Stream a little stream

Australia’s two main airlines are pleasingly ahead of the streaming curve, even though no Australian airline currently provides inflight internet.

Qantas’s Q Streaming advertises over 200 hours of wireless entertainment, streamed to supplied iPads in every seat on “selected refreshed” Boeing 767 and 717 aircraft, mainly the ones flying on the triangle and east coast capital routes. Qantas will also start upgrading its 38 older Boeing 737-800 aircraft, which do not have seatback entertainment, with the Q Streaming servers – though this will be a BYO device version without iPad provision, at least in economy.

Virgin Australia has taken a different tack, offering the streaming service on selected 737‑800s but only handing out actual tablets (in this case, Samsung Galaxy Tabs) to business class passengers.

Adding streaming to an existing aircraft is quick and relatively cheap especially in comparison to the installation, maintenance and weight costs of seatback IFE.

It can be as easy as swapping a galley insert containing a streaming server box into the slot for an oven, with Lufthansa subsidiary LSG Sky Chefs offering just such an option and number two caterer gategroup hard on its tail. Existing delivery supply chains mean caterers are in pole position to drive away with streaming provision.

Expect wireless streaming to roll out to other airlines in the near term, with several US airlines already quietly offering it on domestic services with the usual “selected aircraft” back-covering provisos, and a few European airlines rolling streaming out this year as well, also on short-haul flights.

Progress is following the same country-by-country pattern as Hollywood film releases (since the film studios and their self-defeating wrangling over digital rights to early window content are a key hurdle to clear for streaming), which is likely to be a frustration for passengers in places where blockbusters are released late.

While it’s a great way to add entertainment on short- or medium-haul flights, streaming video is unlikely to replace seatback screens on the majority of long-haul aircraft. Not yet, anyway: the technology is too new,too dependent on too few entertainment industry players, and battery life isn’t sufficient to keep people’s devices going for more than a few hours. Seatback power certainly isn’t widespread enough.

Also, there’s nowhere to put the tablet while eating – not on most airlines, anyway, although a number of carriers provide tablet holders or suggest passengers hang their tablet case from the literature pocket if it’s been relocated to eye level. The old trick of ripping a phone-sized hole in the front of an (unused) airsickness bag, inserting your device and hanging that from the back of the seat in front as a makeshift tablet holder is an option, but no solution is yet particularly elegant.

Several airlines offering wireless streaming entertainment also offer seatback entertainment, which reveals a bonus combination option: multi-screening. Being able to check the moving map or order a drink while watching the movie is a real plus.

Some latest-gen IFE systems offer a tethered remote control, the size of an Android phone, with similar functionality, but there’s a weight, maintenance and cost advantage to airlines in not having to provide that controller.

Moreover, in business and first class, the increase in pitch as fully flat beds become standard has created a concomitant issue: seatback touchscreen monitors are too far away to control comfortably. It’s a nice problem to have, but it’s an inconvenience for high-value premium cabin passengers and relatively easy to solve with multi-screening.

And it’s by no means unusual now to be interacting with a phone, tablet or laptop (or more than one) while consuming media, either to learn more about the show, to delve deeper into the story, or to watch communally with friends. Airlines could easily offer entertainment on the seatback screen, with added value content, advertising sales opportunities and ancillary revenue options on users’ own devices.

Upstart entertainment supplier Lumexis is already offering an own-device multi-screen option alongside its hi-def fibre optic FTTS (fibre-to-the-screen) embedded system, with kingpins like Panasonic and Thales offering multi-screen primarily in premium cabins or higher-end economy.

With catalogue linefit seat requirements and sole-supplier contracts rife in the interiors industry, it will be interesting to see whether the nimble Lumexis steals a march on the bigger dogs. Inflight entertainment can move quickly. Watch this space.