Hi

I just got a TR5 and I am very happy! But I need your help.

Some airlines are now saying that you cannot use a CD/DVD drive on the aircraft as it interferes with the systems on board.

So if I still want to watch films on my TR5 what is the easiest/quickest way to transfer films onto the TR5 itself from a DVD?

If you could explain it easy terms that would be great!

thanks
rich

as far as I know, you can watch DVD after take-off. In fact, I did so using Swissair own DVD player
regards

[quote author=“sonypc100”]Hi

I just got a TR5 and I am very happy! But I need your help.

Some airlines are now saying that you cannot use a CD/DVD drive on the aircraft as it interferes with the systems on board.

So if I still want to watch films on my TR5 what is the easiest/quickest way to transfer films onto the TR5 itself from a DVD?

If you could explain it easy terms that would be great!

Geeze, there they go again. We’ve had to battle some of them over every generation of small electronic device. :(

This isn’t a one-button solution so you’ll actually have to do some work and learn a little. On the up side you can greatly reduce the file size.

Get DVD Shrink and use it to remove menus and extras. Then use manual settings to shrink the DVD to whatever file size you can manage—remembering the more you reduce file size the lower the video quality. Nevertheless, TV grade video IMHO would be fine if all I’m doing is filling hours on an airplane.

You can find DVDshrink and tutorials on how to use it at:

http://www.videohelp.com/

If I were going to this on a regular basis I might look into DIVX reencoding but that’d be more complicated.

Maybe someone with more knowledge than I of the inner-workings of commercial aircraft can correct me, but I have a hard time believing that consumer electronics interfere that much with aircraft instrumentation, especially considering that the instruments have to be sufficiently sheilded against interference from normal radiation from space at that altitude.

Yes, DVD Shrink is excellent & only just over 1MB to download. Great for “Archiving”  :wink: your original disks.

You do lose a little quality. I’ve had a portable DVD player for some time and it’s nice not to take original discs out into the world. Good also for kiddie discs, solves problems with small sticky hands and eventual scratches.

Maybe someone with more knowledge than I of the inner-workings of commercial aircraft can correct me, but I have a hard time believing that consumer electronics interfere that much with aircraft instrumentation, especially considering that the instruments have to be sufficiently sheilded against interference from normal radiation from space at that altitude.

OK…The deal is…Most electronics don’t interfere with MOST avionics (aircraft electronics used for navigation and communications).  The big gotcha is electronics that transmit or receive (cell phones, radios, tvs…).  DVD players DO NOT interfere and should be usable (above 10,000 feet) on the aircraft.  Some individuals have claimed that no electronics have ever interfered with avionics…NOT TRUE.  I know of two incidents where cell phone transmissions were blocking aircraft communications and the pilots could not hear ATC over the radios.  Rather than test every device, the FAA (not the airlines, although the airlines are tasked with enforcing the FARs [Federal Aviation Regulations]) chooses to restrict what devices can be used with a blanket restriction.  The reason for the 10,000 foot limit for ALL electronics is that below 10,000 feet is a more critical environment and interference at those altitudes can be far less forgiving than at higher altitudes where you have more time to troubleshoot the problem.  So the short answer (now that it is a long one)...DVDs should be fine…transmitters/receivers won’t be allowed (until they start testing specific devices).

Just the man I was hoping would post. :D Thanks for clearing that up. I figured the active trasmission devices like cell phones (and BT/WiFi transmitters in out TRs) were capable of interference, but was always skeptical of my Gameboy causing problems.

Drachen.
You are “Gameboy safe”.  Just remember, a lot of the flight attendants are not very familiar with most electronics and/or their functions so they just regurgitate what is in their PA guide.  Try to be patient (I must admit that my patience wears thin) with the flight attendants who don’t know the difference between a Gameboy and an X-Box.  I try to remember that when I am in the back (just like you) I am at the mercy of the uninformed and they have the HAMMER.  I just grit my teeth and think of all the things I would like to say and keep them to myself.  Fortunately there is movement on a few fronts to allow more electronics to be used more often in flight (cell phones).  I don’t know which carriers, if any will allow them or when but at least someone is taking some interest in that area.

