Tag Archives: closed caption

Post CinemaCon HI/VI Review–Sony CC Glasses

They did this by putting the letters into a small, see-through portion of both lenses and with a little magic sauce the words are suspended in the void between the viewer and the screen. The distance and font size and lateral position were all adjustable. And they were wonderful. But they needed refining and productization. The pairs that USL showed were made with 3D casting techniques that are not fit for production (fragile and expensive.) But the nice part was that they worked with the other equipment that USL has sold for years to the hearing and sight impaired audience members and the theaters who installed them.

At CinemaCon 2011 there was a wonderful off-the-exhibit-floor display of vendors who supplied equipment to the accessibility community. USL was positioned very close to the entrance of the room, but alongside Sony…who were showing a very refined version of the glasses technology that USL had been developing. What appeared to be happening was an interesting combo for exhibitors; the Sony glasses were receiving their signal from USL’s transmitter. But the glasses were light and nicely shaped and amazingly one could see the letters against the screen even in a bright room.

Expectations were that the system would be available around the end of the year…which came and went without any announcements. There were pictures that were smuggled out and passed around the community, but went unpublished even with the news that other vendors were taking orders around the globe. Some examples are the government grants purchasing equipment for hundreds of theaters in Australia and the recent announcement of complete fitting out of closed caption and descriptive audio or audio enhancement equipment at the complete chain of Marcus Theaters (675 screens in 56 theater locations.) Marcus Theatres(R) Completes Rollout of CaptiView(TM) and Fidelio(TM) Systems. Harkness and AMC have made announcements as well.

But Regal was quiet until they made the announcement at CinemaCon with Sony that they would be installing the new Sony glasses and audio system at all their theaters, with the intention of having closed captioning and assisted listening screenings at every show in every theater. Generally speaking this is not impossible but there are still difficulties on the distribution side. The greatest difficulty lies in the narration track which often isn’t completed until after the main movie is ready for shipping. Who wants to take responsibility for missing a release date because the narration track isn’t done? and how many languages are you going to hold the movie for?

Two years ago this dilemma was on no one’s radar. The promise of digital was gaining momentum everywhere but in the accessibility field. The basic standard was set out in the specifications, but they were made without any equipment being made to test whether the ideas worked in reality. Real world experiments proved that the smooth work flow that gave captions and audio in the analog world of film…with equipment that not only wasn’t available but wouldn’t work if it was…was capable of inconsistent jumbles in the digital world. USL’s engineers worked with engineers of other equipment manufacturers to work out compatibility problems during the times of transition between TI’s Series One and Series Two methods of creating letters and shapes accurately positioned on the screen from data files of text. Hundreds of hours of plugfests with no other manufacturer of HI/VI equipment showing up.

Against this background, USL becomes one of a million companies who help shape a technology and get the arrows of the pioneer as the reward. Sony announced that their clients preferred an all Sony implementation rather than a mixed vendor version. The new glasses system are sold with a receiver that also includes an audio jack so that this rechargeable receiver can also provide audio from the stereo assisted listening or the mono narrative tracks. But, they won’t supply the glasses and the audio headsets (not shown at the demo) at the same time.

Notwithstanding, a nice implementation. And yes, before you ask, 3D lenses can be used in combination with the glasses. The implementation shown at CinemaCon had a Regal logo centered on a flat set of lenses that were made to fit (if somewhat clumsily) into invisible grooves in the glasses frame.

Like Doremi, USL also makes a device that is mounted on a goose-neck that fits into the cupholder. As nice as these units are, and as nice as they have worked to block the light from interfering from adjacent seats…these are Model T implementations compared to the Sony glasses. There is no comparison to the comfort of not having to constantly look down and refocus to read the lines of text. Once an audience member gets used to using these glasses, that’s it. They will only go to a theater that supports them. In the United States, this is a good thing, since Regal has nearly 7,000 screens.

Regal has also put a lot of effort into working with CaptionFish, an online group who can guide the audience to open and closed caption screening times as well as note what type of narration equipment is available. Some narration equipment is able to work with the hearing aids of the user, and some users have purchased their own headsets.

