19 February, 2013 – Emirates, one of the world’s fastest growing airlines, has launched ‘ice TV Live’ as part of its on-going efforts to provide the latest in on-board entertainment. Emirates will now offer up to four channels of as-it-happens television viewing.
ice TV Live offers passengers four TV channels to select from: BBC World News in English, BBC Arabic, Euronews and, for sports fans, Sport24 - a channel dedicated to major sports events around the world.
A major sponsor of renowned global sporting events, Emirates recognizes the power of sport and its ability to connect people from around the world. A dedicated channel which provides coverage of major sporting events is a key part of the TV channel line-up. February’s Sport24 highlights include English Premier League and Bundesliga football matches. Coverage of more events will be announced soon, but 2013 will feature coverage of the Australian Open, Wimbledon, US Open Tennis, ATP Tour Masters 1000 Series, ATP World Tour Finals, US Open Golf, and the British and Irish Lions Tour. In line with this week’s announcement of a five year agreement appointing Emirates as a Global Partner of Formula 1® starting with the imminent 2013 season, ice TV Live will also include coverage of Formula 1; ensuring sports fans on Emirates miss none of the action.
“Installing the type of satellite communication that allows live TV on an aircraft is no easy feat,” explained Adel Al Redha, Emirates Executive Vice-President of Engineering and Operations. “Emirates continues to enhance the features of its inflight entertainment system with its partner Panasonic.”
The ice TV Live channels will also complement the full range of Emirates entertainment and communications options. Emirates was the first airline to introduce usage of GSM telephone on its aircraft and expanded this to the use of Wi-Fi and now live TV channels. With this latest addition, Emirates now offers Wi-Fi on 32 aircraft including all A380s, plus mobile phone use on 98 Boeing 777, Airbus A330-200, A340-300/500 and A380 aircraft.
Emirates is committed to providing the most connectivity, maximum comfort and most engaging in-flight entertainment in the skies. The ice TV Live news channels enhance Emirates existing live BBC text news headlines introduced in 2003 - which made Emirates the first airline in the world to offer such live news updates.
The new ice TV Live follows an incredible year of Emirates ‘firsts’ for inflight entertainment and communications. In 2012 alone, Emirates introduced touch TV screens similar to that found on tablets, bigger personal TV screens (27-inch in First Class, 20-inch in Business Class and 12.1 inch in Economy Class – with high definition (HD) resolution), and the introduction of mobile phone use for the first time on A380 aircraft.
2013 will build upon Emirates’ reputation for equipment and content innovation. In addition to ice TV Live, mobile phone use and Wi-Fi to Boeing 777s, the entire ice-equipped fleet will see improvements in the first few months of the year that include more music and more types of music than ever before, more Arabic TV and films on-board, the introduction of African movies, and a dedicated CBeebies channel for younger flyers.
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