What does the average reader Geektimes, soaring in the clouds

Perhaps you do not know, but some airlines have finally understood that when every grandmother has a smartphone, you can radically save money on the fleet and suddenly increase the level of service.

The thought of the operator is something like this: why buy a liner with a TV in each headrest (or carry out a deep modernization, if it is even possible), if movies, music and cartoons can be streamed straight into the passenger's pocket?

I love it. If only because the screens built into the chairs are terrible to say the least, and the headphones connected to them are also so-so, to be honest. I am already silent, that in an economy class there are so broken connectors that the headphones either wheeze or deaf in one ear. And yes, I still can not afford a business class.
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In general, at least one airline already has such an option in the form of a Wi-Fi media server with content broadcasting to passengers' devices on the Airbus A320 and A320neo boards. I found out about this, do not believe it, from the pre-flight report of the commander of the ship, usually not carrying particularly useful information. Details, as was said - in the logbook.

Since there was nothing to do, I began the good old reading. It turned out that, firstly, you need to connect to the on-board Wi-Fi network. And, secondly, if you have a smartphone or tablet in your hands, then it would be good to have a branded app (available for iOS and Android), and if a laptop, then nothing is needed, and everything will work.

Without a branded app, access to music and books is promised. With a corporate app or on a laptop, movies and cartoons are added.

Interestingly, the app installation description for Android turned out to be different for the A320 and A320neo. For example, if you believe the instructions, then flying to the A320 app need to have time to download before departure (as well as owners of devices with iOS), but the lucky ones on the new A320neo can install the application at any time (obviously, you can download from the internal server); courage and allow installation from unknown sources.

Since my flight was performed on the A320, and I didn’t find a branded application (and laptop too), I was literally in the span. But, you see, it was boring. And with the longing, I still connected to the network, hoping that if there is a streaming server, then you can search for the address of the stream, and Android somehow figured out what to do next.

Having connected to the internal Wi-Fi network of the liner, I saw on the screen a standard authorization screen with a primitive browser, where by default the media portal is displayed.

Since I was interested first of all in the video, I chose a cartoon with a reptiloid. The note suggested that it would not be possible to see without app, but would you really stop me? I boldly pressed the play button.



It is hard to say what I was hoping to see, but I received an error message, in which I paid attention to the JSON link:



Of course, I selected it and opened it. In the end, you need to start playing text quests sometime. At this step, I really liked the link to the file with the promising name Manifest_MD.mpd:



And she did not disappoint. In the manifesto among a lot of things that are incomprehensible to me (I remind you that I am an average reader of Geektimes), there was also a way to what I was trying to find - a file with a cartoon.



Since I am not very confident in composing the URL, I spent some more time getting the correct full path and voila:



More precisely, not quite voila. It turned out that Android knows what to do with MPEG, but remains at a loss when it encounters DRM protection. In this case, however, the entire movie can be downloaded to the memory of the smartphone.

In general, I admired the little squares jumping around the screen as a symbol of what I can read, and then fell asleep.

In the meantime, I was asleep, I dreamed that it was not quite right, probably, to give download content like this and allow anyone to walk around the media server bypassing its interface.

And I also dreamed that aerophobes shouldn’t worry about this: the media server is isolated from the computer’s flight control, so even the most sophisticated hacker will not be able to play in flight.

TL; DR: Boarded the plane without downloading the corporate application, fell asleep, without looking at the bedtime story. Do not do as I do.