Netflix Streaming Has No Closed Captioning…Yet

About a month ago I was about to cancel my Netflix subscription because I was feeling that I needed to make some serious budget cuts in light of making less money than usual last month and the fact that I went months without renting a movie. My decision was delayed when Netflix started offering their streaming movies for free. There was one caveat- there was no closed captioning on any streaming movies. This was a disapointment to say the least. Half the reason that I rent movies is that I know I’m getting a fuller more comprehensive movie watching experience when I can get every word from the script via captioning into my other working sense- vision.

So of course, I write this blog where I discuss these sorts of issues and I went to investigate the situation. First of all, Netflix has a pretty good blog and Neil Hunt, the chief product officer at Netflix, gave a fluent rundown on the technical background of their encoding. In that post, Neil mentions that as far as subtitles, closed captioning, and alternative soundtracks go… “these features are desired for future releases. Delivering closed-captions via the Silverlight player is probably closest, but it won’t be 2008 either.” Not much information to gleam from that- except that its possibly high on their priority list.

The more I think about closed captioning the more I realize that its important to me and it enriches my experience when it comes to the art of movie making. I’m sure other folks out there, who have a hearing impairment, speak english as second language, or just enjoy subtitles for whatever reasons, feel the same way as I do. Its in our best interest to let the people in high places that are in charge of these sorts of things know that.

Sometimes I wonder if the hearing impaired community itself will have to step up to the plate – particularly the technically inclined ones- and make our own solutions with the technology thats available…more on that later.

Contact Netflix and let them know what YOU think:

call 866-7160-0414
or write customerservice@netflix.com

See a discussion on Netflix blog about closed captioning for Roku device

Another good discussion here on a “timetable for captioning on Roku device”

A brief post on the site Hacking Netflix and an ensuing discussion of CC

Heres a link to a deaf customer that wrote Netflix about these issues

 

Frankie the Chihuahua Emits Radio from his Ears?

A Chihuahua from Ohio, named Frankie, has a very peculiar ability. His ears seem to emit “radio static” from his big antena like ears. This sent of a furry of speculation as to how this was possible. Some speculated that there must be some kind of transistor or chip installed in the dog. Others surmised that this news report must be fake. I think one of the best explanations can be found on the blog called Smartdogs. Check out Frankie the Radar in this video:

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Google Introduces Closed Caption Video Search

The lovely google empire recently introduced a cool new feature that allows users to find closed captioned videos on the internet. To use this feature, go to video.google.com/videoadvancedsearch type in keywords for videos your looking for and select the box “subtitles: search only for closed captioned videos.”. Then you just hit the search button and viola- you got your selection of videos with captions only. You can even select for different languages if you like.

 

Hearing Impaired and Not Cool with Prop 8

“When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.”

Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

Though I was pleased to see an Obama-Biden win this month, I was embarrassed to be a part of a state (California) that voted to shoot down the civil rights of gays via proposition 8- disallowing them to participate in the rights and responsibilities of marriage. I trust my readers are smart enough to have in their mind the many reasons why proposition 8 is an asinine ballot measure, or fearful enough to to make up illusory scenarios to support it. I have another perspective to add to the mix. I’m against proposition 8 as a human being, a friend of gay people, and last but not least- as a hearing impaired person. Let me explain:

Suppose there were a group of people out there that was afraid of hearing impaired and deaf people. The group (we will call them the Pro Normal Hearing Society Against People with Damaged Cochleas or Eardrums) believed that these foul beings, born with dysfunctional cochleas, were a menace to society and claimed ‘they were taking jobs as teachers and forcing sign language on the children, stealing jobs from the hearing folks’, and this group goes on to produce studies that show ‘hearing impaired people make terrible parents because they can’t hear their infants crying for help at night, and so they ought not to be able to marry or be permitted to raise children.’ The group spreads propaganda that aims to show that same-messed up cochlea-marriage might teach our children that marrying another hearing impaired person is just the same as marrying someone who can hear. The pro normal society takes it upon themselves to get more than a million signatures for a ballot measure that paves the way for a constitutional amendment against same-messed up cochlea type folk-marriage.

Now my example is completely ludicrous and hyperbolic of course. No one in their right mind would believe any of this crap and it’s not as if these arguments against hearing impaired and deaf folks marrying make any sense. Well, that’s what I thought about proposition 8, which paves the way to make a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage!

If I ever did face discrimination, as a member of a minority group of sensorineural hearing loss persons, I would hope someone was there to stand up for ME. History has examples of explicit discrimination against people with hearing impairments and the deaf (in particular). World War II Nazi Germany remains as an extreme example, and our US of A has more than a few. If, in the year 2008, we can have laws passed that ban a particular group of people from participating in child rearing and forcing those couples to send back their children to the government to stay in group homes, or preventing a particular group of upstanding citizens from marrying, then I believe that its in the realm of possibilities for my group of dysfunctional cochlea people to face discriminatory laws as well.

This comes around to my thought- why should I care about this proposition if it doesn’t directly affect me. I’m not gay, why should I care? Because I better shut up and realize I’m a hypocrite if someone comes after my rights one day and I didn’t care about anyone else’s rights that were infringed upon. Everyone matters and some of my friends happen to be gay, they weren’t taught to be that by any teachers in school, and they deserve to have the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities that my country affords me.

