Of course, this was the first attempt for a domestic airline, and as it turns out, I was able to play YouTube and Netflix with beatiful ease. In this case, we are trying the following six services.
JAL Group’s J-AIR is offering a free in-flight Wi-Fi service, “J-AIR Unlimited Video Viewing,” which also allows streaming playback of these videos. This initiative commemorates the completion of antenna installation on all 14 of JAL’s Embraer 190 aircraft, and will run from July 12 to September 30.
Even so, restrictions were placed on “streaming videos” such as YouTube and Netflix, and I had to prepare for the videos I wanted to watch on the plane by downloading them to my phone in advance. If you are a video addict, you may have experienced the disappointment of connecting to the airport Wi-Fi in front of the gate just before boarding and starting the download, but eventually it was not completed and it was time to board. ……
I’m about to board a plane, so I won’t be available for work for a while! Nowadays, free in-flight Wi-Fi access is the norm on domestic flights, and it is rare to not be able to connect to the Internet.
Video streaming services tried with J-AIR in-flight Wi-Fi
Amazon Prime Video: Playback in low quality mode, long buffer (more than 30 seconds)
Apple TV: Playback in high quality mode from the beginning, very short buffer
Disney+: Playback in high quality mode from the beginning
Netflix: Starts playback in low quality mode, then shifts to high quality mode
U-NEXT: Starts playback in low picture quality mode, then shifts to high picture quality mode
YouTube (Premium): Starts playback in low quality mode, then moves to high quality mode. Very short buffer
*Behavior may vary by date, time of day, etc.
The above is only the situation at the time of the interview (August 23), and the behavior may vary depending on the date, time of day, and congestion on the plane, but the viewing experience was not dissimilar to that of a 5G connection or free Wi-Fi connection on the ground.
In terms of YouTube, there was a slight time lag until the grayed-out (pre-loaded) video thumbnails appeared, but not so much that it was impossible to follow the scrolling, and there was almost no wait time between tapping a thumbnail and the start of playback. Amazon Prime Video had a slightly longer buffering time on both round-trip flights (JL155/154), but I have not been able to verify if this was just a coincidence on this particular day.
The philosophy differs from app to app in terms of how much buffer is used before playback starts and whether playback starts immediately even in low quality, but even if playback starts in low quality mode, all apps switch to high quality mode as soon as the buffer is saved, which is almost the same, so there is no “you can playback in-flight but the picture quality is wobbly”. There is no such thing as “you can play it in-flight, but the picture quality is too choppy. Please check the following video as a sample of actual behavior.
For reference, we also conducted an in-flight speed test. The speeds varied considerably (13-50 Mbps downlink at the time of the interview), which may have been affected by other users, but still remained within the acceptable level for HD video playback.
According to a J-AIR representative, the company originally focused on areas with sufficient bandwidth for in-flight Wi-Fi, and has loosened that restriction for this initiative.
When we previously asked J-Air President Shunsuke Honda about in-flight Wi-Fi, we were impressed that he said, “We want to be able to do everything we can do on the ground,” and we were impressed by this groundbreaking service as a major step toward that goal.
It is becoming commonplace to offer movies and dramas as in-flight entertainment on domestic flights on aircraft that have personal monitors at every seat, but it is nice to see passengers being able to watch videos on their own devices as they please. This initiative has a deadline of September 30, but we look forward to its full-scale introduction. In addition, there are no restrictions on online smartphone games, so it seems that users will be able to do a variety of things, not just streaming videos.
© Source travel watch
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