They also encourage you to provide info on yourself (create an account, provide birthday) to even use the screen on the seat back…
Isn’t the WiFi free? It’s free for a reason. You aren’t forced to use it.
I understood the mildly infuriating aspect to be how airlines find a way to extract value from you at every step of your trip.
Plane WiFi is a modern technological marvel and you’re lucky to be able to have it at all.
Not so long ago sat phones were the domain of the super rich, because they were paying several dollars per minute. Then it was down to 10 dollars for two hours of multiplexed satellite access. And now apparently it’s down to where advertising will work. That’s amazing.
I doubt the ads are streamed over the internet, this could easily be done with local storage.
With a possible quick database update over the internet to log views
on the bright side they could make you watch an ad to check your bags, check in, and find your seat the way things are going
Wireguard vpn+pihole and you won’t need to watch those ads. Set it up to use an ntp port, and you won’t have to sign in to use the wifi.
Hold up, using the ntp port to skip WiFi sign in is a game changer. Any way to do that with Tailscale on iOS?
Nice one.
But now that you outed the secret, we just need to QoS the NTP port.
It’s a free wifi service provided by the airline while on the flight. One ad, when most other places are charging $10-20 per flight? I’ll watch the single ad. I’d rather that then someone, say, injecting adverts into sites and services. which is very possible.
Better PR if they have a button underneath that says “skip ad ($20)”?
The more infuriating thing will be realizing that the inflight wifi is basically only good for texting and email.
I flew Delta last year and got their free WiFi when I signed up for an account with them. Think it was for a loyalty program for every flight I flew with them and one of the perks was free WiFi.
I used it for streaming from my Plex server at home and watched 1984 and some other movies on my phone on the flight and don’t remember encountering any buffering or other issues the whole time. Was pleasantly surprised and grateful for that so I didn’t have to use their movie selection.
Though I do have to say they had a pretty good free selection to choose from. I remember even TV shows which I thought was weird like The Sopranos was on there. I just preferred choosing from my own library and continuing where I left off on my server.
I like scrolling through the offerings because it clues me in to foreign language films I had no idea existed, then I add them to my radarr library.
