Screenshot Tour: Qantas’ New Inflight Entertainment System

From December, Qantas will begin upgrading its in-flight entertainment systems, on both seat-back screens and iPad-equipped flights. Here’s an overview of what the new interface looks like.

The new interface updates through the course of the flight, offering different entertainment options and highlighting the stages of the flight. It also offers additional ways of sifting through viewing choices, including recommendations based on what a passenger has already watched and more genre and language categories. The menu for flights will also be shown, along with duty-free shopping and destination weather forecasts.

In-flight news on Qantas is now being provided by Sky rather than Nine, and there’s an increased emphasis on providing entire runs of series so you can binge — very handy on the Australia-US routes.

Qantas is also about to bringing trials of bring-your-own device wireless streaming, so you can view onboard entertainment on your own tablet or phone rather than using supplied iPads. That testing is taking place on the airline’s five 717 aircraft (which generally fly the Sydney-Canberra and Melbourne-Hobart routes).

New seatback screens from Panasonic are being added to the A330 fleet, which is currently being refurbished. International and domestic business class passengers get a 16-inch screen, international economy get 11-inch (almost double the current 6.4-inch screen) and domestic economy get 9-inch screens.