On long flights that last several hours or more, movies were once shown on big screens with audio coming from an earphone jack. It was like a movie theater yet very narrow. You didn’t have a choice of the movie you were watching. It was either watch the movie or partake in some other activity that you brought on board with you.

Today, you don’t see big screens on airplanes anymore. Have the airlines got that poor that they stopped movies too? On some planes there are small screens on the back of each seat, even in coach class. You have control over what you watch (or don’t watch). Besides the new releases, there are television shows to sports, broadcast, and premium channels. So no, they’ve found personalization of entertainment to be profitable.

If you don’t mind watching a small screen the size of a portable DVD player, it’s a great time waster until you land. You can catch up on that movie you never saw in the theater and won’t have time for when you land and return to the regular busy life with no movies.

This new technology does include live television, which requires a satellite connection. Recently, on a flight across the country, there were issues with the signal. It was disappointing that one could not watch television for free, but could instead pay for a movie and watch it. Hopefully it was truly a technical glitch and not a gimmick to get more revenue from the passengers.

If you have a travel partner, invest in an audio splitter that can take the audio source and allow more than one person to listen to the movie. You can share the movie together.

If you forgot your headphones, that’s not a problem. You can buy them for $2 along with your movie and alcoholic beverage. But you can’t buy a splitter.