Airplane Video-on-Demand via wireless?
I was just trying out the performance of different video encodings over WLAN yesterday, and had been thinking about scenarios where something like this might make sense, given that people are starting to carry around more powerful client devices.
Singapore Airlines already runs a great video- and audi0-on-demand service on their flights, but it requires essentially a full PC under every seat. Moving to a bring-your-own client entertainment format might not make sense for SQ, but would be a huge improvement for me on United or any other US-flag airline.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy to clog up the shared bandwidth with high quality video, and you can’t really solve an “on-demand” bandwidth problem using multicast. I’m not even sure they could count on using 802.11g or a to get the higher bandwidth, as there aren’t that many 802.11a clients around, and a mixed 802.11b/g network won’t give you the performance unless you keep out the 802.11b clients. Going the other way, I don’t think people would be terribly happy with 150-300kbps “broadband internet” quality video streams on an airline flight, but I could be wrong.
Actually, I’d be pretty happy if United would just get power deployed to all the seats so I could run my own gear without needing a ton of batteries to get across the Pacific.
An airline entertainment company is working with Microsoft to provide videos to passengers’ laptops, according to a blog posted by a Microsoft employee.
In the blog, the Microsoft employee said that the unnamed airline entertainment company had recently spent two weeks testing whether it could use a set up a WiFi wireless network “inside the fuselage of a commercial aircraft while airborne.”
I’d like to read more about what they actually tried. The news.com article doesn’t link to the source, and it didn’t turn up in a quick search either.
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June 27th, 2005 at 2:09 am
Why don’t you visit to Connexion by Boeing, who is an unique in-flight Internet Provider. Home page is www.connexionbyboeing.com, where you can find out what they actually tried. Furthermore, if you need more information on wlan security for this application, please surf this homepage, www.bdsinc.co.kr.