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Comment by michaelbuckbee | Hacker News Reader

One high-level design choice that they made is to entirely skip any kind of in-seat entertainment and screens and instead of plan around people showing up with their own tablets and phones (to which they provide power). This makes immense sense to me and I'm sure simplifies things on their side.

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I have never seen a train with in seat entertainment (other than looking out the window!). Is that even a thing?

It used to be a thing. https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/end-of-volo-tv-on-fgw-h...

They made the seats more claustrophobic even though they didn't stick out massively. They were not free so the only thing you could use them for realistically was the map. So yes, you could see where the train was for 2-3 minutes then it would go into 'attract mode' to try and get you to pay.

I think that they were a solution looking for a problem. They could reboot the concept to use Apple Carplay/Android Auto. Train info is useful to have on hand and it should be possible to do upsells.

Agreed. Southwest Airlines does this in the US, with "free" wifi access to their entertainment app/portal. I much prefer it to the often terrible seat-back screens on some other carriers.

I have even seen on some airlines (Alaska) that are doing away with seat backs screens on newer flights you can pay to rent a tablet if you don't already have one, want an extra one, etc.

Same with certain United flights. Stream movies onto your own phone from the plane's WiFi.

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