I flew TPAC yesterday on a pmUA 777.

The system was stuck on the "PA" state (the control unit said PA and screen was frozen) after the safety demo. I told the FA as we were taxiing. He made sure the PA system was off - no FA accidentally had the phone off hook (?) but it did not fix the problem. He said the Purser had to reset it after we took off.

So, she did not do the first reset until we were above 10,000 feet...

First reset - system started playing the pre-safety demo "UA commercial" right after return. She turned it off and reset again and asked passengers to not push any buttons in the mean time

2nd reset - it did not even get that far and she reset again

Waited 20 minutes (per instruction as she said) and 3rd reset was the charm - it started playing the "commercial" and demo. She waited for them to finish then the system returned to a good state

That was about 1 hour after take off - we were already having our salads in BF by then.

That got me curious...these systems do seem kind of finicky and resetting, which seems to be the only way to correct problems for the FAs, takes a long time.

Is this just the nature of these systems (this does not seem to be unique to UA)? Why can't they make these systems more reliable software wise (I am sure hardware is very strict after the SR111 tragedy)? Why the wait between the resets? Do the passengers pushing buttons during the reset really hurt the system?

Of course, in C and F, with the system powered down, one can't do the FA call button nor control the overhead lights.

Thanks.