Entertainment

Inflight entertainment is mostly pretty bad. That is, unless the airline has either invested in retrofitting their jets or outright bought new jets.

If you are the unfortunate many that prefer to travel with "legacy" carriers like Lufthansa or United, you will no doubt know that most of their jets have a central projector and the choices of entertainment are non existent.

However if you happen to travel with a broader set of carriers, then you must have seen the newer systems.

The best system I've experienced is on Singapore Airlines, but that was in First Class so let's exclude them.

Within the US, the best coach class entertainment system is with Delta. Virgin America, a new entrant, may have a better system. I'll fly them later this month and report back.

JetBlue is second best. Both Delta and JetBlue have live TV as well as movies, games and music. However, Delta's selection is better.

Alaska has done a smart job of introducing Digeplayers - digital entertainment systems that you can rent and place it on your seat back table to watch. It has a variety of movies, TV shows, games and more. However since it isn't attached to the seat, you have to close it down if you wish to use the seat back table for anything else. American Airlines is following suit, though only on their transcontinental flights.

The only system better than Delta's is Continental's on their 777-200. Only some of their jets have them. The system is very similar to what's found on Delta, only with far more options. More movies, more music and more games. It also appears to have been prepped for INTERNET access.

This all makes a lot of sense. The systems used by JetBlue, Continental and Delta run on a version of Linux, a computer operating system. Without digressing, I'll say that Linux is a powerful, yet cheap alternative to more traditional systems and thus allows an airline to experiment more freely with their options.

The ideal entertainment system, next ...

Why live TV on airplanes is bad ...

Ok TV sucks. That's not because of the technology or anything, it's just that there's rarely anything good on. So much so that with the abundance of channels that show nothing but nothing, people actually feel safe watching TV programs, for that connection to their reality.

Now that airlines like JetBlue and Delta have premiered DirecTV and Dish Network respectively, it brings about an interesting mix of experiences.

The novelty factor is astronomically high. Watching even 36 of those hundreds of channels while flying across the country is amazing.

You have the Food Network, NBC, Discovery and more.

Fly as often as I do and you'd probably do what you'd do at home - channel surf for a while. With at most 36 channels, you'd likely soon tire and turn off the TV.

However even if you were to keep flipping channels, you'd become aware of an interesting problem with live broadcast TV - it was designed to be viewed by a stationary TV.

When you fly across the country, or for that matter, the world, the jet passes over vast tracts of land where the only residents are bison or mustangs, or rattlesnakes. The cable companies don't cover these regions, and if there is coverage, it's because of the spill over from a nearby satellite.

During these times, you have the dubious pleasure of flipping through frozen channels at best, and a "signal not found" message at worst.

It would make so much more sense for airlines to provide pre-recorded programming. From the perspective of the passenger, the majority of the programs are not time sensitive so even if it were to have been recorded earlier, the entertainment value would have been preserved.

So is live TV in jets about entertainment, or an addiction to real time information, like blackberries and cell phones?