart usually carried a spare bulb because they burned out quite often.

Not sure what would be done today if someone wanted to make a new projector to view archived (or even new) film. Possibly use an LED source which would be a lot cooler and more reliable. Apparently there are some direct LED replacements for those old bulbs.

Not sure what they would do about all this inside a plane, especially if the projector is in some hidden location. It would be a huge pain to get into anything buried.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Thought it was funny that I saw this article not long after I posted Jamie’s anticipated flight pattern

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/airline-route-maps/index.html

 

[west point]

We had a few guys that carried film splicing kits. That was not me! Too fumble fingered.

 

[BlackDiamond]

I only use the airline IFE to view the map to see where we are, altitude, airspeed, etc. My "IFE" is usually a good book, such as one of the Patrick O'Brian Captain Aubrey novels.

 

[jis]

In addition to the moving map display, there are some airlines who also present video channels from a front facing and sometimes additionally, downward facing cameras, among their offerings as part of their IFE. Typically they were/are to be found in A380s and B748s. I remember being mesmerized by those during daylight hours on my flights on Lufthansa A380s (FRA-DEL) and B748s (FRA-ORD), way more than the moving maps. I believe those channels are available in all classes. I was in Lufthansa Business Class, upper deck on the A380, and in the lower deck portion of BC on the 748.