Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Zediva is a new on-line movie distribution company. For $1.99 per movie, you can instantly watch the most current and popular blockbuster movies online wherever you have an Internet connection—as soon as the movie becomes available on DVD. According to their press release, “Movie aficionados can watch many movies as much as 90-180 days (or more) before they could with some other movie rental services … and at prices as much as 60-80 percent lower than many satellite and cable providers.”

Of particular interest to hard of hearing people is that Zediva has “enabled 2 special DVD features – Subtitles and Languages. Furthermore, closed captioning, if available on the DVD, is also automatically supported.

Zediva has come up with a new twist—using remote DVD players. This enables you to remotely rent a DVD and a DVD player located at Zediva’s Silicon Valley data center. You can instantly watch your rented DVD on a wide range of Internet-connected devices, including TVs, laptops and smart phones with high-speed connections. You have full access to the DVD controls to play, pause, rewind and fast-forward as if the player was sitting in your own living room. Unlike many other online movie rental services, Zediva offers you access to additional features such as multiple languages, directors’ commentaries, subtitles and closed captioning.

Some of Zediva’s key features include:

• Broad Access: Compatible with PC, Mac, Linux, Android tablets, smart phones and Google TV.
• No Rush: Ability to watch and re-watch a movie (free of charge) for up to 14 days from the time you rent it.
• Multiple Languages: Watch a movie in any of the supported languages specific to its DVD (English, Spanish, French, etc.)
• Subtitles and Closed Captioning: In all languages that are supported by the DVD.

Now for the not so good news. On opening day (March 17, 2011) within 10 hours of its full launch, Zediva’s website was overwhelmed by so many people trying to use their new service that it basically crashed the system. Thus they have put all new membership registrations temporarily on hold until they increase their capacity to handle all their customer’s requests without degrading the system.

However, if you are interested in trying out this new service, point your browser to Zediva where you can sign up and get on their waiting list.

________________

Update: November 2, 2011

On Friday October 28, 2011, a US District Court judge ruled that Zediva’s activities were illegal and ordered a permanent injunction against such activities. As a result, Zediva has permanently shut down this innovative entertainment operation.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Nanci Linke-Ellis of Captionfish recently explained about a new captioned entertainment search service now being provided by Phlixie to help you find captioned movies on Netflix. She wrote:

When Captionfish was created, it simplified the task of finding captioned entertainment at public venues everywhere.

[Ed. note: I last wrote about Captionfish back in May 11, 2010.]

Now we have a different kind of challenge—finding captioned titles online from different content providers and being able to sort out where and how they will work.

To provide a solution, Chris Sano and Brendan Gramer put together Phlixie. Phlixie is an easy way to find captioned titles on Netflix. Even though Netflix improved their online captioning, they haven’t improved the method of how to find these captioned titles. Thus subtitled movies get lost in their library. That’s where Phlixie comes in. Learn more about how Phlixie works here.

Over time, we plan/hope to expand this service to include Hulu, iTunes, captioned Web Series, etc.

This is an early development release because we pushed to get this out the door quickly so it’s not all together yet. Now we’ll focus on improving the application itself, artwork, design, and new features (like Play/Add to Queue buttons, View by Movie Poster, etc). We’ve got lots of ideas and are now deciding which features to put in a roadmap.

We’re always looking for feedback and feature requests so if you think there’s a better way to do things, let us know!

The Phlixie website explains that Phlixie provides you with a simple way to traverse all of the available accessible titles in Netflix’s Instant library. It further explains that by accessible titles it means those titles that are available with English subtitles. This includes titles that content providers have made subtitles available for, and all foreign films that are available with English subtitles.

Phlixie is needed because Netflix still has a number of limitations such as:

• You can’t limit your searches to just subtitled movies.
• You can’t filter by genre.
• There’s no way to tell which titles were recently added, or which titles are
  expiring in the near future.
• When it comes to a TV series, you can’t tell which episodes have subtitles and which don’t.

The good news is that Phlixie addresses all of the above. So if you are into Netflix movies, give Phlixie a try.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Going to the movies isn’t much fun when you can’t hear or understand the dialogue. This is the case with multitudes of hard of hearing people. Thus, you want a simple way of finding captioned movies playing near you. This is where Captionfish comes in.

One year ago, I wrote about the debut of Captionfish, the web site that finds captioned movies near you if you live in the USA.

