Epson Moverio Smart Glasses

[Andy Frodsham]

Regarding the Epson Moverio smart glasses, I know they've been very successfully trialled at the National Theatre in the UK, but are they being used in any cinemas yet and if so what were the outcomes?

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess most exhibitors will not want to pay the price for those glasses, let alone the rest of the solution. A smart-phone app, although probably much more intrusive, seems more attainable than AR glasses.

[Mike Blakesley]

I've never heard of this item, but the word "glasses" makes me think of 3-D, and given that "wearing glasses" was most patrons' least favorite part of that experience, I expect anything that tries to cross watching a movie in a theatre with wearing glasses might be problematic.

[Marco Giustini]

Mike, those are for captions.

If you cannot hear, wearing some weird glasses is welcome if they allow you to enjoy the movies again.

[Steve Guttag]

The problems with smart phone/tablet based solutions are (and this includes, to a degree caption displays):

• Encourages cell phone use for more than just captions (e.g. texting)
• requires that the user constantly look off screen for the captions so their eyes must constantly dart up/down.
• Significantly different focal plane from the screen so one's eyes are perpetually adjusting to the different focus...which is more problematic for older people.

An advantage to glasses is that all three of those issues can be reduced/eliminated. An obvious downside is that the captions now float about as one moves their head. The eyewear offered by the USL stuff has an awkward battery pack arrangement that has a cable and belt pack.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I attended a Regal Captioning Symposium in Washington DC years ago. They had a deaf audience and demonstrated several systems. The audience liked the glasses best (these were the Sony glasses), though open captions were preferred over any closed captions. Comments filed with the DOJ when they were establishing the current rules also favored open captions. See https://hallikainen.org/org/DojNprm/ .

On the USL glasses (CCH-100), the "awkward battery pack" was necessary to keep the weight down on the glasses. The IR receiver is in the glasses, and the power supply in the "battery pack." Sony put the receiver (and power supply) in a handheld unit to keep the weight down on the glasses. The Hanacaptions unit (using Epson Moverino) has a separate handheld Android computer with a cable carrying the video to the glasses.

Harold

[Randy Stankey]

This sounds like a good case for Google Glass.

Too bad it was a product that came before people were ready for it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The problems with smart phone/tablet based solutions are (and this includes, to a degree caption displays):

• Encourages cell phone use for more than just captions (e.g. texting)
• requires that the user constantly look off screen for the captions so their eyes must constantly dart up/down.
• Significantly different focal plane from the screen so one's eyes are perpetually adjusting to the different focus...which is more problematic for older people.

An advantage to glasses is that all three of those issues can be reduced/eliminated. An obvious downside is that the captions now float about as one moves their head. The eyewear offered by the USL stuff has an awkward battery pack arrangement that has a cable and belt pack.

The problem with this solution seems to me that those glasses are just glasses and they still need some kind of device to connect to, like a smartphone. They're not self-contained solutions. And while you probably only need your smartphone once to get them going, this extra complication doesn't really justify the cost of those glasses, that start anywhere around $650 a piece and go all the way up to somewhere around $2200.

[Andy Frodsham]

I am amazed by now that we don't have a universal standard for generating closed captions. Even though the end technology for displaying the actual text may vary (glasses or other visual displays) it should be the case that someone who is hard of hearing simply takes out their 'display glasses' whenever they visit ANY venue which relies upon the spoken word. A visit to a museum, say, or the theatre or the cinema one should just be able to take out the glasses and put them on and there are the captions! A universally agreed standard for transmitting this data should be agreed. This is surely a basic human right on a par with hearing loops in public venues!

[Marcel Birgelen]

I am amazed by now that we don't have a universal standard for generating closed captions.

Hah, we surely don't have one single standard, but at least 10 to choose from.

What you're proposing sounds simple, until you start to look at all the nitty-gritty details.

The problem here is that a universal standard needs to account for all those little specials that you have in every country. Let's start with the character set, the alignment on screen. Then, there is the case with countries that need to support multiple languages, etc.

[Carsten Kurz]

Well it seems obvious that people's personal smartphone already is and will be that universal assistance hub for those with impaired vision or hearing. Then what the market offers is a different thing. The usage in cinemas is still low, that's why the technical development goes slow. The company that produces the app and assets for Greta/Starks developed their own glasses to be paired with a smartphone (so the glasses wouldn't need a battery hungry high performance processor on their own). That went on for years, and did not come to a product yet.
I talked to them a while ago, and they said it would make more sense to wait for a standard AR product to adopt in order to achieve low prices and widespread use.
Unfortunately, Google Glass and other products do not take up any pace. Maybe Apple now has something in the pipeline. For a cinema to buy a few, something in the 500-600US$ range is not too expensive. Often, there is public funding available as well. At the time, the Sony glasses worked very well. Unfortunately, Sony left that market.

[Steve Guttag]

I've been a proponent of BYOD from day-1. I think it is stupid to require businesses to supply the eyewear/display. Like Andy above, the RF and IR frequencies should be standardized and not to just cinemas but all places that serve the public so if a life-safety system in another venue goes off, the devices work there too. As I say, the business supplies the wheelchair ramp, not the wheelchair. Having the business supply the device presumes that all hard of hearing people have the same sort of hearing loss or have the same sort of visual impairment. The person that needs these devices should have their own that they are comfortable with and best serve their needs.

That said, those that want captions are emphatic about open captions on screen. To this, I like Rear Window best as it can provide essentially that on 100% of shows without bothering people that don't want captions on screen. It would be great if there was a way to with, say IR LEDs to locate the captions on screen and only with a suitable transparent display they would show. It would cost more than Rear Window but some complain that the slight glow of the LED display (they are a very subdued amber or green, typically) to be bothersome to those in the rear of the theatre since they go off/on when new text is updated.

[Andy Frodsham]

If we could only agree a universal infra-red and/or wireless coding standard then let all the different manufacturers of display units join the party. It doesn't matter what particular device specific add-ons get into the mix. Some display units may offer caption positioning or size or colours or backgrounds, others may be more simple. Maybe some collective working party may specify that particular features are mandated.. Otherwise purchase the device of choice knowing it will work everywhere. As long as the transmitter/receiver standards are universal, then any device can be used. Buy your glasses and use them everywhere where captions are available (including watching TV and maybe even captioned radio programmes and social media).