We weren't just
talking with Sir Richard and crashing the first class cabin on yesterday's Virgin America flight, we also spent some quality time with the in-flight RED entertainment system. The experience shows a lot of promise, and offers up a hefty helping of media, interaction and convenience, easily besting other seat back offerings we've played with. There are also plenty of rough edges and features yet to be enabled, so we look forward to playing with RED in a year or so, once everything's up and running. Our in-depth impressions are after the break.
Overview
Let's start from the start. Once you tap the main screen, you're prompted with this usage policy. Nothing outlandish, but a reminder that you'll be bumping into fellow passengers in chat rooms, and your neighbors can see what you're playing on your screen, so use discretion.
In case you're not familiar with the hardware behind this system, you might want to check out our previous
hands-on with the plane, where we get more involved with the behind the curtains stuff. In a nutshell, every seat back has its own little Linux computer, built by Panasonic, running on an AMD Geo processor. You can use the touchscreen or a USB remote / gamepad / keyboard to control the system, and media is served up off of one of three on-board file servers, along with the satellite TV decoders for live TV. In-flight transactions are routed through a Sprint connection with the ground, and credit card data is stored in flash memory for the flight.
One of the basic functions the system serves is as an interactive in-flight trip tracker. RED has Google's map tiles stored on-board.
If you get confused by the system, which is pretty unlikely, you can pop open this handy user's guide.
Accessible from anywhere on the system is the main menu, which lets you access the main functions of the device, which are as follows:
Watch
It would hardly be a 21st century airplane without in-flight movies, and RED has plenty of that. The options are pretty straight forward: "Movies" takes you to pay-per-view moves stored on the plane, "Music Videos" has a selection of free vids, "TV" plays live Dish Network TV, "Premium TV" allows you to purchase TV shows for a couple bucks a pop, and multi-lingual TV gives you access to free foreign TV shows.
Seven rows of five movies each adds up to around 35 titles so far for your viewing pleasure. Newer titles go for $8, while classics run at $6. Purchasing a movie is a breeze, you just tap the title to view a description, tap a purchase button if you're ready to go all the way, and then swipe your card below the screen to pay up.
Quality certainly isn't near HD, which is disappointing given the 1024 x 600 display resolution, but it's passable. There weren't really any load times to speak of, which is nice for something streaming off of a server, but the playback controls were pretty rough: fast forward and rewind only serve to jump you back a certain chunk of seconds at a time, so skimming through the first 10 minutes of Die Hard, which we had accidentally restarted, was a painful process. The snazziest part is the picture-in-picture mode for when you're ordering food, which we seem to have misplaced our photo of.
The satellite TV program guide is nice, if lacking in comprehensiveness, but the crappy video quality and occasionally video drops are quite on par with other airline offerings.
Premium TV could certainly use some more selections, but price is acceptable and we're closet Jericho junkies, so it's all good.
Multi-lingual TV is, well, multi-lingual. We hear that whole "foreign language" thing plays well with the international types.
Listen
Yeah, the initial music menu certainly looks bare, but there's good stuff underneath.
We hit the "All Artists" button, which turned out to be a mistake.
There are hundreds of artists, and while the interface is decently responsive, it still took us over a minute to make it to the D section, where we gave up.
Luckily the first four letters of the alphabet include artists like Bert and Ernie, Daft Punk and David Bowie, so it really wasn't a huge deal.
Once you tap an artist, you get a selection of their tracks which you can either play right there or add to your playlist. The scroll bar is a little wonky, but overall it wasn't too hard to build up a decent collection of tracks.
The playlist editor is quite functional for re-ordering and removing tracks.
When the bottom menubar is in "Media Player" mode, you get this "My Media" option to let you switch between different media you've been playing.
We're not really into the randomness of radio, but there's a decent collection of stations for most tastes if that's more your style.
Play
Other than Doom, we didn't really spend much time with these open source knockoff games, we guess we'll just have to save that for our next cross continent Virgin America flight. They don't look horrible, just uninspired.
Luckily, Doom is the real deal.
Turns out it's a bit difficult to shoot back while you're taking pictures.
Overall, Doom's a blast. The controls are a little loose at the moment, the framerate stutters just a bit, and we didn't find the gamepad completely comfortable to use for such shooting purposes, but it still feels like a monumental achievement to get this kind of game built into an airplane, and it's certainly playable.
Talk
We could easily see Talk becoming one of our favorite in-flight features. Currently the Email & Text Message option is disabled, since there's no internet on the plane yet -- you'll have to wait until next year -- but the rest of the chat functions worked just great.
Flight attendants have mod privileges, but you've got to pretty much expect an anything goes scenario. If that's not your style, you can set preferences to reject chat invitations and keep to yourself.
We chose "paul" for a screenname, being the creative passengers we are.
