Originally Posted by mckov
However, blocking Skype would be useless. That would just kill Skype. What about other VOIP services? Moreover, we are finishing up an Asterisk install at our office, so we could just as easily use that, and assign any port we want, making blocking impossible. All they can do is make another rule they will need to enforce. Another issue is that as voip becomes more popular, use of Skype and other voip service will soak up what little bandwidth is available on the plane.
I can't think of any reason that compressing the data more would cause a CE device to be more stable. To the contrary, the more you compress it, the more horsepower the device will need to decompress. My guesses (without really understanding the problem) would be more in the area of hardware problems (bottlenecks), codec problems, or just plain sloppy programming.
Correct! That's why I said the guys in the UA forum WANT to block it, even though that endeavor would be quite futile. In any case, they really wanna proactively regulate it, which I found strange, as 99% of the "pro regulation guys" had never tried Connexion and didn't really know if it was annoying or not.
And regarding IFE: From what I was told, the major bottleneck must be on the server side, as usually the entire system crashes. A single reboot can take up to 20 minutes, at least with the 1st generation software they got on those A343s running MUC-LAX and MUC-PVG, which were the first planes to be reconfigured with new C (they removed F on these a/c). LH has a new software now (on more recently reconfigured a/c) which enables AVOD. I tested it in April on MUC-CLT in enhanced F (witch a touch screen), worked flawlessly. But then I hear horror stories from the new MUC-ORD and MUC-IAD routes featuring new C and enhanced F (purser being busy issuing compensation miles to pax and desperately trying to fix malfunctioning C seats).
IFE control in incredibly slow. The system often need a few seconds just to react to a "mouse click", so it takes ages to navigate through the menus. Pax don't care if this is due to CE or the server OS (or any combination of it), they just hate the end result. And LH hates it, too.