 

My New Widex Passion Hearing Aids

I’m happy with my new widex hearing aids. Perfect? No, of course not, but I’m unhesistant about reaching for them on the bedstand every morning. As I slide them in my ears I feel a great flood of  auditory information, an exclamation of  “aaahh”, like the experience of taking that first sip of coca cola.

The Widex Passion hearing aids have a special feature that I’ve mentioned before – called transpositioning. The gist of it is that you take the higher frequencies and bring them down to a lower, more audible, octave. Ive got the hearing aid set up in three modes: transposition, regular, and music. I almost exclusively use the transpositioning mode on a typical day. You’ll soon see why:

One of my earliest experiences with the hearing aids took place in the pine barrens of New Jersey (Yes, Jersey has great swaths of wilderness). I was attending a wilderness surivival school taught by Tom Brown Jr in the pine barrens. The place is teeming with life and noise. When I woke up at dawn I would hop out of bed and quickly pop my hearing aids in. The forest would come alive with sound- I could hear dozens of different bird calls that I never heard before (with my previous hearing aids), frogs dwon at the swamp, the buzzing of insects… a great crescendo of a symphony that occurs all across the planet as the day shift of animals goes on the and the night shift checks out. I could still make out some of these sounds in regular mode- but the transpositiong mode allowd me to hear the full quality of this cacophany- the timbre, the rhythm and rising and falling pitches of all these sounds. Yes, the sound was often a bit artificial and unreal, and maybe a bit overwhelming, but worth it. It gets better over time- you have to get used to this brand new phenomenlogy- a new means of knowing and perceiving the world.

Back to the city world I live in on a day to day basis- San Francisco. The city is an altogether different symphony of sound. First of all, one of the sounds I want better access to is my car. I usually depend on other people to tell me, “hey Dave, your car is making this terrible high pitch screetching noise every time you shift into third gear”. The transpositiong feature of the hearing aid is particularly good at getting this information into my scope of auditory perception. It was great fun to get my ears in there and listen to the carborateur, the rise and fall of the pistons, and all the other parts that make plenty of sound. The sounds coming off of these parts had a greater resolution with the transpositioning and I’m more confident about listening to my car when theres a noise that shouldn’t be there. I can now figure out for myself whats going wrong- without relying on other peoples ears to tell me the problem is there when it’s a little too late to fix. The sound of my car is just one area out of many that I appreciate hearing better with the widex passiong hearing aids.

Communicating with people at work and home has got to be one of the most important benefits of this tool- the hearing aid. If you have a hearing impairment and you wear hearing aids- your going to be a lot more productive, useful, and better at a communicating with your coworkers than if you didn’t wear them. That’s a no brainer and I’m shocked there are people who spend years without them when they have a hearing deficit. I find the transpositioning really helps me communicate better. At first the speech sounds are somewhat strange. Widex gives a training CD with the aid to help make the transpositioning. Within weeks I was able to make better and better use of the sounds that were brought to a lower octave for me- “s”, “sh”, “th”, “ch”. These sounds are difficult for me to discriminate with “regular” hearing aid settings. The transpositioning brings these sounds back to an area where I can make meaning out of them. Considering that I’ve never really heard them in this way- it was disconcerting and confusing at first. Slowly, with the help of the CD, and also just getting out and believing that transpositioning would prove useful over time, I was able to hear speech better than ever before. For example, I had my girlfriend speak to me in the passenger seat (the car is a typically difficult sound environment)  – saying phrases such as “ the ship sailed to the seashore to pick up the sea shells and such things as sea lice attacked us”. It was important that the phrase had aspects to it that I wasn’t familiar with- otherwise I might guess the phrase cognitively without actually hearing it.  I was able to hear these phrases as well as I could if I was lip reading. That’s a big deal.

I’ll have more details to share in a future post..

 

The New Widex Passion and the Audibility Extender Feature

I recently visited my audiologist here in San Francisco to meet with him and a representative audiologist from Widex to try out a brand new hearing aid- the Widex Passion. The representative was there to fit and adjust the new hearing aid and see how I responded to a unique concept called the audibility extender. The audibility extender brings the higher frequency sounds that are unavailable to me down to a lower octave that I can hear. It was amazing!

Its certainly a bewildering experience to have new sounds available that I’ve never heard before- and its not without a certain “unnaturalness” and strange sound artifacts. These are the inevitable consequence of tinkering with sound in this way. However, I found the new sounds to be something that I really want. For instance- I can barely differentiate between “sh”, “th”, “ch”, and “s” sounds. The audibility extender brought those particular sounds into a range that my hearing aid could amplify for me- at a lower octave. I could understand speech better as a result…truly amazing and I hope they keep this technology and continue to improve on it. It really clicks with me.