Captionfish has lived up to its expectations and now one year later is going strong and is adding new features.

Following is a letter Captionfish founder Chris Sano wrote on the first anniversary of Captionfish (1).

One Year of Fishing for Captioned Movies

“When we launched Captionfish a year ago, the vision was simple. We wanted to provide a service that would allow people to conveniently find captioned movies playing in theaters near them. It would no longer be a laborious effort. You would not need to visit a handful of theater/ticketing web sites, dig through page after page of data, mentally build up a schedule of what is available and where, and finally decide whether there was anything appealing to go to. Instead, you could go to Captionfish and have all this information available at your fingertips, immediately upon arriving at the site. The faster you could get what you were looking for, the better.

To date, Captionfish has picked up over 465,000 captioned show times for 150 titles playing at 498 theaters. We kicked off 2010 by introducing foreign movies available with full English subtitles. Since then, we’ve added 97 new theaters and picked up an additional 33,263 accessible show times. We’ve provided captioned show times for over 15,000 unique locations across the United States.

Over the past year, we’ve expanded the site based on the feedback we got from many of you. One such example of this is the inclusion of descriptive audio show times, of which we’ve found 105,408 since November 2009. We’ve increased the visibility of our data to provide you with a high level overview of the current state of captioned movies in theaters. We’ve become staunch advocates for equal access in theaters and we continue to work with people in the industry to help understand how we can become stronger players in the movement to improve captioning accessibility for everyone.

Moving forward, we will be expanding into all forms of live entertainment, starting with our new Live Plays feature. We are currently working with several different production houses to include their accessible show times. We hope that this will eventually become large enough for us to integrate with our movie offering so that you will be able to do a search for and find all captioned entertainment in the area of your choosing.

In addition to that, we’re wrapping up work on our new platform that we’re currently calling MovieShare. We envision this being used to build a comprehensive ecosystem of applications and widgets that will help us spread awareness about the availability of accessible movies in theaters across the United States and other regions as we expand into them. The first application to leverage this platform will be our iPhone application. We currently have a working prototype and are very excited about what we’ve come up with. While we’re not quite ready to go into too much detail about the application yet, we’ll definitely let you know when we are, and we’ll be doing a beta program, so be on the lookout for that!

Chris Sano May 18, 2010″

If you are a movie goer, give Captionfish a try. You may be surprised at all the captioned movies playing in theatres in your area.

(1) http://www.captionfish.com/letter

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Back in February, 2006 I wrote about a website called “Fomdi” that finds captioned movies near you. Fomdi was much better than nothing, but it had its limitations. Now something better has come along.

On May 18, 2009, DeafCode LLC released the beta version of their brand new “Captionfish” captioned movie finder. This free website automatically provides information about captioned movies in your area based upon your computer’s “address”.

Their “blurb” reads: “It is the first website to integrate an Instant CC Film Finder™, which provides immediate and effortless custom results within 30 miles of a chosen location, refreshed on each visit to Captionfish.com.”

I found it better to put in my own address manually rather than accept where Captionfish thinks I am. For example, when I first tried Captionfish, it calculated its results as though I lived in York, PA, not in Stewartstown, PA where I actually live—a difference of about 20 miles. When I put in my Stewartstown address, it replaced the 1 movie in my “area” with 3 others that were actually closer to me, but to the south.

By default, Captionfish shows you the captioned movies that are showing today within 30 miles of your location. You can easily change this to the next 7 days if you want to. You can also set the radius from 30 miles to 15, 45 or 60 miles depending on how many movie theaters are near you, and how far you are willing to drive.

Another cool feature of Captionfish is that it indicates whether the theater uses Rear Window Captioning (closed captions), or whether the movie is open captioned.

In my opinion, open captioning is much nicer than Rear Window Captioning as there is nothing you need to have (a small, smoked glass screen available at the theater, but you need to ask for it), or do (set up the screen and aim it at the back wall where the captions are actually displayed), and you can sit anywhere (and not only where you get a clear shot at the back wall).

With Rear Window Captioning, you read the captions off the small, smoked glass screen in front of you while you watch the action on the big screen at the front of the theater. Thus, you are trying to focus on, and watch, two different places at once, not always an easy task.

Now, back to Captionfish: when you click on the “Movie Details” link, Captionfish shows you a printed description of the movie, and also shows you a short preview of the movie. Note, this preview is also captioned! Nice!

