juniordk2000

Earlier today I checked the list of movies available for my upcoming flight later this month. It seems to me that the choice of movies has become much more limited in recent years.
I fondly remember when BA had a range of classic movies, a director/actor theme plus a wide range of movies. Sadly todays list of movies seems to pale in comparion to the "good old days" - or I am just getting old and grumpy?

Yahillwe

YESSSSSS�. my last flight, there was nothing that I wanted to watch.

Am dreading my return and maybe I will just take something to sleep.

Cap'n Benj

It's the same as it's always been for me

There's a fair few classics this month- Annie hall, Casablanca, Eternal Sunshine..., jaws, Godfather, All 3 Toy Stories, Trading Places

It looks like the theme this month is Bond, looks like pretty much every single film is available, although that could be Thales specific

stevie

BA IFE, for a few years now, is relatively appalling.

T8191

It was Bond-Month in October as well, together a large number of Bollywood productions which seemed a trifle incongruous on an East Coast TATL ex-LHR. The only thing worse than the film collection was the TV programme offerings, as discussed here before.

As usual, I was saved by my Kindle

Physci

Which is why I load up my ipad with movies

corporate-wage-slave

I don't know, I normally don't do IFE, I have to work on aircraft. Also I strive to watch movies in a proper cinema (but given my schedule it's a bit of a pipe dream). But on a recent longhaul I was surprised how much of it I wanted to watch, notably a documentary on the Alan McGee rise and fall in the music industry. Then among the movies there is:

Blue Jasmin
Behind the Candelabra
Despicable Me 2
Pacific Rim
Elysium
Alan Patridge Alpha Papa
Filth
Star Trek Into Darkness.

Some of these are edgy enough for Virgin, most are within a few months of their original release, and I'd suggest quite an eclectic selection. Some of them will get Oscars.

Sixth Freedom

Almost every Bond film was featured in August too. I watched Thunderball on the way to SIN and Tomorrow Never Dies on the way back. See my TR for more about this trip.

Towards the end of my time at QR I spend a period working extensively with the IFE team to revitalise and rejuvenate our offering, as part of which I discovered several interesting things. If memory serves, these included:

i) English language films made available by Hollywood are a constraining factor in IFE and each month almost every airline offers the same 'latest releases' and there is not that much variety across the industry in 'classics' either

ii) it generally costs proportionally much more per film to have all the films of a particular series than to have all except one or two (QR offers only 7 of 8 Harry Potters at any one time for this reason and I expect that BA does not quite offer every James Bond)

iii) one of the most interesting discriminators between operators is non-English language options; at QR this was an area that we were keen to boost - EK, who proudly boast about their IFE, do not actually offer that many more English language films than competitors (although they do offer a few more) but they do have an excellent range of non-English films

iv) the most popular choice of English language films watched by passengers is 'action', followed by 'comedy' - we had an interesting debate about whether a long tail was more important than more choice among the most popular genres

v) due to the Hollywood availability constraint for new films the only field where operators can vary the balance of genres is in the non-new releases and system capacity is a critical issue here because operators tend to fill up with all the new releases first; I seem to recall that BA had comparatively few actions and comedies to competitors and relatively more romances, thrillers etc... in the data I collected.

paulwuk

Ahh, the old "I don't like the films on offer therefore it's rubbish" argument.

Every Bond film has been on the upgraded IFE (Thales? On 773s and the second-rate A321 torture flights) for a long time, over a year I think. Always good to be able to watch the best bond (Brosnan) and film (For Your Eyes Only).

The selection on the 747 has been skewed towards new releases in recent months, they've been on longer, and there have been more. I forget how many, but 5 or 6 pages of new releases - so about 30-35, at the expense of a handful (4 I think) in the Movie Library. I have a feeling more space has been given out to TV shows too.

Ultimately the older AVOD system, on the 747 and 767 (and some 777s) has a limited number of minutes it can put on. Sadly it's not just a case of BA slapping a new 4TB hard drive in the system and calling it a day.

Remember it's only recently that the old 12 channel loop system has been replaced.

IMO All planes should have the following two films in the system

* Up in the air
To remind you not to fly as much, and

* Airplane
I saw that December's high life warns about an "aircraft in distress" on one film

London_traveller

I'm glad you mention this - on my last few flights I've been disappointed with the selections and hardly anything I've wanted to watch. I never used to have this problem - there were always a handful of films and TV programmes I'd be happy to watch, whether new releases or older 'classics'. Certainly more than enough to fill a flight.

Seems to have got worse in the past six months in particular. I mention this as I recall a couple of good flights for IFE in the first half of the year where there was more than I could fit in.

Just another enhancement to add to the list, I guess?

Polomarc

Just had a look on High Life, some of the ones that CWS mention can be ok and there are also a few tv serie such as Breaking Bad

Sixth Freedom

Epic and highly recommended. I saw seasons 1-3 earlier this year and a friend has just leant me the DVD for season 4, which I am working through this week.

stevie

TV series as offered by BA are a major mistake. Take CX, I had a long haul flight and had heard the comedy Veep was good. The whole series was on offer so I started at espisode one and enjoyed working my way through it. BA always offers episodes 4/5 of season 4 or the like. Useless.

diontd

Last few times I went on BA LH flights I just slept. Got a return to DXB on 777s (109/108) in a few weeks. Hopefully the flim selection isn't too poor as the return is a day flight. What are my chances of getting an aircraft with Thales IFE?

G-BPED

I always take an ipad for entertainment. As I come from a film/audio engineering background a reasonable size screen and at least 5.1 audio is a necessity.

Otherwise, its just not worth watching IMHO.