Nobody was in the chat room, so we created a "fred" user for the seat next to us.
Fred and Paul chilled out in the TV Chat room, watching ESPN. Neither of 'em had anything to say about Barry Bonds. We're pretty stoked about TV chat, and it works as advertised, but the drawback to all of these chat features is that your enjoyment is contingent on other passengers using them as well.
Like we said, Email & Text Messaging is currently disabled.
ReadOnce this option is available you'll be able to buy and read ebooks in-flight, and we think certain news sources will be available as well.
Eat
The Eat menu was really a breeze to use. Just select the category, select what you want, pay and enjoy!
We chose drinks. Soft drinks and water are free, adult beverages will cost you.
We chose the Scotch. After you tap the add to cart button, you can either continue shopping or go straight to checkout.
You just tap pay, and then swipe your credit card below the screen or through the USB controller.
And now it's on the way. Theoretically. For the inaugural flight the attendants weren't fulfilling purchases, since people were just messing around with the system, and credit cards weren't being charged for media or snack purchases.
ShopAnother menu option that's not ready for prime time yet, but apparently you'll have a Sky Mall-esque catalog to order from, and orders will be "pushed" to the ground while in flight.
Kids Play
This menu collects all the various child-friendly content on RED into screen.
You can limit the movie selection of your kid, but once you set it you'll have to ask a flight attendant to remove the restriction if you change your mind.
Quicknav
Quicknav simply allows you to see all the various menu option in one screen. Pretty convenient, but it's not like the menus are hard to get around anyways.
Settings
Yeah, that game invite option? Doom multiplayer is on the way. Otherwise the options are limited, but there's really not much to set. If you want to set screen brightness the control is below the screen.
We tapped the "Login" button, which is currently disabled, and managed to crash the system. We tried to reproduce the error, but weren't able to.
Controller / keyboard
The USB remote / keyboard / credit card reader / handset is built into your seat's armrest.
There are basically two modes for two types of users. You can use this remote side to control RED like you would a TV at home, tap the food button for making orders and just generally be a newb about it. Or...
You can flip the remote over and be faced with a full QWERTY keyboard and gamepad, for enjoying the further features of RED.
Behind the scenes
You won't normally see this on your flight, but this is what the flight attendants are faced with when you make an order. They can also enter, revise and cancel orders from this screen.
There are also controls for the rest of the entertainment options in the cabin.
Be nice to your attendants, they have the power to reset!
For the inaugural flight we had tech support on board to troubleshoot problems and monitor system load -- everything went smoothly for the most part.
Flight attendants are also equipped with this wireless tablet for taking orders from passengers that don't want do their own ordering from RED. The tablet is pretty much a mirror of the one we saw in the back of the plane, so system reset functions are also available for the attendant on the go.
That's it, thanks for reading this far. Before we sign off, above is hands down our favorite feature on this airplane: USB charging plug and a real, live AC plug. There's really no reasonable excuse for current airlines not to have standard power plugs, and once you go AC it's hard to go back.
posted Aug 10th 2007 12:45PM
That looks awesome! Tons of neat features on there! Great review engadget!
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http://filelime.com
Great article. Can't wait try them out specially when internet becomes available.
are the power plugs capped when not in use? I'm waiting for the first kid to electrocute themselves sticking a toy in one...
Sorry, no gonna happen. the outlets are GFI protected... and have limits - only 75W, so no hair dryers, pouring coke into the outlet just shuts it down, and sticking tweezers in does likewise.
My next flight will be on Virgin America.... The AC plug makes it so worth it!
I was recently on a Delta flight and snagged a picture of the entertainment screen booting Linux. pretty cool
More pictures.
Goddamn that sounds awesome. Can you tell us how much the flight cost you guys?
Last time I travelled Virgin Atlantic the 747 had the V:Port system. No touch screen, but 50 odd movies on demand, loads of tv and music on demand, and, best of all, snes games, lots of snes games! All free.
Great article. I'm actually looking forward to flying Virgin America to Vegas later this year.
Oh that is SO cool.
And YES you little smartasses, IT RUNS DOOM!!
It makes me want o fly again!
well that's fine and good if it plays DOOM
...but WILL IT BLEND?!?!?!!!!
Holy crap. I've never wanted to fly more in my life.
What's with the virginity pledge??
Fares right now are pretty competitive. NYC to SF is $149 OW for coach. First class is $449.
http://www.virginamerica.com/va/search.do?method=landingFlight&tripType=rt
wish they flew to/from more cities... :(
Am I the only one who saw 'beta' in really teeny letters and nearly nose-shot his beer?
(I know, I know...it's a test version for the 1st flight, but bloody -everything's- in beta these days...)
on my recent china eastern airlines flight from shanghai to JFk they also had AC plugs
Woo hoo. I really don't see the big deal here. I flew American and they had the flight tracker and I was able to select movies. Chat with other passengers *may* be kind of cool but the only thing I really see here that may make for an enjoyable flight is the food and drink ordering.
