Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses - Part 2

In the previous blog post Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses, I tried using the Sony Captioning Glasses for the first time. Then flash forward to recently, when I watched Frozen with the glasses.

This time, I found I missed something from the first time I used them. I didn't make an effort to adjust the noserests. Thus, the way the noserests were at the time, no wonder they caused me so much pain. I managed to adjust them just far enough so I wouldn't have the same problem as before, and it worked. I went the entire movie without the glasses hurting me too much, adjusting them here and there.

Still some room for improvements as I mentioned before. One additional suggestion would be adjustable captions color and font size. I'm wondering if this sort of thing would work with Google Glass with the right adjustments and programming.

Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses

I just recently got back from watching The Dark Knight Rises with captions. In this case, it didn't use open captioning or rear window captioning (RWC). The theatre used the Sony subtitle/caption glasses. They do take a little getting used to at first. No captions will show until the beginning of the movie.

They've got their good points and their bad points. But basically, the glasses have room for improvement.

The good:
- Subtitles are easily readable with green letters
- Tapping Menu on the battery pack with + and - adjusts the captioning mode and brightness
- Subtitles show up no matter where you look

The bad:
- After wearing them, they'll feel a bit heavy and the bridge of your nose may hurt
   (in my case, it was painful due to the noserests pinching me, but didn't hurt til I took them off)
- Might cause some eye strain with some people due to the focal plane of the subtitles. Meaning, you're going to be reading subtitles close to you, then look at the movie screen.

The suggested improvements:
- the ear pieces could be made adjustable, like longer or shorter
- the eyepiece connector or middle of glasses could be made hinged to allow for those with one good eye to see more of the subtitles
- the subtitle placement could be made adjustable
- if not hinged, maybe use wraparound glasses?
- the nose rests could be made adjustable
- possible to make "clip-ons" to display subtitles on the person's own glasses?

Came across these pages/blogs mentioning it as well:

Regal Captions All Movies With Special Glasses - A Review
The future of captioned films
My Opinion on the Caption Glasses

And interestingly enough, a Quick Start Guide for the glasses. There's more like this with a little more looking around.

Update: I tried them a second time and posted about it. (Part 2)

Why No Movie Subtitles on Flights?

It's been over 10 years since captioning was introduced. One place it has consistently never shown up is on planes. The airline industry keeps saying it's too expensive to add. How hard can it be to add in subtitle/caption support? Those little TVs and wall monitors can show the words. With some airline companies, the pre-flight instruction videos are captioned or subtitled. However, the movies aren't.

The circuitry is small and simple enough to be added to just about anything out there.

http://category.alldatasheet.com/index.jsp?semiconductor=CAPTION
http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/pic/caption/

More can also be found on Google. It's a simple matter to turn on the subtitles if there's any. But to deny others enjoyment of a movie while on a long flight?

With portable DVD players getting cheaper and better, let's hope the airlines take notice of this. Keep spare batteries with you as well. Long flights can outlast batteries at times. Same goes with laptops with DVD players. Oh, wait, the airlines have noticed this but don't want to throw any money at it. Too bad. They'll probably have more satisfied flyers if they did.

Netflix CEO Said No To Captions?

Did I read Jared's Netflix CEO really doesn’t care about subtitles/captioning blog post (including the shareholder meeting post) right? The Netflix CEO said there's no captioning technology or it's not widespread? Picking my jaws up off the floor, I read further...

"Mr. Hastings said other sites didn’t offer captions, and mentioned hulu.com as one of them."

Does he live under a rock? Then he said we could receive DVDs in the mail and most had captions. That's pretty insensitive, ignorant, and dismissive.

Cry me a river, Mr. CEO... You've had two years to add this "nonexistent" tech according to this blog post. Check these sites out which have captioning/subtitling utilities and related forums;

http://www.doom9.org/
http://www.videohelp.com/
http://www.cdfreaks.com/
http://autocaption.com/
http://www.cpcweb.com/

Adobe's Encore has the ability to add subs. We know YouTube, CNET, and Hulu have captions/subtitles. Google has more hits on these using keywords (dvd captions), and/or (dvd subtitles), including (netflix captioning online deaf), minus the (). Check out Hulu Has Captions and Netflix Doesn't. Why?

Care to try that again, Mr. CEO?

Let's get a new Caption Action off the ground!


Update: I neglected to add the Facebook group Netflix Watch-Instantly Needs Closed Captions!

Long Drives To See Subtitled Movies

When Sherlock Steve posted "Anything Screws Up Day", it reminded me of something similar that happened to me sometime around 1997.

When the subtitled movie Titanic was being shown in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I was living in Louisville, Kentucky, I made plans to go. My main mistake was not calling the theatre for when it was showing.

So, I drove two hours, arriving about 15 minutes before noon. I go in and right before I buy my ticket when I mentioned the captioned movie, the ticket lady tells me it'll be at 6pm.

Now what do I do for the next 6 hours?

So, I purchased a ticket for that 6pm showtime and did a little touring of the area, not going too far lest I get lost. An hour before showtime, I drive back into the parking lot with a sandwich and read the local newspaper. Then about 30 minutes before showtime, it started getting a bit crowded, and I went in.

It was nearly a full house with a bus from a local deaf school being there as well as a number of other deaf arriving from various locations in and around Cincinnati. After the movie 3 hours later, a lot of us started talking on the way out to our vehicles.

I didn't get home til a bit after midnight. It was worth it what with the long drive, wait, and movie time.

About a year later, I left home at 4am to drive to Detroit, MI, to be with someone to watch a captioned showing of Schindler's List.

Today, we just wait for the captioned show to come to the theatre near us, though some people from small towns may have to drive some distance.