Originally Posted by
747FC
These were headphones. State of the art at the time
Channeled sound waves through hollow plastic tubing into the auditory canals of user's ears. No electironic components. Used by all major airlines I flew. Useful for listening to the one movie that played at a time, either on a screen that was pulled down over the center bulkhead, or--later--on Cathode-Ray Tube TVs mounted on the ceilings. There might be a few music channels to listen, namely classical, easy-listening, and country. And, on UA, Channel 9.
Only on DL on the CRTs as of the last 20 years or so. My experience flying UA / AA / CO always had stereo plug-in variants on at least their respective 757 fleets. The CO stereo headsets were always 2-prong which were always annoying as it forced people to pay for the useless headsets for the flight and nothing else. I always took the AA ones off the plane as a kid and they actually were of decent quality on a regular CD or cassette player.
The DL mnemonic headsets came wrapped and cleaned when I experienced them in 2001. I couldn't believe they were using this technology in 2001 and go figure as they were switching to full-on AVOD via Song by the middle of the decade.
UA always had somewhat decent looped entertainment options. I recall they even did looped "Sirius XM" playlists as late as 2009 but had zero food for purchase on ORD-LAX while sitting in the front Economy row on a 757. They were serving cheese plates in F at the time and had no catering in Y. An F/A felt bad (being a college kid) and gave me cookies from F while freezing my a** off in the bulkhead seating area. Great Sirius XM '80s looped station though.