Another cool feature for those hard of hearing people on the move is that Captionfish provides a mobile website optimized for mobile phones so you can start driving and find the film you want as you go.

For those of you that use custom RSS feeds, Captionfish enables an RSS feed so you can check for the latest captioned film results using your preferred RSS reader.

To find captioned movies in your area (Captionfish just covers the USA), simply click on Captionfish. It’s that simple!

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Shanna Groves, herself hard of hearing, and one of our HearingLossHelp eZine readers has just completed her first novel about a hard of hearing family.

Here’s your chance to read this brand new novel. (She just finished the final chapter on December 24th!) You’ll find the first chapter grabs you, and before you know it, you’ll have read the entire novel in one sitting—all 30 chapters. At least, that’s what happened to me!

To read the pre-publication version, simply email Shanna and ask her for access to her “Lip Reader” blog, because access to this blog is “by invitation only”. She’ll gladly send you the invitation link so you can enjoy it too. Let her know you learned about her novel right here in the HearingLossHelp eZine.

Now, here’s the “official” blurb on “Lip Reader”.

Young Woman Shares Hearing Loss Journey in Book, Blog

OLATHE, KS – Most people don’t expect to deal with hearing loss until their old age, but one person has years of experience and she is in her mid-thirties. Shanna Bartlett Groves has dealt with hearing loss in online support groups, speaking engagements, relationships and now in a new novel.

Groves, a freelance writer, completed the novel “Lip Reader” based on her own experiences with hearing loss. “I wrote ‘Lip Reader’ to tell the story of a family dealing with hearing loss. This is a story that not only tells about their experiences with being hard of hearing in a hearing world, but also some of the reactions that other people have had with their deafness.

“My own hearing journey inspired the two main characters in the story, 12-year-old Sapphie Traylor and her mother Rea. The extended family—the grandparents, uncles, aunt and cousins—were inspired by my father’s family, some of whom still live in the Fort Cobb/Anadarko, Oklahoma, area where I was born.”

She has written about her hearing loss journey in Hearing Loss Journal, The Kansas City Star, MOMSense and the book “A Cup of Comfort For Nurses”.

Read the Full Story here.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote:

I have worn non-telecoil hearing aids for 8 years now and will be ordering mini BTE hearing aids with a telecoil soon.

Our satellite TV audio feeds into a stereo receiver and I currently wear headphones when watching TV. Am I correct to assume I could plug a neckloop with a proper size adaptor into the stereo receiver headphone jack which then would pass the audio to the hearing aid’s telecoils?

Yes, that’s exactly the way it works. You can plug a neckloop into any jack where you would plug in headphones or earbuds.

However, a word of warning. Neckloops are always mono devices, so you wouldn’t hear true stereo as both stereo channels would be “smooshed” together into what I call “dual mono”.

Also, if you are using a neckloop, you’d need to have a stereo to mono adapter (which you can easily get from Radio Shack) or you’d only hear one channel while the other channel would be shorted to ground (not a good idea).

If you want to hear true stereo, you’d need the Music Links I have on HearingLossHelp website (or something similar). They work exactly the same as neckloops, but are true stereo devices since the signal at each ear is too weak for the opposite t-coil to pick up. You can see the music links here.

The man continues: “I would also be using a patch cable between the neckloop and the stereo, as I do now to lengthen the neckloop cable.”

That’s not a problem. If you’re going to be using a stereo patch cable with a neckloop, then the stereo to mono adapter goes at the neckloop end—in other words the neckloop plugs into the adapter and the adapter plugs into the extension cable. Note: If you use the Music Links, you don’t need any adapter.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

In response to my article “Setting Up Your Digital-to-Analog Converter Box” (July 15, 2008) , a reader supplied some more valuable information.

Steve wrote:

The most recent issue brings up the topic of the Digital TV conversion. There are a couple of things that the web sites do not mention, I thought your readers might like to know what I have learned.

1. Do not use the coupon(s) initially to buy a converter box. If you decide to return the box, you will probably not get the coupon value returned even though the store gets paid for redeeming the coupon.

I had to return two boxes after testing each one at my home. One didn’t receive digital signals on two stations in my area. Another had such a bad user interface and remote control that I deem it to be less than useful.

When I decided on the converter box I liked, I took it back to the store and effectively returned it and bought it again this time using the $40 coupon. The store people understood this tactic very well.

