CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

So, when I went to Tokyo, I ended up on a 747-400 both ways. Usually on international flights you get nifty stuff with seatback displays that reboot every 20 minutes and offer 10 channels of terrible music that's been run through a highpass so everything under 1khz is gone, along with terrible ports of Popcap games. But I digress.

This 747 was apparently built back in the DAY, because it still had ashtrays in the bathrooms and no in flight entertainment system - except for a few hangy-downy 14" CRT TVs, and... DRUM ROLL PLEASE... CRT projectors in each section! They were in the middle row, each firing on a 4:3 screen about 40" wide. It was hard to tell who made them (yeah, I don't know for sure they were vstars), since you couldn't see anything of the PJs themselves. I took a look back at them as I left the plane at one point, and they were really TINY - they looked smaller than the 7" PJs I've seen, though that could be because I'm used to my 808.

As for quality... welll.... Not so great. The color was quite different between them, and universally awful, but I didn't see any pattern burn despite all the time they spent showing a big-ass red delta logo on a blue background. Convergence was not truly terrible, but definitely not good, and the geometry was shifted around a bit. Focus was godawful - the signal was clearly SD NTSC, the same as that going to the little CRT TVs, but you could read small text on those and not on the projection screens. They were probably lucky to be resolving 320x240. I didn't see any scanlines at all, or any flicker indicative of 480i, but the focus was so bad it might not have been visible.

It's kind of interesting that the things are still in there - they could pretty easily save a ton (or at least a few hundred pounds) of weight by switching to small digitals, and even new digitals could easily be plug-and-play replacements - the PJs are probably being fed composite or svideo, and even if it's RGBHV it'd be easy enough to convert to run a digital via VGA. Even if you assume the planes are flying 15 hours a day, the cost of bulbs would be almost nill, and my own experience has proven that small, conference-room-style projectors are reliable as hell even if you shake the bejesus out of them.

So, anyway, that's my experience with what are probably among the last remaining CRT projectors in service for public viewing. Heartening, isn't it? Razz

ecrabb · Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:28 pm Post subject:

Airplanes aren't like houses or cars. It wouldn't be nearly as inexpensive as you think it would be to switch the plane over to new digital projectors. A major modification like that would require Boeing to do engineering and design (power?, HVAC?, mechanical?, cosmetic?) to integrate the new equipment, testing, and finally FAA re-certification of the aircraft. So, a project that seems like it should cost a few thousand dollars if you or I did it, would probably cost well into the six- or possibly even seven figures... All to save a few hundred pounds and get better PQ. Consider also, that if the aircraft is as old as it sounds like it is, the airframe may be nearing the end of its usable lifespan. If it's only going to be flying a few more years, it makes no sense whatsoever to do anything more to the aircraft other than maintain it.

It's the strict regulation of modifications that are the reason you don't see "piecemeal" upgraded planes. When an airline refurbs an aircraft, they spend millions (literally) and do everything at once. New carpet, seats, interior panels, A/V, galley, etc. and the costs are then amortized over many, many years.

Long-haul airplanes are often older (and look it) because they don't see nearly as many flights or get as much wear/tear as domestic short-haul aircraft do. Your 747 is probably 30 years old and due for retirement soon.

SC

PS - You're such a geek... A full report on the CRT projectors on your airplane complete with details on focus, convergence, resolution and scan lines, yet no mention of any hotties on the airplane or whether the flight attendants were good looking. Smile

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

Geeze a 747-400????

When i flew to Nippon, I was on a 777. It was a nice new plane, but the seats were designed for an anorexic midget!

Nonstop, NY to Tokyo! Shocked

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

ecrabb · Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:07 pm Post subject:

I'm 6'3 and 230 or 240 or so, so NO airliner is comfortable... At least not the seats I can afford. Thank God I've never had to fly transcontinental.

Unless I get an exit row or bulkhead seat, my knees are literally jammed against the aluminum tray-table hinges. It always feels extra nice to have the person in front of me hit the recline button on their seat, too. Stupid recliners... Those should be banned on domestic flights. It makes the seats only marginally more comfortable, and totally intrudes on the space of the person behind.