It remains to be seen whether audience members will be able to buy their own glasses and listening device, letting the theater be responsible for the transmitter and link to the movie. One would think that it would be a great opportunity for a sponsor to get involved with partial or complete funding. They are more used to working with this model in the legit theater, which also supplies multiple languages for the scenes in opera or during plays.

All in all this is a wonderful time for accessibility in the US. In England, Your Local Cinema has helped the industry move along for some time there, but there is no great motion anywhere else in the EU…and the growth in accessibility seems stalled even in England. No one is talking of universal accessibility the way that Regal is. Perhaps it was the way that the lawyer who had lawsuits against them put it, when he gave his public presentation to the US Department of Justice. (In it he pointed out how minuscule the cost of accessibility equipment would be compared to the previous year’s corporate dividend.) Who knows? But it is a great thing to have happen after so many promises were broken for so long. In the end it is a mutually beneficial enhancement.

References:

Digital accessibility: Exhibition industry aims to deliver entertainment for all – Film Journal, 18 August 2011

Sony Closed Caption Glasses

 

 

Multiple HI/VI equipments

Post CinemaCon HI/VI Review–Sony CC Glasses

They did this by putting the letters into a small, see-through portion of both lenses and with a little magic sauce the words are suspended in the void between the viewer and the screen. The distance and font size and lateral position were all adjustable. And they were wonderful. But they needed refining and productization. The pairs that USL showed were made with 3D casting techniques that are not fit for production (fragile and expensive.) But the nice part was that they worked with the other equipment that USL has sold for years to the hearing and sight impaired audience members and the theaters who installed them.

At CinemaCon 2011 there was a wonderful off-the-exhibit-floor display of vendors who supplied equipment to the accessibility community. USL was positioned very close to the entrance of the room, but alongside Sony…who were showing a very refined version of the glasses technology that USL had been developing. What appeared to be happening was an interesting combo for exhibitors; the Sony glasses were receiving their signal from USL’s transmitter. But the glasses were light and nicely shaped and amazingly one could see the letters against the screen even in a bright room.

Expectations were that the system would be available around the end of the year…which came and went without any announcements. There were pictures that were smuggled out and passed around the community, but went unpublished even with the news that other vendors were taking orders around the globe. Some examples are the government grants purchasing equipment for hundreds of theaters in Australia and the recent announcement of complete fitting out of closed caption and descriptive audio or audio enhancement equipment at the complete chain of Marcus Theaters (675 screens in 56 theater locations.) Marcus Theatres(R) Completes Rollout of CaptiView(TM) and Fidelio(TM) Systems. Harkness and AMC have made announcements as well.

But Regal was quiet until they made the announcement at CinemaCon with Sony that they would be installing the new Sony glasses and audio system at all their theaters, with the intention of having closed captioning and assisted listening screenings at every show in every theater. Generally speaking this is not impossible but there are still difficulties on the distribution side. The greatest difficulty lies in the narration track which often isn’t completed until after the main movie is ready for shipping. Who wants to take responsibility for missing a release date because the narration track isn’t done? and how many languages are you going to hold the movie for?

Two years ago this dilemma was on no one’s radar. The promise of digital was gaining momentum everywhere but in the accessibility field. The basic standard was set out in the specifications, but they were made without any equipment being made to test whether the ideas worked in reality. Real world experiments proved that the smooth work flow that gave captions and audio in the analog world of film…with equipment that not only wasn’t available but wouldn’t work if it was…was capable of inconsistent jumbles in the digital world. USL’s engineers worked with engineers of other equipment manufacturers to work out compatibility problems during the times of transition between TI’s Series One and Series Two methods of creating letters and shapes accurately positioned on the screen from data files of text. Hundreds of hours of plugfests with no other manufacturer of HI/VI equipment showing up.

Against this background, USL becomes one of a million companies who help shape a technology and get the arrows of the pioneer as the reward. Sony announced that their clients preferred an all Sony implementation rather than a mixed vendor version. The new glasses system are sold with a receiver that also includes an audio jack so that this rechargeable receiver can also provide audio from the stereo assisted listening or the mono narrative tracks. But, they won’t supply the glasses and the audio headsets (not shown at the demo) at the same time.

