[bdowling]

Yes, they would charge for headphones to watch the movie. The movie (there was only one, or maybe two on a long international flight) was played on CRT monitors mounted on the ceiling of each cabin section.

That was 20+ years ago, before flat panel screens in every headrest that could tune into one of a couple dozen looping channels, and long, long before you could watch anything at any time from a huge library.

[dpig_]

You skipped too far into the future with the "huge library" bit. Fixed:

"long, long before you could watch [Season 2, Episodes 4 - 6 of Comedy Central Roast]."

[turnsout]

Before that, they actually ran film projectors in some planes, using a variety of half-baked schemes.[0] Wild times!

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-flight_entertainment#Histor...