SC

Sparky015 · Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:20 pm Post subject:

You should be more concerned that you were on an aircraft more than 15 years old. Can't say you see very many '94 vintage cars on the road. You should stop thinking of that old A CRT and get yourself a lottery ticket! Glad to see Delta is charging more while maintaing old aircraft.

ecrabb · Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:32 pm Post subject:

Sparky,

But, that 20- or 25-year-old aircraft was designed for that usable lifespan and is also more reliable and better-maintained than practically any car on the road - even those driven by super-anal owners. Regular inspections, periodic overhauls, well-trained technicians, industrial design and engineering... It's all superior to how cars are designed and maintained.

SC

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

SC is right again. Airplanes are much more like houses than cars in the longevity department - and the safety record pretty much speaks for itself. You have a considerably smaller chance of dying in any given flight than you would of winning the lottery - old plane or not. Only three 747-400s (out of 500) have been written off in the 19 years since they came into service. None of those crashes (as far as I can tell) were due to mechanical failure, and two of them only had one fatality combined.

I wasn't too worried. The 45 minute drive to the airport was far more dangerous.

Spanky Ham · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central

Crabb is correct on both counts. Doing work on airplanes is straight forward. There are ways around it, but probably not on commercial passenger aircraft. At this point it is probably not worth it even if it was only $15k.

As for the age of the plane, are you kidding? Airplanes are designed to last damn near forever. If they weren't, then the airlines would never recoup their investments.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:13 am Post subject:

Google DC3 and see what ages you come up with.

donaldk · Joined: 17 Jun 2008 Posts: 308

You can still book flights on DC3s here in Holland. http://www.dutchdakota.nl/index.php?content=content&description1=Vluchten&menu_id=11&subtype=2

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

I'm generally quite confident in aviation engineering - but I have to say it boggles my mind that they ran all four 'redundant' hydraulic lines down the same fuselage tube in a lot of 7xx aircraft... Great! That's really useful!

ecrabb · Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 7:30 pm Post subject:

I think it's that atypical that the lines are together in the fuselage... The fuselage is a pretty safe place. If something pierces the fuselage and the armor protecting the hydraulic lines in the middle of the aircraft, then you probably have more to worry about than hydraulic lines. Where colocation of redundant hydraulics becomes a real problem is in the extremities, and near engines, like in the United Flight 232 DC-10.

In that instance, when a compressor disc in the #2 (tail) engine failed (catastrophically, of course), it severed all three hydraulic lines in the tail and took the hydraulic pressure and flight controls along with it. They had to use the throttles and differential thrust to crash-land the airplane. 111 people died, but 185 people lived through it... a miracle. The only reason I know anything about that particular crash is because it was kind of personal - I was just over a mile away when it happened.

SC

Spanky Ham · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central

Wow, crabb did you see it go down? I just looked and the DC-10 has only had a couple of crashes in the U.S. in the forty years it has been in service.

ecrabb · Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 10:41 pm Post subject:

No, I didn't see the crash... I think that might have been a good thing. I just saw the giant black mushroom cloud that resulted from it after I hauled ass out of the front of the building to see what made all the ceiling tiles in the office jump. I went back in and called my old man moments later (his business was on the airport), and he told me the news. Given the violent nature of the crash, it was still assumed then that there were no survivors and that nearly 300 people had just died.

Over an hour later, there were crash victims that had literally stumbled into the terminal totally unattended and were asking to rent cars. It was unbelievable. I still remember the cream-colored fiberglass insulation from the fuselage floating around in the air for HOURS after the crash. It was so surreal.

I spent that entire evening prepping cars and cell phones for the small army of people from McDonnell Douglas, GE, the FAA, NTSB, news media, etc. that descended on my little home town... People started showing up in private jets just a few hours after the crash. It was nuts. I've never seen anything like it.

SC