Size and substance - behind the scenes of the world's largest media library in the sky, Emirates ice
Dubai, UAE: Emirates has launched an innovative new video for ice that highlights the breadth of content that Emirates' 54 million customers can enjoy in the world's largest media library in the sky. Emirates invites readers to explore a behind-the-scenes look at the process of maintaining providing the best inflight entertainment globally.
Emirates is the biggest licensee of content in the skies
Movies, TV series, podcasts, language-learning courses, documentaries, animations and even live sport and news at 40,000 feet – Emirates has all bases covered. With a whopping 6,500 channels of high quality and acclaimed content, ice is the world's largest entertainment library in the sky by a long shot. The sheer quantity of content procured makes Emirates the biggest global licensee of content in the skies. As soon as global distributors open the 'non-theatrical' or post-cinema sales for movies, Emirates snaps up the best of them - allowing customers to enjoy up to 2,700 Hollywood and internationally acclaimed movies at any time. Catering to the varied tastes of millions of passengers, Emirates acquires rights to show more than 600 international movies in 50 languages from across Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, over 150 documentary movies, more than 150 Arabic movies, and 300+ Bollywood and South Asian movies to name a few. For the film buff, ice even offers more than 350 classic films from the 1930's onwards, from Casablanca and Frankenstein to Spartacus and Ben Hur, recognising that a flight just might be the perfect time to watch a perfectly remastered and high quality piece of history on a personal screen.
Emirates partners with the best providers
HBO Max, Disney+, Paramount+, Food Network, CBeebies, Discovery+, BBC, Bloomberg Originals, Shahid, BBC Earth, Animal Planet, HGTV, Nickelodeon - Emirates 'subscribes' to everything, so you can watch all your favourites when you travel. Customers have remarked that boarding an Emirates flight is like 'staying over at that movie-obsessed friend's house,' - the one who has all the leading streaming platforms and top media brands available at the touch of a button. Depending on their mood and preferences, travellers can settle in and choose from hundreds of complete TV series and full box sets including the latest trending shows. Emirates even has an agreement with Spotify - the world's most popular audio streaming subscription, offering passengers access to the best podcasts and playlists on the market. For all the planners out there, it's possible to curate your ice experience before a flight, by browsing and pre-selecting movies or TV shows on the Emirates app, which can then be synchronised to ice the moment you sit down.
Emirates offers a huge yet carefully curated library
Emirates library is vast, but the team behind the scenes invest a lot of time researching what's available worldwide that customers are likely to enjoy. The most recent or popular movies are placed at the top of the screen in the first positions. To provide a top notch entertainment experience, Emirates goes to great lengths to curate collections of content for customers - platforming movies, series and documentaries that are more niche, and often highly acclaimed. Highlighting thought leadership and trending topics, the ice team recommends 5 pieces of content each month, which might include a brilliant podcast, an informative docuseries, a TV show, or a movie that may not be on everyone's radar, and anything that is in the cultural zeitgeist. Recently, the ice team curated an entire folder of movies, shows and podcasts that related to Autism and Neurodiversity, to highlight Autism Awareness month. To highlight Earth month, Emirates' ice team prepared a folder of content about nature, including almost 60 documentaries and episodes about the earth and its creatures. To celebrate Emirates' brand ambassador Penelope Cruz, a folder of her movies was put together so that customers could familiarise themselves with Emirates' latest iconic collaboration.
The Emirates ice team also work to ensure that each piece of content onboard meets Emirates' goals of being a family-friendly airline. Emirates takes great care to ensure appropriate versions of movies are featured on ice, suitable for a myriad of cultures and perspectives. This involves intensive monitoring of various international rating systems, as well as reviews by the ice team. For children specifically, content is carefully curated, with over 250 dedicated kids and family channels, including dozens of shows for pre-school kids.
For further guidance on what to watch amidst the masses of options, Emirates produces an ice magazine every month, which highlights the best content to look out for, as well as tips on connecting to the Wi-Fi and what content is 'Coming Soon' onboard. The magazine is combined with EmiratesRED, allowing customers to browse the inflight retail offers and trending products while watching.
Emirates keeps it fresh and refreshes content monthly
Emirates content is switched up on a monthly basis, so that even frequent flyers will find the latest hits and a wide array of options. For the box office hit movies and popular TV series, Emirates aims to keep the content for as long as licensing will allow. As media server sizes differ across aircraft types, content sometimes does need to be removed to make space for the new shows and movies – although on Emirates' new A350 aircraft, the servers are notably huge - offering over triple the media storage capacity.
With a goal to constantly innovate, the ice team identified a trend in recent years from customers interested in self-development and a desire to be more actively engaged with content. Emirates added a selection of premium content from LinkedIn Learning featuring topics like productivity, motivation, transparency and entrepreneurship, as well as UTalk language learning courses available in multiple languages – English, Arabic, Latin American, Spanish, Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin and German.
With a music library of over 3,500 albums and more than 500 curated playlists from both Spotify and Emirates' own ice team, a flight is a perfect place to delve into some world music and discover new genres trending across every corner of the world. From K-pop to P-pop, Afrobeats to Arabic Classics, there is 4,000 hours- worth of music and podcasts on ice, where flyers can get into the groove of their destination before arriving.