Notwithstanding, a nice implementation. And yes, before you ask, 3D lenses can be used in combination with the glasses. The implementation shown at CinemaCon had a Regal logo centered on a flat set of lenses that were made to fit (if somewhat clumsily) into invisible grooves in the glasses frame.

Like Doremi, USL also makes a device that is mounted on a goose-neck that fits into the cupholder. As nice as these units are, and as nice as they have worked to block the light from interfering from adjacent seats…these are Model T implementations compared to the Sony glasses. There is no comparison to the comfort of not having to constantly look down and refocus to read the lines of text. Once an audience member gets used to using these glasses, that’s it. They will only go to a theater that supports them. In the United States, this is a good thing, since Regal has nearly 7,000 screens.

Regal has also put a lot of effort into working with CaptionFish, an online group who can guide the audience to open and closed caption screening times as well as note what type of narration equipment is available. Some narration equipment is able to work with the hearing aids of the user, and some users have purchased their own headsets.

It remains to be seen whether audience members will be able to buy their own glasses and listening device, letting the theater be responsible for the transmitter and link to the movie. One would think that it would be a great opportunity for a sponsor to get involved with partial or complete funding. They are more used to working with this model in the legit theater, which also supplies multiple languages for the scenes in opera or during plays.

All in all this is a wonderful time for accessibility in the US. In England, Your Local Cinema has helped the industry move along for some time there, but there is no great motion anywhere else in the EU…and the growth in accessibility seems stalled even in England. No one is talking of universal accessibility the way that Regal is. Perhaps it was the way that the lawyer who had lawsuits against them put it, when he gave his public presentation to the US Department of Justice. (In it he pointed out how minuscule the cost of accessibility equipment would be compared to the previous year’s corporate dividend.) Who knows? But it is a great thing to have happen after so many promises were broken for so long. In the end it is a mutually beneficial enhancement.

References:

Digital accessibility: Exhibition industry aims to deliver entertainment for all – Film Journal, 18 August 2011

Sony Closed Caption Glasses

 

 

Multiple HI/VI equipments

ShowEast [Update]: HFR, 3D Sound, HI/VI Glasses, Test Tools and Duqu

In a clever move, Christie took the URL highframerate.com – It now points to a story on their site: Expect a higher standard- higher frame rates. They tell the hyped part of the story, and don’t tell any of the grusome details like, how is the technology going to get there? what standards are going to need to change? How many of these standards are going to be backwards compatable? But it is good to see an effort to educate their audience.

What we can glean is that Christie now has their own internal media block and screen management system for their projectors. We’ll post the PR for you to read yourselves. When people start touting “Future Proof Your Long Term Investment”, it might be read as “We haven’t paid attention to this before, but we have nailed it now!”

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Barco has two facilities with their new Auro 3D Sound system now…one in Moscow and a new one in Antwerp at Kinepolis. Barco announced IMB/SMS integration at CineEurope.

That makes a lot of parties interested in selling IMBs. We seem to remember a ShoWest that <3 letter company> secretly showed a network panel and IMB that would do the same over a high speed network several years ago…and everyone said it was too early to talk about. We also remember Laser Light Engine’s Bill Beck describing the vision of fibre running from an engineering room to some DLP chips and a lens at the port hole back in 2004. Looks like the time is going to be here before we know it.

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[Update] USL has just released some new information about their new IMB, which will be used for several of the demonstrations of HFR at ShowEast – The input is 500 Megabits per second, twice the DCI spec datarate of 250 for a DCP. It will push to the projector the data rate of just over 10 Gigabits per second, displaying 60 fps stereoscopic 2K (2048×1080), 12 bit JPEG 2000 color plates. An interested party describes it as absolutely stunning.

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Sony showed the incredible Closed Caption glasses at CinemaCon – then the project went into silent mode. They were working with the USL system (speaking of 3 letter companies), which is the gold standard in the market for several reasons; the first being what was mentioned before – they did a good job of evolving their product line so that a client could upgrade without throwing away their current product.

