Aeskualpio
Head-Fier
A quick note and opinion for airlines and IFE (In-Flight Entertainment)
I mostly fly Alaska Airlines to the tune of 75-100K miles per year. Alaska is going to obsolete built in IFE and go the route of BYOD so you can use your tablet, PC, phone to watch videos via wifi streaming. They are even changing seat backs with adjustable docks to hold your tablet or phone so you don't have to use your tray. I think this is the future for IFE and makes for a better experience, especially the audio. Now, you can use your Sony DAP in either DAC mode hard wired to your tablet, or wireless with BT receive mode. In either case, audio will be orders of magnitude better than the noisy, crappy built in IFE audio. To to mention, I've come across numerous built in 3.5mm jacks that were completely worn out and in some cases have a broken off tip still embedded inside. The built in screens of most IFE systems are really bad too compared to your average tablet. IMHO, wireless is the way to go so you don't have to deal with cables from seat to seat back. In fact, the new seat backs are designed to plug your tablet of phone into a USB port to keep the battery fully charged.
I think this is a great evolution that gives a longer useful life of Sony DAPs. There are flagship DAPs today that don't have BT receive mode (I'm looking at you AK). On the flip side, wireless headphones would be the most convenient for travel and the audio quality continues to improve. Having said that, I still find the wired output of the WM1z still superior by a fairly large margin against state of the art wireless headphones, even with compressed sources like AAC.
I fly about 75k miles on Delta and the SQ out of the IFE is consistently horrible.
Those screens are never cleaned and I run into broken or disabled units about 30% of the time.
A fully loaded iPad is your friend, but I sure wish they’d implement what you are showing Alaska will be doing. So smart and useful.
Cheers