Live TV is one of Emirates' game-changing entertainment options in the sky, ensuring customers never miss a match. ice currently has 5 channels of live TV, including 3 news channels and two channels with live sport coverage on most flights. For important finals and matches, Emirates even plays them on the big screen at the A380 Onboard Lounge, an unrivalled setting for a big game.
Emirates makes its own content too
Emirates even makes its own movie-style content. The latest promo for ice, now showing onboard, is a 3-minute whirlwind of epic action, as an Emirates cabin crew member hops on a motorbike to race an aircraft, joins a pirate battle, dances in a Bollywood scene, serves a drink on a mysterious planet, plays football in Antarctica, and is both crew and customer onboard an Emirates flight. Conceptualised by Emirates' Brand team, the video was brought to life by the multi award-winning CGI company – Framestore and took more than 6 months of post-production to produce the slick movie-style teaser that showcases ice's variety and versatility.
The Emirates ice team personally plans and records 'Emirates World' podcasts with key figures from Dubai Government officials to international thought leaders and experts, authors and poets. Emirates World includes interviews about Emirates own products and services, such as its unmatched wine programme, Emirates' culinary creativity and Emirates' Skywards loyalty programme.
Even going to the ends of the Earth for the best entertainment is possible with Emirates ice. The team conducted a live interview with UAE astronaut Dr Sultan AlNeyadi in 2023, chatting to him about his 'inflight experience' in space, while he floated 400 kilometres above the planet. Sprinkling some stardust on the ice experience, the interview was live on the Emirates World podcast on the same day the esteemed astronaut began his journey home to Earth, having completed a six-month science mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The interview was conducted from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) Mission Control Centre, via NASA in Houston, through a space to ground communication link, exclusively for Emirates' ice. At an ISS altitude of 400 kilometres and an orbital speed of 28,000 kilometres per hour, the live footage is interspersed with Dr AlNeyadi enjoying his coffee in microgravity, conducting experiments, and strapping in for his daily workout where he overlooks spectacular views of planet Earth.
Emirates is the original 'early adopter' of inflight technology
Remember the days of everyone watching the same movie on an overhead monitor? Emirates was the first airline to introduce personal screens on every seat-back in 1992. This was during the pre-internet days and was considered a disruptive and costly industry innovation at that time. At a cost of $15,000 per seat, the system offered just 6 channels.
In 1993, Emirates was one of the first airlines to introduce telecommunications on an Airbus, in all 3 classes, and in 1994, was the first to equip its Airbus fleet with an inflight fax facility for customers to stay in touch during a flight. In 2003, Emirates upgraded to ice and launched video-on-demand, with a more interactive system. In the same year Emirates became the first airline to offer live news text headlines inflight – from the BBC. By 2006, Emirates had installed personal in-seat email and SMS in all classes, and by 2008, Emirates was the first airline in the world to enable mobile phones to be used during a flight using AeroMobile systems.
With innovation as a core pillar of the Emirates brand, ice holds a legacy for best in class entertainment after 33 years – but never rests on its laurels and continues to invest to maintain its position.
Emirates ice is the most accessible inflight entertainment
Emirates is committed to setting industry standards and accessibility for People of Determination and was the first airline in the world to introduce Audio Descriptive soundtracks and Closed Captions on movies on an inflight entertainment system in 2008. Emirates now offers over 600 movies with 'Closed Captions' and 200 movies with 'Audio Description', offering accessibility to the visually impaired. Emirates headphones are also compatible with hearing aids when set to the 'T' position.
Onboard Emirates latest aircraft, the Airbus A350-900, a new user interface on ice has been designed in partnership with Thales and advocacy groups for visually impaired customers, to ensure all customers have an intuitive, high quality inflight entertainment experience. This imparts best practice experiences for visually impaired customers including audio-cue navigation assistance, voice metadata feedback, touch and swipe gesturing support and presents the large selection of audio-descriptive (AD) content available on ice.
Need information? ice has you covered
ice isn't just a cool name for the world's best entertainment in the sky, it's also an anagram for Information, Connectivity and Entertainment. If you're looking for updates, news headlines, flight times – this information is all available on ice. An inflight airshow capability invites customers to follow their flight's progress on a moving map, and see the world from 40,000 feet through external cameras. The 'I' section even has information on Events coming up in Dubai, fleet size, new destinations and routes, trending events and places in Dubai and top attractions, while the Connectivity section details how to connect to the EmiratesWiFi network after take off.
The next generation of ice
The new Emirates A350 introduced the first next-generation version of the ice inflight entertainment system with a suite of ground-breaking features designed to enhance the customer experience. Offering a cinematic display to Emirates customers, this includes the best picture quality on any aircraft with stunning 4K and 4K HDR, ultra-responsive touchscreens for seamless navigation and a vast media selection—up to triple the current content capacity. Customers will also enjoy handy new features like 'eye comfort mode' to reduce blue light exposure, the ability to skip credits and intros on videos, enhanced live TV, and simplified volume and brightness controls. An improved search function is complemented by iceMoments, a revolutionary way to explore content on ice in a short form video format. Kids will enjoy a new pictorially driven interface, while parents will appreciate the seat side parental controls for family-friendly settings.
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