Maybe I missed it, but they should have team games say trivia type games that various rows of passengers could compete against. That would be cool if others played.
You should also check out the in-seat screens that Air Canada Embraer 190s. They've just much of the same functionality as the RED system (no food ordering, chat functionality or live TV) but everything is free and I found it to be a very useful system for my weekly flights between Toronto and Seattle over a 3 month period.
Oh yeah, they also have AC power for each grouping of seats (2 per side), THAT was AWESOME!
I'm flying to Tokyo in 2 weeks and wished I had access to that system onboard. That truly looks lke fun. Doom, mack on female passengers in other rows in chat, it's all there!
Nice, the flight attendants get Motion slate tablets for use. GREAT product!
Those movie rates are insane. This system is cool and all, but I've been on flights, even 3+ years ago, that gave you a bunch of movies to select from and play on demand and it was all free. I'd have a hard time paying for it. I guess with the AC plug and a laptop you don't have to pay for anything though...
True and True....
Wonder if acess to the intenet is free?
hehe unmeterd satellite....NOTHING CAN STOP ME NOW!!!! *starts to dll interwebs*
All in all I guess for an American airline (owned by a Brit) its a pretty good system.
However, living in Singapore, and flying Singapore Airlines (SIA)at least once a month throughout Asia, they have had a similar system (KrisWorld)in place for at least the past 10 years, currently they have 80 movies available on demand (all free). In seat power has also been available for some time. In fact SIA were the first airline in the world to have individual in seat entertainment.
Infact, SIA are currently upgrading KrisWorld in all classes. First gets a 23" LCD screen, Business gets a 15.4" LCD screen and Economy a 10.6"LCD screen (full details can be found here, http://www.singaporeair.com/saa/en_UK/content/exp/new/index.jsp).
I guess its about time the US airlines caught up with the best airlines in the world, but, its taken a Brit to do it!
Virginity Pledge???
wow...you guys weren't kidding. This thing really runs Doom!
flying will actually be fun now...and this will at least temporarily make up for the fact that we don't have commercial supersonic flight in the year 2007!
I cannot belive I'm saying this, but AC plug will be my reason for an airline switch.
The Brazilian airline TAM has a similar system on their international flights. On demand movies and tv shows all free.
Wait... is this in economy class? Or in Business/First only?
If it's in Economy, then that makes Virgin pretty much THE BEST AIRLINE EVER. IN SEAT ORDERING AND FREE COKE!
I've recently flown with Virgin Atlantic, and even though it were 14- and 6-hour flights, I felt like the one on 6 hours were a bit too short, as their entertainment center (the ones they have in the Airbus 340-600) had so much stuff I would've liked to see.
Virgin is the only transatlantic airline I'll be using from here on out.
I hope someone from Virgin or other airlines (this looks nearly identical to the US Airways system that's being installed in 2008) are reading this!! I hope that if this goes into all planes that all magazines are removed, to save weight and thus fuel costs. Carrying 6 pounds of magazines around in every seat of hundreds of thousands of planes each day has get to cost a fortune in fuel... and isn't too great for the environment either.
I almost think that the seatback entertainment systems aren't necessary with most everyone having their own laptops and handhelds. Just think, in about 2 years when all phones are iphone-ish and you can use wifi on a plane, just tell passengers to browse to the inflight webpage with their phone or laptop and now you don't need magazines or seatback systems - saving another 10 pounds per seat. Saving fuel is the goal here.
Now if only all the passengers could lose 20 pounds off their butts... and on shorter flights you could grab your drink bottle and snacks before you get on the plane, you could save a lot of storage bins and heavy fluids and ice too... more weight saved!
$8 to watch a movie on a plane, thats got to be a joke.
Isn't that about the price of buying a DVD in the states nowadays?
Sounds promising. The best in-flight entertainment system I have ever used was in an Emirates flight. They had over 500 movies for you to pick, and number of other video and audio of various genre. They also have the usual current location map overlay, view from a camera facing front, another camera facing down etc. This was in 2005.
Linux.
I like it.
does anyone know what kind of speed the network has? what wires does it use?
"Hacks on a plane" an upcoming movie be Virgin Airlines America
....dude if they can out linux on it someone can hack it, if they encrypt credit card info someone can decrypt it.
Basically your inviting a hacker into a LAN full of innocent people and sensitive information, it gets so much worse when your playing on their turf though. The way I see it is this a big juicy target for a man in the middle attack, unless they create some sort of authenticated Ethernet.
Personally I wouldn't let a credit card near it till i know i cant hack into it, but even then I'd be cautious I know very little in the way of penetration techniques compared to many of my friends.