Be sure to check out all of the features you will use, especially the closed caption setup if you need it. Not all boxes are easy to set up for these options.

2. Attaching a converter box to a VCR will not allow you to use the VCR programming features to change the channel during a recording session. For example if you want to set your VCR to record channel 2 from 7 to 8 PM, and then record channel 4 from 8 to 9 PM, this will no longer work with the converter box supplying the TV channel signal. You have to preset the converter box to the channel you want to record and then program the VCR to record on the input channel (such as channel 3 or 4 or the line input) for the amount of time you want to record. Changing the channel selection on the VCR will cause it to record nothing since the converter box is supplying the TV channel signal to channel 3, 4, or line input.

I have not found any Digital TV converter box that will change channels at a programmed time.

There are a few DVD and VCR boxes that have digital tuners that will allow you to program them like you are used to with your older analog VCR. These cost more than $200.

3. If you do decide to use the two converter box setup (one for the TV and one for a VCR), be sure that the two converter boxes are from different manufacturers (not just different brand names but actually different manufacturers). If you have two from the same manufacturer, there is a very high probability that the remote control from one will work both boxes. There is even the possibility that one remote from a different brand will operate both boxes—change the channel on the box connected to the TV and the channel on the box for the VCR will probably change too.

There are also other possible issues with antenna signals (UHF), older splitters and amplifiers, as well as, using older cable from the antenna to the converter box that could be a problem setting up a digital TV converter box.

I hope your readers find this useful.

I’m sure they will. Thanks so much Steve for your insights on this issue!

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

One of the things I have wished for, especially in emergency situations, was a radio that would display the text as well as the audio, so I could read the words that my poor ears miss—much as I do with captioning on the TV. You don’t have to miss many key words before you don’t understand what is really happening.

The good news is that captioned radio is coming—maybe even before the end of this year!

“A radio with closed captions, allowing hard of hearing listeners to ‘see’ radio shows is good news for millions of people with hearing loss, and one of the best new gadgets of the year, according to the BBC. The captions are shown on a screen on the receiver and will require the user to subscribe to a closed captioning service.”

According to an article in PC Magazine (01.06.08), “The systems works a lot like close captioning does for television. The company will piggy-back a data stream on the standard audio signal. The text can then be read on radios fitted with a display. The system will only work with digital broadcasts. Currently more than 1,500 radio stations are currently broadcasting in HD Radio in the United States.”

The new radio is still in the development stage. But a spokesman for Harris Broadcast, a party to the project, told the Washington Times newspaper in Washington, D.C. recently that a radio with closed captioning capability may be in production by the end of 2008.

Now you know what you want for Christmas this year!

 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

On February 17, 2009 all analog TV transmissions in the USA will cease. If you have an analog TV (not digital) and use an antenna (not cable), then your TV will go blank on February 17.

What you need is a digital-to-analog converter box. You can get two government coupons (worth $40.00 each) to help you pay for this box (or boxes).

Furthermore, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has created some fact sheets to help you set up your new converter boxes.

You can download an illustrated basic fact sheet entitled “Setting Up Your Digital-to-Analog Converter Box (Basic)“.

A 3- page illustrated, more advanced fact sheet, “Setting Up Your Digital-to- Analog Converter Box With a VCR” shows you how to hook up your converter box, VCR and TV so you can watch and record one channel, or watch one channel and record a second channel at the same time. (This second method requires two converter boxes, so even if you only have one analog TV, you still might want to get two converter boxes.)

You can find a wealth of information on the digital change-over, how it might affect you, and what you need to do about it at http://www.dtv.gov and at https://www.dtv2009.gov.

Throughout this whole transition process, make sure that you can get your closed captions. It’s easy to overlook this critical element until the last. You don’t want to purchase everything and set it all up, and then discover you can’t get your captions to work! Check that your captions are working properly every step of the way. (See our two previous articles on this subject, “Captioning Problems—Avoiding the HDMI Cable Fiasco” and “Getting Captions On Your New TV—The Good, the Bad and the Downright Frustrating“.)

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

If you are like many people, when you lose some/most/all of your hearing, one of the things you really miss is music. This is especially true if you are/were a musician, whether amateur or professional.

Maybe you weren’t aware of it, but their is an organization especially for you called the “Association of Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss (AAMHL). If you are interested in joining them, check out their web site.