USL also invested heavily to get people noticing the the closed caption space in general, and the glasses idea in particular. They showed them at plugfests and conventions for a few years, and really invested the time for the industry and client’s benefit.

Closed Caption in glasses is a big deal. Other solutions work, like the small screens that fit into popcorn holders. But they seperate the kids who can’t from the kids who can’t…and we all know how kids are. So a product that allows people with impairments, but who can read, now have a pair of glasses available that don’t look bizarre. The effect of placing the words out in the distance is great, so that they don’t have to keep changing focus. There are many questions to follow-up on, and we are expecting a call with Sony immenently – it sure looked as if USL was going to be able to incorporate the Sony technology into their sales flow, so it could be the best of both worlds.

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Harkness has an announcement that is under embargo until Monday and USL has a rumored announcement. Both show a certain maturity to the industry, and just in time. Several cinematographers have measured light levels in hundreds of cinemas around the world and found deplorable circumstances. One got the impression that, until recently, putting any impediments like quality in the stream would be too much for the industry to bear. In the next update we will have links to articles that are embargoed for pre-release, but the potential for Quality Control takes a couple steps forward at ShowEast.

===>> So now it can be revealed. Hopefully we will get more news as the product matures toward release, which is promised to be early next year.

Like IMBs above, the topic of test tools deserves a full article. Doremi has a new product in test, USL has a new product in test, Harkness has a new product in test, Digital Test Tools has a new product in test. Perhaps the industry is ready for a good examination of luminance on the screen.

The Harkness product is called a Digital Screen Checker, and looks like this.

Harkness Screen Checker
Just what the doctor ordered, though we don’t know much about it. What is the price? What corrolation does it have with a NIST certified device? The viewfinder window leaves some confusion in our simple minds. And is this a plot to impose Foot Lamberts on the other 96% of the world that uses the ISO standard unit of candelas per meter.

On/Off us interesting on something that looks like a USB device. But maybe it is also battery powered? Does the USB aspect imply some database and/or network capability?

The press release is attached at the bottom of this document.

 


USL is also in the process of introducing its LSS-100 Light and Sound Sensor. This product is based upon our 2006 design which combined proprietary luminance and audio level measuring technologies. Their other products in this field are pretty inclusive so, like the Harkness device we look forward to seeing people actually use these devices to make the audience experience more like the director’s intent.USL LSS100


One thing that won’t be talked about at ShowEast is Stuxnet and its new evolution, Duqu. Why would the dcinema industry need to concern itself with a virus that randomly attempts to get into any network to find out information about machine control? We present the link above without comment.

Cinemark and Regal Go Captioned

Here are some links to the news. Cinemark has decided upon the Doremi CaptiView system, while Regal hasn’t specified the technology. [Sony Entertainment Access Glasses with Audio are announced as the choice at CinmeaCon 2012 – Ed.] Cinemark had ongoing lawsuits with the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA), which are going to be dropped, according to the announcements of ALDA.

Regal will also be working with the website development group and Captioned Movies Search Engine site CaptionFish to help promote the services to their customers.

Hearing Loss Law : Washington Hearing Loss Lawyer & Attorney : John Waldo Law Firm : Hard of Hearing, Disability, Hearing Impairment : Seattle, Bainbridge, Washington, Pacific Northwest – Dead Link

Cinemark and ALDA (Association of Late-Deafened Adults) announce movie theatre accessibility for customers with hearing disabilities Global Alliance on Accessible Technologies and Environments

Cinemark Agrees to Provide Closed-Caption Option – DCInsider

Cinemark Installing Closed Captioning in all Theatres | Digital Cinema Report.

Regal theaters to become more accessible | Denver Business Journal

NJ theaters to use caption devices for deaf

Closed Captioning at the Movie Theatres. 

Regal Makes Seattle America’s Most Accessible Movie City

“Unfortunately, not every theater chain is following the lead of Regal and Cinemark. AMC theaters, America’s second-largest chain, continues to take the position that it will equip some but not all of its theaters to show captions. We are currently in the process of addressing that question in our Seattle lawsuit, and would hope for a favorable ruling, a change in AMC’s corporate position, or perhaps both.”