Apologies for breathing more life into this thread.

My biggest complaints about BA's IFE aren't about the absence noise cancelling headphones (I manages to pick up enough pairs of the SOny folding ones for the entire family at knock down prices, so that's not an issue).

My complaints are (i) the quality of the screen. In CW, the screen is both too small and of ultra-low quality. It also has this bizarre grid pattern on it (presumably for the touch screen use) which I find very distracting. (ii) the fact that the IFE is broadcast using video and not dvd. The image quality is definitely sub-standard, and recently on more occasions than not the film I've started watching has had tape tracking problems that render it unwatchable.

It only takes five minutes of watching a dvd inflight on a laptop or portable dvd player to realise how far off the mark BA's IFE is from where it should be. Unfortunately, I can't see the required level of spend being incurred to get it up to standard any time soon.