Latest news with #inflightentertainment
Daily Mail
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
British Airways rolls out controversial in-flight change - here's how passengers will be affected
British Airways is set to trial a new system that could change how we watch movies and shows on long flights. The airline is launching a trial called 'Bring Your Own Device' (BYOD), which will allow passengers to stream all the usual in-flight entertainment from their seat-back screens straight to their phones, tablets, or laptops. This is welcome news for passengers who've ever struggled with malfunctioning seat-back screens, especially on long-haul flights where travellers are left with limited options to pass the time. The trial is set to start later this month on selected long-haul flights out of London Heathrow, specifically on BA's A380s, Boeing 787-9s, and the older 777-200s. Passengers on these flights will be able to use the same entertainment options they usually get from the in-seat screens – but streamed directly to their personal gadgets. British Airways has made it clear that this won't mean the seat-back screens are going away anytime soon - at least not yet, as the new system will be offered alongside the existing screens. However, it's worth noting that a number of other airlines have already started ditching seat-back screens on short-haul flights. Etihad, Qantas, and American Airlines are among the carriers removing them to save weight and costs, relying more on passengers' own devices instead. While some travellers are excited about the move as a sign that airlines are adapting to how people regularly travel these days, others may not quite be ready to say goodbye to the built-in entertainment just yet. Many people still like having the choice of a big screen in front of them, and phones and tablets have their own limitations, such as running out of battery mid-flight. For the unfortunate few who have accidentally packed their chargers in their checked luggage, they might be stuck altogether with no way to keep watching. Another big factor is WiFi on planes, which still isn't up to scratch, according to Travel expert Clive Wratten, who told The Telegraph that if airlines want passengers to stream content, 'every seat must have reliable power and WiFi'. He added that without steady connections and charging ports, streaming might cause more frustration than convenience. The BYOD service will be free for BA passengers on the trial flights, who will need to connect to the plane's WiFi to start streaming. For now, there are no plans to roll it out on short-haul flights, so passengers flying closer to home will still want to download their entertainment before they board. Meanwhile, Virgin Atlantic has unveiled a number of groundbreaking new changes set to enhance the in-flight experience, announcing that it will become the UK's first airline to offer free, unlimited, 'streaming-quality' Wi-Fi across its entire fleet. The service, powered by SpaceX's Starlink satellite technology, will begin rolling out across the airline's Boeing 787s, Airbus A350s, and A330neos starting 2026, with completion expected by the end of 2027. This marks a significant milestone for the airline, which first introduced fleet-wide Wi-Fi across the Atlantic in 2017. The new system promises 'low-latency, global connectivity,' meaning passengers can enjoy video streaming, work seamlessly, and stay connected from gate to gate - all at no additional cost for members of Virgin's free-to-join Flying Club. Following a $17 billion fleet modernisation, Virgin Atlantic will also operate a fuel-efficient fleet of 45 next-generation aircraft by 2028, with an average age of just under seven years.
