Changes to v:port's functionality
Posted: 21 Oct 2008, 14:23I noticed a couple of changes to v:port when flying to/from SFO in the past few days. Had a quick search on here but couldn't see anything mentioned so apologies if this is already covered!
The first change was that when you ff/rew through a film, there is a new on-screen-display that tells you what you're watching, how fast you're forwarding through it (seemed to be 2x/5x/10x/20x - didnt try any faster than that), a time counter telling you where you are in the film, how long the film is in total, and also how much of the flight is left before you reach the destination. Of course, it didnt work quite as well as it should have - so the display of the movie didnt seem to actually update while it was forwarding, nor did the elapsed time... so I still ended up sporadically reverting to play mode to see whether I'd reached where I was previously in the film. Still - an improvement over what was there previously - i.e. nothing
The next change I saw was much better and is something I have lamented the absence of for a loooong time.
Now, when watching a film (tv programme, etc), if you press the 'i' button, then the film pops down to fill only a quarter of the screen, and i:map appears in the background. You can check where you are, flight progress etc, without stopping watching your film. It takes a minute or so for i:map to start working, and it's not tailored to the screen layout - so the 'information popups' that appear over the map itself are somewhat hidden behind the film 'picture in picture' but even so, it's a great feature. The interactive bits of i:map are not available - only the preprogrammed cycling info.
Nice to see that they're still working on improving the v:port system. It also only crashed once (prompting an entire system reset) on the two flights, and i:map didn't crash at all! On my flights in Aug/Sep, I couldn't get i:map to work for love nor money - it would crash out my entire entertainment system and it would painfully reset itself.
Now if only they could improve it in other ways. Like - making it more responsive. Making the user interface and navigation more intuitive. Implementing features they've been banging on about for years (email/interwebs, anyone?). &c. They do have working SMS now - I can't remember if that was there before or not. But at US$2.50 for outbound and $2.00 for inbound messages, that's rather expensive!
The first change was that when you ff/rew through a film, there is a new on-screen-display that tells you what you're watching, how fast you're forwarding through it (seemed to be 2x/5x/10x/20x - didnt try any faster than that), a time counter telling you where you are in the film, how long the film is in total, and also how much of the flight is left before you reach the destination. Of course, it didnt work quite as well as it should have - so the display of the movie didnt seem to actually update while it was forwarding, nor did the elapsed time... so I still ended up sporadically reverting to play mode to see whether I'd reached where I was previously in the film. Still - an improvement over what was there previously - i.e. nothing
The next change I saw was much better and is something I have lamented the absence of for a loooong time.
Now, when watching a film (tv programme, etc), if you press the 'i' button, then the film pops down to fill only a quarter of the screen, and i:map appears in the background. You can check where you are, flight progress etc, without stopping watching your film. It takes a minute or so for i:map to start working, and it's not tailored to the screen layout - so the 'information popups' that appear over the map itself are somewhat hidden behind the film 'picture in picture' but even so, it's a great feature. The interactive bits of i:map are not available - only the preprogrammed cycling info.
Nice to see that they're still working on improving the v:port system. It also only crashed once (prompting an entire system reset) on the two flights, and i:map didn't crash at all! On my flights in Aug/Sep, I couldn't get i:map to work for love nor money - it would crash out my entire entertainment system and it would painfully reset itself.
Now if only they could improve it in other ways. Like - making it more responsive. Making the user interface and navigation more intuitive. Implementing features they've been banging on about for years (email/interwebs, anyone?). &c. They do have working SMS now - I can't remember if that was there before or not. But at US$2.50 for outbound and $2.00 for inbound messages, that's rather expensive!
