This will be published well after its time of writing since I’m writing this in TextEdit.app as there’s no internet access on the plane (KLM 777-200). Or rather, there’s no internet access available to my MacBook. The seats have your usual long-haul flight built-in entertainment system but this one has SMS and e-mail as part of it. I’m not quite sure how it works, since one of my favourite things about long flights is that I can’t use SMS or e-mail so I’m not about to try it. The entertainment system also has video-on-demand built into it but it’s pretty slow. Nice collection of films though: lots of new ones like the Bridge to Terabithia, Zodiac and Number 23 as well as “classics” like 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, Chinatown, Coming to America, Trading Places… I love Eddie Murphy. Apparently whoever put this collection together does too. There are 21 “classic” films and I count 20% as Eddie Murphy movies. It also has some genuine “classics” like On the Waterfront and some not-so-genuine classics like Anger Management (2003).
Nice music collection too, from the Beatles to the Shins. All on-demand too! But it’s a little bit dodgy since the songs start about 15 seconds in. Some annoying usability problems too:
- Speed
- Speed (there should at least be a “loading” indicator or audio feedback to let you know your button pressed)
- I have to keep the remote detached from the arm-rest or my elbow keeps pausing/resuming the film.
- It shows time left to arrival while paused, but this is only updated when it’s resumed and paused again.
- The controls are all over the place and make very little sense. Sometimes you need the coloured buttons at the bottom (like green for “enter”) but other times, the right side of the D-Pad is “enter”.
- I’ve seen 3 people get the demonstration video confused with the real menu. They both look almost exactly the same and the D-pad doesn’t exit it… this time you need to use the red button.
- The earphone jack is actually 2 jacks. I have no idea why they did this. There are 2 mono jacks, about 1cm apart, and the special 2-jack airline-provided earphones plug in. If you want to use your own ones, they won’t fit in. I don’t think this incompatibility is anything got to do with people robbing the earphones because they’re pretty clearly disposable (pretty flimsy things). Anyway, they can’t be used in anything other than this plane and normal earphones can’t be used in this plane really. Sucks. that being said… my ER-6is get pretty painful after only about 30 minutes with anything other than the foam tips. They give me an hour or so before becoming painful. Next time I’m ignoring sound reproduction quality and going for comfort alone.
Usability aside, it’s a nice system just from the amount of stuff you can do with it. It does a Wii and you can turn the remote sideways to play games too.
Air hostesses are lovely. Of course they could be horrible and I just can’t see past their skin colour. いいな〜、日本。
Entertainment summary:
- Number 23 gets kinda boring once you get past the whole “wow, everything is 23″ thing.
- Forrest Gump loses a lot in translation to Japanese.
- Death Note movie sucks. The writers decided to end the entire story so changed everything and made their own ending which isn’t at all as intelligent as the rest of the series is. Ugh. And what’s with the opening and closing songs as Dani California and Snow from Stadium Arcadium?? Someone listen to the first two tracks of whatever was on in the charts at the time or what? Watch the anime though.
- Fat old irish women clearly don’t understand the importance of the second-last level on the highest difficulty in Ouendan. Stop moving around behind me!! I only passed one or two more levels in Nekketsu! Moero! Rhythm-damashii! Osu! Tatekae! Ouendan! 2 before going back to the first game and trying to get that second-last stage done.