The National
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
What makes a great plane movie? Best films to watch on Emirates and Etihad while flying this summer
Many have said it: 'I'll watch it on a plane.' Whether it's a recommendation from a friend or a something we missed in cinemas, a long-haul flight is the place many people finally cross things off our seemingly-endless lists. But thousands of metres in the air, something shifts. Tastes change. We become more emotional (possibly due to lower air pressure), less cynical and far more likely to hit play on something we might have ignored on the ground. Air travel creates a unique mental space – half boredom, half vulnerability – and cinema becomes both an escape and a comfort. A great plane movie is built for that head space. It's not just about quality – it's about mood. It needs to be immersive enough to distract from the armrest battle unfolding beside you, yet undemanding enough to pause mid-flight. It should feel like a reliable companion, not a chore. With that in mind, here's a breakdown of the types of movies that thrive in the sky – and several recommendations currently flying with Emirates and Etihad. Tear-jerkers Yes, it's true – people cry more on planes. Blame the altitude, the cabin pressure, or the fact they're emotionally raw after three hours in an airport queue. A good cry can feel oddly cathartic in the clouds, especially with the right film to trigger it. These picks deliver the gut punch with heart to spare. Flow The animals in this Academy Award-winning animated film never speak, and that realistic characterisation makes them burrow into the heart even more. Available on Emirates Betterman If you'd told us a year ago that a biopic about British singer Robbie Williams would be a tear-jerker, we'd never have believed you. But give it a try to you'll be pleasantly surprised. Emirates Field of Dreams You don't need to know baseball to be moved by this deeply earnest tale of fathers, sons and second chances. Emirates Sleepless in Seattle Rainy nights, lonely hearts and Tom Hanks at his most Hanksian. One of the great comfort films. Emirates The Iron Giant Still one of the greatest animated films ever made. Brad Bird's breakout classic is as funny as it is devastating. Emirates How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies A Thai box-office sensation and TikTok favourite. Balances humour and heartbreak with remarkable ease. Etihad Rewatchables There are films that feel like old friends – endlessly rewatchable, oddly reassuring and perfect for watching when tired, bored or mildly sedated at 30,000 feet. They don't just pass the time – they make the flight fly by. Conclave While less than a year old, this suspenseful political thriller among cardinals picking the next Catholic priest is just as good on return visits. Emirates A Few Good Men That courtroom scene is iconic, but the rest holds up brilliantly. Peak-era Tom Cruise and writer Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, The West Wing). Emirates A murder mystery viewed through a window. Director Alfred Hitchcock makes voyeurism feel like comfort viewing. Emirates The Social Network Razor-sharp writing, brilliant performances and still oddly thrilling even when you know how it ends. Emirate s Moneyball Another baseball film for people who don't like baseball. Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill sell the underdog magic. Emirates Over-the-top action The constant buzz of a plane – the whirr of engines, the clatter of trolleys, the wails of overtired toddlers – can make even the best film hard to focus on. The solution? Loud, fast, gloriously over-the-top action. These are high-stakes, low-subtlety thrill rides. Explosive visuals, simple plots and non-stop momentum make them perfect in-flight entertainment. Just plug in and let the chaos wash over you. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera After the first film became an under-the-radar dad movie classic, Gerard Butler is back as Big Nick for more heist-movie goodness. Emirates Die Hard Still the gold standard for single-location action. Unmatched pacing, wisecracks, and villainy. Emirates G20 Viola Davis saves the world. No, really. She plays the US President rescuing world leaders from terrorists. Emirates The Fugitive A wrongly accused man, a relentless pursuer, and a perfect 90s thriller that's aged like fine wine. Emirates Novocaine Jack Quaid stars as a man who literally can't feel pain – a useful condition when he's forced to become a reluctant hero. Etihad Three-star dramas Not every plane film needs to be a classic. Some of the best in-flight discoveries are the ones you missed in cinemas or never bothered to stream. These mid-tier dramas don't demand full attention, but they deliver just enough emotional pay-off to feel worth it. The Amateur The inimitable Rami Malek gets the eminently-watchable plane action-thriller he's always deserved. Emirates The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants A charming, surprisingly affecting coming-of-age tale about friendship and growing up apart. Etihad Juror #2 Thanks to Superman, Nicholas Hoult is having a moment. This overlooked courtroom drama directed by Clint Eastwood features one of his best performances. Emirates Under the Tuscan Sun A post-divorce Italian villa fantasy. Exactly the kind of wish-fulfilment that hits differently mid-flight. Etihad BlackBerry A tech-world biopic that charts the dizzying rise and fall of a once-ubiquitous device. Emirates Crazy Rich Asians Glamour, romance and family drama set in Singapore. A modern romcom with the heart of a classic. Emirates and Etihad Engrossing documentaries On some flights, our boredom can't be satiated by fictional stories. In those moments, documentaries that teach us things about the world or peel off the layers of a mind-bending mystery are the only thing that can scratch that itch. Sugarcane A heartbreaking film that investigates the dark history of a residential school in Canada. With testimonies from some of its former students, it's a fascinating true crime story you won't soon forget. Emirates Senna If F1 The Movie was your introduction to the world of Formula One, your next step should undoubtedly be director Asif Kapadia's masterful film about the life and death of Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna.