DVD’s shoud be fine, but more and more airlines are now banning the ‘spinning of the CD drive’ throughout the whole flight!

The airlines cant really have 2 rules, its either safe or it isnt for all airlines - as most airlines still allow cd drive useage then its obviously ok and doesnt interfere with aircraft instruments.

In the UK, 2 that now ban it are:

My Travel
Aer Lingus (Ireland)

cheers

rich

sonypc100, are they telling you that you cannot even listen to a music CD?  That involves spinning the CD drive.

Does anyone know how small the file gets using DVD shrink?  I know that Divx can get as small as 500mb and still look very good on any laptop.

Truth

Crazy but correct! The in flight announcement goes something like this….

“You may use laptop computers once the fasten seatbelt is turned off, however you must not use the cd/dvd drive at anytime during the flight, as this may interfere with the aircraft systems, this includes personal CD players etc etc”

load of %$** if you ask me!!!!

I used dvdripper to rip a dvd to my drive.  It will create vob files to be read by windvd and powerdvd.

[quote author=“Anonymous”]Well, I can’t speak for passenger airlines, but I’ve used my cell phone in GA - General Aviation, that’s single and twin engine prop planes, and no issues whatsoever.
Cell phones operate on entirely different frequencies than air communications. Air radios go from around 117 MHz to around 135 MHz. My cell phone isn’t even close to that.
I asked my flight instructor about this, and he said that the reason they (The FCC, not the FAA)  restrict cell phone usage is because when travelling at 400+ KIAS, or 450+ mph, at more than say, 10,000 feet off the ground, your cell phone jumps from tower to tower repeatedly, and they can’t track the service. This is illegal for some reason.

As to DVD/CD players, the only thing I can think of, is because the airline wants you to rent their headsets and portable DVD players.

AFAIK, the only thing that would mess with an aircraft’s communications is another aircraft nearby transmitting at the same time as first said aircraft. Then you get fun whistle sounds with hints of voices while both try to decide if they should stop talking, or wait for the other one to stop.

Feel free to ask me about anything aviation-related, I’ll do my best to help out.

I don’t know if I buy the can’t track you from tower to tower. If you’re connecting they are or the phone wouldn’t be working.

A radio transmitter transmits not only on it’s assigned frequency but also on multiples of the center frequency. These are normally suppressed to the point that for most purposes they’re unimportant. Parasitic oscillatiions can also occur at random frequencies (no relationship to the xmit freq.) if there’s a bad connection in the circuit or antenna connection.

Somewhere out there is a beat-up, dropped, poorly designed cell phone that under the right circumstances MIGHT affect avionics. All the FAA and other aviation authorities are doing is what we’ve asked them to do. That’s why after so many hours they take apart perfectly running engines, inspect and reassemble them.

I have no idea what the hang-up with optical drives is. Computers themselves are noisy little beasts.

i did read once about the cell phone jumping scenario. I thought it kinda sounded like an urban myth as they said that since you couldn’t be tracked base station wise you weren’t charged for the calls. Don’t know whether this is true or not.
Cell phones can cause some interference sure - as we’ve all heard the awful sounds made when your phone goes off near to the car radio or other audio equipment. That said the rules were probably put in place when older phones leaked more interference. I would also think that the interference generated is quite localised, so unless you’re standing next to the pilots headset it shouldn’t affect anything.
I used to travel all the time with a guy who always left his phone on in his bag in the overhead locker and it used to ring all the time. He was too embarrassed to get up and turn it off as he would look foolish - again. So we’d land and there’d be a couple of missed calls.
One thing i always used to think was if it was such a safety hazard then wouldn’t they take all the mobile phones off people before they got on the planes? Seems like it’d be a pretty easy way to mess with a plane if all you had to do was take a bag full of mobiles on board and leave em switched on :twisted:

[quote author=“dbs”]
Computers themselves are noisy little beasts.

We gotta get rid of all those noisy mechanical parts. :wink: