Personal Captioning Systems - Movie Theater Demonstration - Press Release

From: Personal Captioning Systems, Inc. - Aug 31, 2006

On Wednesday, July 12, 2006, at the Pickwick Theater in Park Ridge, Illinois during three regularly scheduled showings, Deaf and Hard of Hearing audience members viewed first run screenings of the new Disney film Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest with captions discreetly displayed on small PDA units at the patron's seat.

The July 12th screenings at the Pickwick Theater were the first public demonstration of this state of the art captioning technology developed by Personal Captioning Systems, Inc. of Morton Grove, Illinois. ICODA (International Center on Deafness and the Arts) members were invited to use the new technology. A representative from Disney Studios also participated in this event.

Individuals who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing are often left out of entertainment activities because captioning is rarely available. Many of these individuals would enjoy or once again enjoy a movie if word captioning were available.

For the last few years, portable small screen captioning display units have been providing this form of unobtrusive CLOSED captioning at live theater performances from Broadway to San Jose.

PCS uses state-of-the-art electronic, computer, and optical technology. Prewritten captions of the film were formatted to standard captioning with white letters on a dark background, 4-6 lines per screen and synchronized to the film using proprietary PCS hardware and software. The caption signal was transmitted throughout the venue so that an individual could read the captions from a wireless PDA supported by a flexible gooseneck at their chosen seat. (Any number of captioning display units can be in service at any given time.)

Following the film, audience members were invited to participate in an information gathering survey.

NOT one individual of the general viewing audience said that the PCS display interfered with their enjoyment of watching the movie. Of those who used a PCS display 93% found it "easy" or "very easy" to use.

With PCS captioning technology, EVERY seat at EVERY showing of EVERY movie film can provide the accommodation of text captions to those who would benefit in a manner that does not distract or interfere with others in the audience.

Photos and a summary of survey results will soon be available on our web site: www.personalcaptioning.com

Also visit our blog: http://personalcaptioningsystems.blogspot.com/