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Sony’s subtitle glasses continue to earn promising responses from movie goers

  • Written by Steve Claridge

A live demonstration of Sony’s new subtitle glasses took place in London this week, with positive reports from attendees. Tom Fiddian from Action on Hearing Loss – formerly the Royal National Institute for Deaf People – attended the event and reported via Twitter (@tomfiddian and hash tag #Subtitleglasses).

The first slide presented was of actor Tom Hanks wearing a prototype of the glasses at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2009. This first generation of glasses was for text only in cinemas. The next generation of glasses can display images and send audio, and Fiddian suggests has the possibilities of being used as user interfaces for mobile phones.

It was this generation that was trialled in the USA and received positive feedback from the deaf community. One comment was that they were “better than a hearing aid.”

The subtitle glasses are wirelessly connected and can transmit over seven channels with each channel running up to 6 different languages. At only 79g and with a 6-hour battery life, the glasses offer a lightweight, long-lasting alternative for viewing captioned movies. View a photo of the glasses and some basic specifications.

As the text ‘hovers’ in front of the viewer, there are three distance settings as well as two text size settings. There are also five levels of brightness which adjust automatically to the conditions.

The receiver, which is wired to the glasses can transmit either captions to the glasses or audio to headphones, but it can’t do both. For patrons that already wear glasses, the subtitle glasses are designed to sit over your own glasses. A 3D clip-on solution is also being developed.

Read the full article at yourlocalcinema.com.au.