Gizmodo
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
This Dock Is the Only Way to Play the Switch 2 in AR. It Was a Very Awkward Experience.
I should be used to sticking odd contraptions on my head during plane flights. I've planted a Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro over my eyes as my in-flight entertainment and tried not to get motion sick while imagining what other passengers think of my sci-fi asshattery. On my latest six-hour, cross-country flight, I took my Nintendo Switch 2 out of my bag, then dug in for a USB cable, two pairs of augmented reality (AR) glasses, and finally a large power brick that was supposed to make this entire tedious experience work together. Two players can indeed play multiplayer with two AR glasses on one system, and it was a wild ride in my sardine can-sized seat. Getting to that point just requires a rainforest's worth of cables and gadgets thick enough to choke any constrained space—let alone the three inches of legroom airlines grant you for economy these days. See Nintendo Switch 2 at Amazon Viture Mobile Dock If we're trying to figure out new use cases for AR Glasses, multiplayer gaming is the oddest one yet. Pros Cons The $130 Viture Pro Mobile Dock may be the weirdest way I've ever used to play on handhelds. It's a device that takes the screen output from devices like the Steam Deck, Switch 2, a smartphone, or even an HDMI TV stick and pushes out duplicated pictures for up to two AR glasses at once. It can prove very useful for using AR glasses with more devices, or if you need to replace a screen with AR glasses. For example, Nintendo's handhelds don't natively support AR glasses via their USB-C port, but the Switch 2 and the original Switch can thanks to the dock. Viture even sells a $20 mount to hook the dock to the Switch 2, which also operates as a limited external battery. In very specific use cases, the dock can ensure you and a friend can play split-screen multiplayer together without an extra screen. It's nominally useful for when you're on a long plane flight where you and a partner want to play the same game side-by-side without needing to squint at an 8-inch screen propped up precariously on a rumbling tray table. It will also make you question just how close your friends are willing to get to you. See Viture Pro Mobile Dock at Amazon The dock also supports 3D content, but I was mainly interested in how it could change how I play on the go. I've messed around with the dock by myself and alongside a buddy, and it's an odd experience either way. The dock itself includes an incredibly short USB-C charging cable that also allows video passthrough. There are two other ports that hook up any working pair of AR glasses. For review, Viture gave me two pairs of its $500 Luma Pro XR glasses. Each has a magnetically attached 3-foot cable that is normally fine for playing with a device right in front of you but is not nearly enough for the Pro Mobile Dock. At least setup is dead simple. All you need to do is plug each device into the other, and the dock will split the image so both players see the same screen at once. There's no lag or latency I could perceive, enough that I couldn't blame the glasses as a friend kicked my keister in Street Fighter II Turbo. For gaming, this entire apparatus seems best used on Switch 2, a handheld built for multiplayer thanks to its Joy-Con 2 that can each act as independent controllers. It also has the capability to make a Steam Deck into a multiplayer-friendly device. Playing the few local multiplayer games on my Steam account, like Hellish Quart, works perfectly well. You just need to be willing to sit very close to your friend when futzing about on the same system. I know you're already screaming at me: why would I bother with this when I can just plug it into a TV? Hey, random citizen, you're perfectly correct. This dock and glasses combo is for the few edge cases where you don't have an HDMI dock for passthrough and you still want to play with friends. The problems mount when you're using it for too long. The dock promotes that it can extend the device's battery life since it doubles as an external battery pack. The problem with that is that it needs to power both the handheld and up to two glasses at once. On a plane, I squeezed out two more hours from my Switch 2 before the Pro Mobile Dock died. Nintendo's handheld will normally last a little more than two hours, so all in all, I doubled my system's battery life, but half of that lacked the AR glasses. The dock only has one port for USB charging, meaning you can't daisy chain your outlet through to your device, either. For those of you confused why you would use a pair of glasses above the Switch 2's native screen, it's for the sake of your spine. Glasses mean you're not hunched over like Gollum, treating your handheld display as your latest 'precious.' The Luma Pro aren't the 'Beast' glasses with '4K-like' 1200p screens that are coming in October, but they have a pair of bright panels with a 52-degree field of view. Images looked crisp, though only after I found the