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Comment by harrall | Hacker News Reader

The bridge has been crossed for a few years.

I watch streaming video over plane Wi-Fi. Sometimes over the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.

Buffered streaming is quite different than a two way call. The latency on traditional airplane WiFi would make video calls more like a two way radio with “Over!” pauses in between.

Sure, but my point isn’t that over technical specs. Plane Wi-Fi is already good enough to let people do some seriously rude stuff but yet I have not heard of it being a problem.

United, who are the ones quoted to be adding Starlink, has already invested some of the most I have seen in on-plane Internet so this is just a gradual upgrade for those who fly United.

I did this once.

I explained the situation ahead of time to a coworker in the same meeting and that I'd answer any questions via chat.

A little surprised it worked as well as it did.

Yea, I watch YouTube all the time on planes. Usually 480p maybe 720p. Sometimes I find I need to use a VPN to prevent streaming sites from being throttled badly.

That's typically a CDN node on the plane though, not a live 2-way connection.

I’m watching videos from my Plex server sitting in my living room, on the other side of Earth…

…or random skate videos on YouTube which won’t be replicated.

So it’s not the on-plane CDN.

It’s true that the upstream probably isn’t too great for streaming but I also upload media over plane Wi-Fi just fine.

Really? I doubt that. How large is a node on the plane?

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