The in-flight entertainment systems on most commercial flights I've been on have been consistently clunky and unpleasant, anyway. The servers are prone to flaking out and needing reboots.
Responsible for at least one total loss accident:
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Good riddance. I guess putting an iPad-type screen running some in-house software to serve up movies safely was just too tough a nut to crack.
If you had read that article to its conclusion you might have noticed that at least one inspector suggested that there may have been an incendiary device due to the presence of magnesium in the wiring. This was picked up by the CBC network and broadcast in 2011.
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In September 2011, the CBC program The Fifth Estate reported allegations suggesting that an incendiary device might have been the cause of the crash. These claims came from a former RCMP arson investigator who was assigned to the Swissair file the day after the crash. Sgt. Tom Juby claimed that suspicious levels of magnesium and other elements associated with arson were discovered in the wiring and that he was ordered to remove references to magnesium or a suspected bomb from his investigative notes.[25] The TSB claimed that the high levels of magnesium in some wires could be explained by prolonged exposure to sea water during the recovery effort. A TSB document obtained by the Fifth Estate showed that the TSB had placed pristine wires in sea water for several weeks and upon testing those wires showed no traces of magnesium.[citation needed]
I'd be flippant but a lot of people died and it appears that the actual cause has not been determined - and no one appears to have taken credit for it. It may well have been just a very sad accident. Magnesium is used in flares after all, and if there were flares in the aircraft one or more may have gone off after hitting the ocean, leading to cross contamination.
The article says the do it because most passengers bring their own entertainment device instead of using the supplied one.
Of course that poses a risk in itself, but it may be unwise to double the disk by both providing a device in the airplane and allowing the passengers to bring and use their own device as well.
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