right size of nosepiece that didn't cut off parts of the screen and didn't screw up the automatic PPD—or pixels per degree, which help clarify the displayed image based on your pupillary distance, or PD. The glasses lack the Xreal One Pro's ability to resize the screen in your field of view, which also reduces eye strain. These glasses take what is already the excellent 720p organic light-emitting diode display of the Steam Deck OLED and replace it with a fairly good-looking micro-OLED screen with a higher brightness. When compared to a Switch 2's 1080p IPS LCD, it offers better contrast and deeper blacks, though it lacks the HDR qualities of Nintendo's handheld. It's not the type of device you should get just to have a nice display, especially at the $570 sticker price. The audio from the glasses' built-in speakers could offer a fine experience with some spatial capabilities for pseudo surround sound, but it would not replace a quality pair of headphones. Viture also sent along its $80 mobile controller it made in conjunction with 8BitDo. The device is essentially the same thing as the $50 8BitDo Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller, with its Hall effect sticks and triggers to avoid future stick drift issues, but this version comes with a USB-C port specific for these glasses. The device feels great—perhaps even more comfortable than the $170 Backbone Pro controller (a device that includes Bluetooth connectivity to act as a regular controller as well). But again, it asks for more money for a very specific case. I could use it to make sure nosy neighbors don't see what I'm playing on my screen. If the plan was to avoid scrutiny for your gaming habits, the mess of cables and ginormous spectacles won't attract any less attention. See Viture x 8BitDo Controller at Amazon The glasses are still the star of the show. That is, they are still very expensive considering the cost of the devices you're meant to use them with. It greatly broadens what you can do with your AR glasses, but perhaps there's a reason we're not thinking of glasses first for handhelds. It may be handy for those few times you don't have or don't want a screen, but it's not as if you're not carrying around more gear. I'm loaded down with enough stuff when I travel as it is, and if I had to leave anything behind, it would be the dock first.
Telegraph
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
BA is scrapping seat-back screens. They might be onto something
Kicking back, guilt-free, in front of a silly film or television programme is one of the last remaining joys of long-haul flights – eclipsed only, perhaps, by the free bar. But the days of seat-back screens and all-you-can-binge films could be numbered, as airlines tighten their purse strings and pursue other options to keep their passengers entertained. This month, British Airways is trialling a new system on selected long-haul aircraft that allows travellers to stream the airline's entertainment selection to their own devices. Dubbed a 'BYOD' – or 'bring your own device' – model, it is being offered in addition to the airline's existing seat-back screens, but other airlines are already taking a harder line. In June, Qantas revealed new screenless seats on its short-range routes, joining the likes of American Airlines, BA Euroflyer and selected Etihad services. Travellers' tastes are changing, too. More than 80 per cent of us consider inflight entertainment (IFE) important or very important when choosing long-haul flights, according to research by management consultancy Kearney. And yet, the same study showed that most 18- to 35-year-old long-haulers prefer to watch their own content and devices than the airline's. According to a report by Sita and Air Transport World, 97 per cent of us were flying with a smartphone, tablet or laptop as far back as 2014, so it's hardly a behaviour change to use them. Are you team IFE, or prefer to BYOD? Here, we examine the perks and pitfalls of each approach, and quiz industry experts and frequent fliers: should seat-back screens stay or go? Why the screen should go By the time you plonk yourself down in front of the seat-back screen, your patience is probably already wearing thin. Frazzled from the airport, all you want to do is be lulled by a nice Jane Austen adaptation, a Jennifer Lopez romcom or a gently violent Mission: Impossible film – but no, the bloody screen isn't working. You have to beg one of the cabin crew to reset it, at which point it blinks reluctantly to life, greeting you either in Spanish or Mandarin. Cue the litany of annoyances that a clunky, outdated IFE system inevitably entails: the labyrinth of menus, the dodgy headphone jacks, the 'touch-sensitive' screen that's anything but. Before you know it, you're prodding impotently at the non-responsive panel, twizzling your headphone cable in the socket (why no Bluetooth connection?!) and raising the hackles of your fellow passengers – especially the bloke in front whose headrest you're now punching. It would be simpler, would it not, just to whip out your iPad and watch that instead.
