This is a variation on something already baked.

Certain movie theatres offer "open captions" for movies, and they show these at special times for the hearing impaired.

The way it works is that the caption is laser burned onto the film frame by frame.

What I'm suggesting here is to create a special screen that is capable of changing the polarization of a reflected "pixel" in real time.

This way, the movie could be watched normally for everyone, but captions could be overlayed that would be visible simply by wearing polarized glasses.

Vertical for the words, horizontal for areas not containing words.
-- zigness, Feb 16 2004

Personal Movie Captions http://www.wired.co....09/eword.html?pg=5
The article describes polarized glasses as one of the four prototyped methods tested in 1994 to provide "invisible" non-intrusive captions for viewers with hearing impairments. The writer's position was that a modification to the Teleprompter product which would make it available to individual viewers was the most effective solution, albeit at a rather stiff price to the screen operator. [jurist, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Good idea, IMHO.

However, people without glasses can see polarized light no matter what orientation it's polarized in. Perhaps if you had a second projector with an infrared laser illuminating an LCD panel, superimposing infrared letters on the screen. Then you'd just need glasses with a little transparent CCD in them that would illuminate white under IR radiation...a person with a TV remote control could play havoc with the subtitles.

Expensive, but it could be a functioning device.
-- Macwarrior, May 02 2004


That people without polarized glasses can see the light regardless of orientation is the whole point. Pixels are turned off for the people with the glasses; the turned-off pixels spell out the words.
-- jutta, May 02 2004


Ah, I see. So it just blanks out a section of the screen in the shape of lettering? Smart idea.

Of course, it's not very useful if the bottom of the screen is black.
-- Macwarrior, May 02 2004


This idea is genius. I know because I independently thought of it myself. Therefore, everyone should give this person 2 buns.
-- GutPunchLullabies, Aug 20 2005



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