zeus2120

"United will begin a test program this week that allows customers on Boeing 777 flights between HNL (Honolulu) and GUM and HNL and the U.S. mainland to rent Samsung tablets during their flights. The Samsung tablets are intended to complement existing Wi-Fi and Personal Device Entertainment (PDE) options on longer flights.

Because some of these flights are close to nine hours long, we wanted to provide customers with an entertainment option if they don't have a device or forget their device.

Rentals will cost $9.99 for flights six hours or less and $14.99 for flights longer than six hours and will include complimentary earbuds. Tablets will be complimentary to all first class passengers.

Customers will also have access to new-release movies and TV shows plus magazines and books, as well as custom-curated content from Tribeca Film Festival and Vevo music videos, all adding up to more than 100 hours of content. The tablets have a 20-hour battery life so customers won't have to plug into a power source during the flight."

Forgive me if this has already been posted, but I couldn't find it on here. Thought it was pretty significant. However, why Samsung and not ipad?! At least it's something!

Doc Savage

Price of course.

Any guess as to when they'll start charging for access to the movies for those of us with our own devices?

And the great part for UA? If you haven't downloaded the app before the flight, you are SOL with your own device, so will have to rent one of theirs.

Nickel and diming. Nickel and diming. It'll never end.

zeus2120

I am very curious to see how efficient gate agents will be at recharging devices and clearing memory / history after each flight. This seems like more trouble than it's worth. Just think when your next flight to Hawaii is delayed because the tablets aren't loaded up yet!

octopic

They'll actually have to get PDE working on the Samsung tablets... It doesn't on mine (thought that might have to do with the fact that I have a custom ROM).

LASUA1K

How do they organize charging these things? ORD-HNL-ORD, would the tablets be charged in HNL, and different ones loaded?

HNLbasedFlyer

Gate agents aren't going to get involved with charging. Hawaiian has been doing something similar on 767 routes.

It is a fairly seamless setup - they have a special cart, much like a beverage cart, that will have all the devices on them - the cart has chargers built in for all the devices and the cart will loaded/offloaded on the plane in the same manner catering is done. (this is how I believe they will do it)

JBord

Get ready for refunds and complaints. I've had problems with Internet every time I've tried it, and some with the streaming entertainment (though not often). If I had paid $15 for a tablet and then had these problems I would not be happy. UA might be better off not adding this service.

sbm12

This is like saying that if they cannot be on time 100% of the time they shouldn't bother flying because people will complain and ask for refunds. It won't be prefect - nothing is - but they'll make many passengers happy and make some money along the way.

skidooman

Just put AVOD at every seat already.

I mean, really... It is 9 hours flight. So just do it. Keep people happy and coming back.

Simple, but hey, this is the crew that wants to sell snackboxes on 12 hours flight, so...

tom911

Are the UA tablets going to have wi-fi? I don't see that in the press release.

AA has had Samsung tablets on international 767 routes for a few years as the IFE option in business class, with the entertainment stored on the tablet. When the program first started up, there were complaints about them not powering up (user error from what I could tell - new tablet users didn't know they had to hold the power button down for a few seconds to start it up), and on a few occasions I had a dead one. They always seemed to have enough spares on board, or extra power cords, for anyone having problems. I see UA says their devices will have 20 hours of battery life so guessing they won't distribute power cords with theirs. I didn't know the current generation of tablets could last that long (my original Samsung model lasts about 6 hours).

emcampbe

Incorrect. To watch all of the offerings, yes, you need the app. Many of the programs are protected and require going through the app due to encryption. Some don't have this setup though, and can be watched from a regular web browser without the plug in needed that the app has.

REPUBLIC757

What is this, 2006? Circa AA offering tablet rentals on their S80 midcons except more expensive?

I agree. No reason why they couldn't install AVOD for these 777 flights that average over 6 hours. Can they finally admit the streaming thing isn't working on these flights?

Makes me wonder if they'll rip out the existing AVOD on the int'l 777 ships they are converting to domestic? If they are, unbelievable.

lensman

I bet they think they will be able to sell more satellite internet on these flights as well.

What do people think about the picture quality of the PDE vs AVOD?

One plus to the PDE is that my ears don't get blown out by inflight announcements. That's one thing that really bugs me about the AVOD system is that announcements are always so much louder than the movies.

I do wish I could figure out a good way of "mounting" my tablet so I don't have to have it take up valuable tray space.

Kacee

Hmm . . . I think this is more about revenue than admitting something doesn't work.

I have mixed feelings about the streaming PDE. In general it's worked pretty well for me. But they need to install power on all their aircraft.

JBord

Hmmm...it's more like you buy a 8 hour flight, UA flies you toward your destination for 2 hours and then just stops.

My last internet experience was ORD-OGG. Now, I fully expected it wouldn't work over the Pacific. But I didn't expect it would stop working just as we passed Denver.

What I'm saying is perhaps they should forego this for a more reliable system, such as in-seat AVOD. But I'll admit I don't have a complete understanding of how the tablets will work. Perhaps content will be loaded directly to the tablet?

I have my own devices anyway. If they just follow through on putting power in their planes, I actually don't care what they do with these tablets.