Virgin America’s new inflight entertainment system

Artur Bergman over at the O’Reilly Radar has had a chance to look at the new Virgin America planes. The inflight entertainment system sounds amazing!

Developed internally at Virgin America, the system is named Red and provides live satellite tv, movies, mp3s, games and plane-wide chatting. Yes, chatting. There is a general chatroom, a private invite channel for your friends, and direct user-to-user messaging. When watching television, you have the option to chat with everyone who is watching the same event.

There are also some other smart touches like USB sockets for charging of peripherals, and being able to order food via the system which keeps track of what’s been ordered so ground crews know how much to restock…

…oh, and it has Doom on it…

…yes, that’s right, Doom.

Update (9th August): Xeni Jardin from BoingBoing writes about the experience on the Virgin America Inaugural, and Artur Bergman blogs about the flight on the O’Reilly Radar, including a screenshot of Doom on the IFE. Cool stuff.