New QF IFE
I've been a critic of QF's AVOD systems (due to being unreliable and much less options available compared with the likes of NZ, SQ & EK), so I was keen to see the touted new improved system. Being a short flight I didn't get to try everything out. But in the interests of research I made a good stab at it.
In first and business class there is an armrest control as well as the touchscreen controls. I can't recall if premium economy and economy had an armrest control or not, sorry. First class passengers can also use the suite master controller (used not only for IFE but also seat positions, lights, blinds, call button, etc). I noted that even when I got a flash error message on the master controller (yes I broke it
fortunately near the end of the flight when I'd already had a chance to test everything out, although I'd be mighty annoyed if I couldn't adjust my seat because of a master controller flash error) the armrest controller and touchscreen controls still worked.
We were told there are 1000 options loaded, being 100 movies, 300 tv shows, etc, even some business topics to learn while in the air. The menu system was intuitive and not much different to the current AVOD system, although this was much slower to operate. This slowness unfortunately seems to be common to all mega AVOD systems. I didn't like how the menus do not rotate back to start - if you scroll to the end you can only scroll back in the opposite direction.
We were not given headsets on this flight so I can't tell the quality of them or the audio.
The tailcam was a welcome addition. Flightpath has more functionality - either select the standard view which scrolls through varying levels of detail, or manual view (I forget the exact name used by QF) where you can zoom in or out, pan, etc. I noticed there was quite a pause though - with both options it takes a while for the screen to refresh after selection/adjustment.
The system seemed to be on from gate to gate, at least tailcam and flightpath were accessible during takeoff and landing. I forgot to check if other options were also switched on.
Edited to add - the new IFE also has email and chat functionality, and from next year some time, the ability to surf the internet also. I didn't check out how these work, sorry.
Next up, the new Qantas First Class (hard product).