How many people (aside from me) get distracted by the Teletext Subtitles that appear for the Audibly Impaired (can't say deaf). My wife is Audibly Impaired and uses the subtitles a lot, but as they are on the screen while I am watching too I find I am paying too much attention to the words and not the action. Also the subtitles have an annoying habit of appearing over the top of crucial pieces of the film.
Solution: Special glasses that the Audib... oh shit, deaf people wear so that they and only they can see the subtitles.-- Alcin, Aug 30 2000 Rear Window Captioning http://www.wgbh.org...faq.html#RearWindowA system currently used in theatres to give private unobtrusive captioning to people that want it. (I'm sure you already know about this one, Alcin...) [koz, Aug 30 2000, last modified Oct 05 2004] Adaptive Micro Systems BetaBrite http://www.betabrite.comInexpensive LED sign that can be controlled by an external PC. [koz, Aug 30 2000, last modified Oct 05 2004] Sony's Glasstron LCD goggles http://www.sonystyl...71/942.default.htmlI have just discovered (in my latest PC mag), the above. This is the sort of thing I had in mind. Perhaps the glasses could include subtitle input. [Alcin, Aug 30 2000, last modified Oct 05 2004] Nope. Not a notion. News of this has not arrived in NZ. I would love to see something like this in action, and take my wife to a movie she could appreciate. But it still does not address the problem of television in the home. Thought. How to teleprompters on studio cameras work? As I understand it the words appear on a sheet of glass (?) in front of the camera lens that the "Television Personality" reads, but is invisible to the camera. Perhaps a variation on this for the domestic market? I mean it has to be cheaper than buying a whole new TV.-- Alcin, Aug 31 2000 The prompt text is on a monitor below the camera, which is reflected on a half-silvered mirror that sits in front of the camera lens. I brought up RWC with the idea that a cheaper home version could be built.
Heck, it could probably be done with an AMS BetaBrite (see link), some clever closed-captioning decoding software for Linux, and a sheet of smoked plexi from the hardware store.-- koz, Aug 31 2000 Not a bad idea...Someone at <I believe> MIT had come up with a pair of goggles that would read barcodes in the environment and display whatever text was tagged to the code, like 'Fred's office' or whatever. Maybe put subtle barcodes in the film itself, so it wasn't dependent on say radio synch with the film. You could also put things in like '<-- Gunshots and scream' on the edge of the screen so they'd know what all the characters just looked around at.
This would probably require a software plugin with the movie dialog of some sort, but it shouldn't be too hard to get from the internet, or pass out in small modules...
Alternatively, a <probably short range radio, or IR> broadcast could send the dialog. Would probably need automatic synchronization of some sort to keep things together...-- StarChaser, Sep 02 2000 Thanks, but there's enough electronic stuff beaming into my head without something aiming specifically at it. The goggles I was talking about displayed it on the goggles themselves as per the links.-- StarChaser, Sep 03 2000 Hey StarChaser, re your comment...like '<-- Gunshots and scream' on the edge of the screen so they'd know what all the characters just looked around at. They actually do this sort of thing on television subtitles. It can actually get quite weird with things like "Eerie music plays" or "Heartbeat thumping". Sometimes they really let loose and subtitle things the characters haven't even said. But my favourite has to be obscene language that gets bleeped out but is on the screen in the subtitles. Or vise versa.-- Alcin, Sep 04 2000 I' ve seen '~\o Eerie music ~\o' before, but never something pointing offscreen otherwise...<grin> And I've seen the language get missed, too...
Was watching the local government channel a couple of years ago, and apparently the subtitler got their fingers onto the wrong home keys, because suddenly everyone was speaking Klingon...-- StarChaser, Sep 04 2000 Reception interference or corroded/badly installed aerial can often cause subtitles to go all to hell and appear to be "Klingon". It took me hours to get my aerials set up just so.
It would be nice also if VCR manufacturers made machines that recorded subtitles. Grundig used to but stopped...no reason available. Mind you they were expensive, so people probably didn't buy them. Of course if they were cheaper more people would have bought them, but what do I know.-- Alcin, Sep 05 2000 random, halfbakery