Sony Unveils Glasses That Provide Subtitles On Movies [Sony's Subtitle Glasses Add Subtitling To Any Movie That Doesn't Already Have Them]

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I spend a good chunk of my off-hours watching movies, which has led to me being a crazy home theater sort of guy. And one thing I know is that subtitles on movies are great for a lot of reasons. They allow you to catch all the dialogue, let you speed up a movie that’s going a bit too slowly (depending on your DVD / Blu-ray player, and of course, the obvious benefit of giving the hearing impaired a chance to join in on the fun. Many smaller releases (not to mention full theater releases), though, don’t offer subtitling, but the folks out at Sony seem to have this problem well in hand with their new Subtitle Glasses.

The Subtitle Glasses do basically what the name implies, provide subtitles to presentations that didn’t have them previously, like theatrical movie releases or home video releases without subtitling or closed captioning. Basically, a set of glasses, like 3D glasses, presents an overlay on which the movie’s dialogue appears, which is then readable off the glasses while watching the movie, almost like a bit of augmented reality. Whether the glasses process the sound track and then convert the speech into text like some transcription software does, or come with preloaded modules containing the subtitles for display isn’t clear, but one thing seems sure from the reports, hearing impaired people who’ve tried the Sony Subtitle Glasses like them.

And frankly, this is a good move as far as I’m concerned. I like subtitles in everything just to make sure I’m hearing all the dialogue right, let alone how the hearing impaired feel about all this. There’s no word yet on pricing, but the early word suggests this may not matter as the movie theaters themselves may be stocking these, and they’re set to do so sometime next year, at least in Europe. Whether or not they’ll make a wider release is unclear, but the theater industry has been lagging home theater for some time now, so some development is in order.

So what do you guys think here? One more set of glasses you’ll never wear, or a great idea to make the movies more accessible to everyone? Either way, we want to hear what you think, so hit the comments section below and fill us in!

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