Personalized Video Experiences from 38 Thousand Feet
December 13th, 2009 by Seth Kenvin
Yet another tech dweeb bragging about being online from a plane
People touting being online from airplanes is about as trite as people pointing out how we increasingly consume the video we want, when we want, where we want & on the device we want. I’m doing both here — is combining those observations even more trite, or kind of insightful? I’m not sure, so I’ll try to keep this brief.
I’m on Virgin America (already established as favorite Market7 airline) flying back to SF from NYC.
- I’ve been taking advantage of the free Dec-Jan WiFi to work online the whole flight (we’re over Utah now), including catching up on a couple of video podcasts.
- Through the gap in the seats in front of me to my right a couple has swapped halfway through the flight so that each of them could watch The Hangover on the same in-flight VoD purchase in the seat’s screen.
- Through the same gap on my left A guy is playing around with the Red interactive functionality on his screen while he’s got MTV up live in the screen’s corner by PiP.
- Both of the guys next to me are using their iPhones to get online by WiFi. I haven’t seen them watch video on them, but they could.
& here I go making with the zeitgeist cliches (but it’s so true): wow we’re progressing from rapidly-extinguishing status quo of everyone being confined to whatever happens to be showing on the tube screens in the ceiling. In fact, my last NYC trip a couple months ago, on a different airline, the only electronic choices were to work on my laptop offline or tilt up my head to consume Mall Cop.
