"Air New Zealand will equip eighteen of its airliners with in-flight entertainment rigs allowing iPod users to play their video on seatback screens, listen to audio through the aircraft system, and control their plane via the device's interface."

So will pilots now be caught with a "Do you want to update your Flight anagement System to Safari?" when they start prepping for a journey?

And do the ground crew now have to check nobody has done any illegal filesharing when they do their maintenance checks? (I can just picture it... "Yup, flaps are working, rudder's working, engines're running... hold on, some kid in Economy has just put the latest Amy Dosshouse album up for grabs!")

Still, at least it's iPods. Just imagine what would happen if you let people plug in devices with wmp files on... <shudders> Still, it'd give Boing someone else to blame when their planes fall out the sky I s'pose. :-)

That is EXACTLY how I read it, and nearly lost a gobful of coffee to it.

Brilliant.

Steven R

I'm glad Apple changed the way they bill iPod Dock makers - previously it was 10% of the final retail price. Bad if you hae a £300 speaker system. Really bad if you produce 767s. now the meesly $4 they charge is fine - I wonder if its per plane or per seat?

"No doubt there's a strong firewall in place between the passenger seats (and the possible global internet hookup) and the aircraft's actual flight systems."

No doubt there's actually no physical connection whatsoever between the flight systems and the entertainment system, with the exception of mono-directional navigation information, which is probably not even IP based.

Use your head, el Reg.

There is only one word for your little piece:

Lame

The article also states the USB option has been chosen to allow other players to connect. So it's not just iPods. Still, AirNZ aren't going to key their advertising on Zune connectivity are they.....

This is quite annoying actually, but it's not the fault of the Airline.

Apple's interface is propriatory, but there should be a standard interconnect/dock system for all personal media players. The control mechanism should be open and usable by other manufacturers, like IRivier, Samsung thingies, even Zune (not that they would use it!).

As public places adopt more proprietary interconnect, the monopolies people will start to get more interested in this particular marketing channel... and it wont always be Apple's fault, rather public demand. So how to solve this other than asking Apple nicely if every man+dog can use their interconnect design and control protocol?

Reminds me of this:

http://www.heise.de/ct/schlagseite/03/01/gross.jpg

The text on the screen reads something like "New device detected: Airbus A380. Begin auto configuration?"

...given how bad the battery life of most Apple accessories is...

Apple is really taking over the world, whoohahaha.

"Videos in seat backs is old hat - they've been flying for years."

I guess they meant video *you brought on your own device* to be watched in the seat's back. Duh.

I have flown on NZ Airlines, US Carriers, Australian Carriers, and UK Carriers. I have yet to find a seat-back airline video screen that wasn't total sheeeite quaity. Maybe if you have some other video playing device this might be good news, but I've seen my wifes ipod touch device and it beats watching an airline's screen hands down in quality, saturation, blacks.

I end up turning off (or trying to) airline screens, more annoying than anything, especially when they leak backlighting all over the place when you want to sleep (if you can on a plane).

Non-item in my book.

...are usually all scratched to sh|t. I'd prefer my tiny iPod screen thanks.

Apple will be into iplanes next, hope there more reliable than there nanos!

I think i would rather use my nice $100 headphones and just play it off my ipod rather than use the crap air NZ supply you with. Still, will be good for charging.

As for quality, well.. the movies you play on your ipod aren't usually very good quality anyway so i dont see the big deal..