CNET
09-07-2025
- CNET
Prime Day Deal: The AirFly Pro Is 25% Off Right Now. Here's Why I Never Fly Without It
Amazon Prime Day deal: Right now you can grab the Twelve South AirFly Pro for $41 at Amazon, one of the lowest prices I've seen all year. That's 25% off its usual $55 and an easy yes if you've ever been annoyed by those crackly in-flight headphones. The Prime Day sale ends on July 11, but that doesn't mean it'll stay in stock, so don't wait. If you fly often, you already know the routine. You settle into your seat, start messing with the in-flight entertainment screen, then remember that your AirPods won't connect. That means reaching for the airline's wired headphones that feel flimsy, let in every engine roar and make everything sound muffled. Just the worst. This is one of the most frustrating parts of flying, especially on long trips when decent audio can make all the difference. Between the engine noise, crying babies and that one guy snoring in 14C, you need a better option. The good news is there's a simple device that fixes the problem completely and makes flying feel a lot more like streaming at home. The AirFly Pro has become a must-pack item in my travel bag. It's a simple Bluetooth dongle that lets you connect your wireless earbuds (like my AirPods Pro) directly to the airplane's entertainment system, no adapters or wired workarounds required. Since I started using it, I've stopped dreading in-flight audio and finally get to enjoy movies the way they were meant to be heard. If you fly often, this little gadget could completely change how you travel. The AirFly Pro lets me enjoy in-flight entertainment The AirFly Pro from Twelve South is a minimally designed dongle that lets me connect to the 3.5mm headphone jack in my airplane seat to listen to in-flight entertainment on my noise-canceling earbuds. All I have to do is pair the AirFly Pro with whichever Bluetooth headphones I'm using, like my AirPods Pro, plug the AirFly Pro into the display in front of me, and I'm all set. I don't even need to use my phone to connect the two devices. Geoffrey Morrison/CNET There are four versions of the AirFly: the AirFly SE, which sells for $35 on Amazon and connects to just one set of headphones, the AirFly Pro at $41, the Pro V2 at $60, which is the newest version of the AirFly Pro, and the Pro Deluxe at $70, which comes with an international headphone adapter and a suede travel case. Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money. I use the AirFly Pro, which has been a game-changer for me on flights. I've never had to worry about battery life since the AirFly Pro lasts for more than 25 hours and can fully charge in 3 hours. I can also pair two separate pairs of headphones to a single AirFly Pro, in case I'm with someone else on a flight and want to watch the same movie or show. And if that's not enough, the AirFly Pro also doubles as an audio transmitter, so I can turn any speaker with a headphone jack, like my old car stereo, into a Bluetooth speaker. Geoffrey Morrison/CNET The AirFly Pro makes a great gift for any traveler The AirFly Pro is the perfect present to give to someone who's planning to travel this year. Besides my Anker MagSafe battery pack, the AirFly Pro really has become my most treasured travel accessory when I fly, which is why I consider it to be one of those can't-go-wrong gifts. For more travel gear, here are our favorite tech essentials to travel with and our favorite travel pillows.