This concept won’t work for everyone. Some people find that the audibility extender makes speech harder to understand and find the strange sounds to be unacceptable. But I think if people stuck with this for a while and went through the training provided on a compact disc- they might find that these strange and foreign sounds become more useful over time. It really requires some work and flexibility. I told the Widex representative that it wasn’t unlike being on a hallucinogenic drug- where the brain has to grasp onto brand new sounds that it’s never dealt with before. I think the brain should be given some credit..built with a huge amount of flexibility it can deal with these new sounds over time and adapt to them. Im confident that the audibility extender will prove to be a more and more useful and positive experience for me over time. I’ll report back on this as I move along with it.

The audibility extender needs to be fined tuned and adjusted for each user. It helps to have someone tinker with the settings and get them right- otherwise the experience won’t live up to its full potential.

Some areas that I’m excited to use the audibility extender in: listening to bird songs, playing the higher notes on my guitar, the high pitched whirring noises that my transmission is apparently making, whispers, overhearing gossip.

This is a deal breaker for me- I might go with the Widex Passion hearing aids over all other hearing aids simply because of this feature. As a quick disclaimer: Please take my opinion with a grain of salt- what works for one person may not work for another. I’d like to hear from other people what they experienced when they tried this feature- both negative and positive!

As a quick sidenote: For my hearing loss, I felt that the Lyric hearing aid was even better than the Widex Passion in terms of sound quality and making high frequency sounds audible for me. Having said that- I find the Widex Passion to be a close second. I’m not going to wear the Lyric because it won’t work for my ear canal. I’ll write more on that later.

Heres an example of a negative reaction that I found at hohadvocates.org forum

Heres an article and a review of a clinical study of the audibility extender from The Hearing Journal

Another more technical article about frequency transpositioning in general

 

Guest Article: “My Ear Cleaning Story”

Thanks to Jeff Roth, the author of this story:

I have never been clear about the proper way to keep my ears clean.  I had grown up being told by my doctor that “the ears naturally clean themselves.”  The advice was to clean the outside of the ear canal, but do not go inside, as this disrupts the natural process of pushing ear wax out, possibly pushing wax so far into the ear canal that it gets stuck. Plus, it is good to have some ear wax.

At the same time, I independently learned the satisfaction cleaning out my ear canal with a bobby pin.  I figured, I could just go a little bit inside the canal instead of staying on the outside.  I got better at going deep inside my canal and periodically getting out big chunks of heavy, sometimes dark, wax.  For 15 years this method kept my ears happily fairly clean.  I was an avid swimmer and I never once had an ear infection, and I never fulfilled my doctor’s concern of puncturing my ear drum.

When I was in my mid-twenties I decided to follow my doctor’s advice, and see if my ears could take care of the cleaning themselves.  I stopped sticking bobby pins in my ear.  After maybe a year, my ears started to get clogged.  Determined to stay on my doctor’s advised course, I didn’t stick in any bobby pins but tried an over-the-counter ear wax softening agent.  I followed the full 3 day course, spending too much time lying on my side.  Afterward, I flushed out my ear, but didn’t get the wax build up I knew was in there.

In fact, my hearing started to get worse, and soon, my right ear was completely clogged.  I went to urgent care, and an incompetent nurse and doctor put stool softener in my ear (they said that would work the best), let it sit, and then spend 45 minutes shooting water into my ear with a syringe.  Did it work?  No, my ear just became painful, and nothing came out.  I got a bill of over $300, of which my copay was $90, and a referral to the ear nose and throat doctor.  I figured I would finally get some relief and some clear answers.

The ENT doc used 100% strength hydrogen peroxide in my ear, which he said works better than any of the softeners.  Then he successfully vacuumed out the wax.  I asked him why urgent care couldn’t have done that and he said it wasn’t the vacuum that is expensive, but the microscope that goes along with it.  I let him know the local Costco has one.  I didn’t bother telling him how I would have to pay for both the unsuccessful treatment and the successful treatment.

The doc confirmed my suspicion that my original doctor was wrong, people’s ear wax differs, and some have wax that will not come out on their own.  He said I could either come in once a year and get the same treatment (which would cost me $100 copay), or use hydrogen peroxide myself every once in a while and then flush out my ears with a mix of hydrogen peroxide and warm water.  I bought a syringe, but have actually found that the water pick on my shower works even better.  And I am confident the bobby pin helps as well.  Having finally gotten some good advice on how to clean my ear, I thought I’d share my story see what other people think.

 

The Lyric Hearing Aid in the New York Times

Check out this New York Times article on the Lyric.

The author of that article asked her readers about their hearing aids on her blog. There are a lot of insightful comments from hearing impaired people and those involved with the hearing health industry.

I’ve been interested in a new hearing aid concept through Insound Medical, called the Lyric. [I've written about them already] The hearing aid fits all the way inside the ear, 1/16th of an inch from the ear drum. This means the device is invisible but it also means the sound doesn’t have to be amplified as much. Theoretically, the sound should be more natural and less distorted. Its supposed to be quite comfortable with its soft and spongy exterior. The spongy material helps dispel moisture that would otherwise be trapped. You can keep the hearing aid in your ear when your sleeping, showering, or doing just about anything but constant swimming. The device provides pure analog sound as supposed to the now ubiquitous digitally processed sound. Analog sound might prove to have its advantages over digital when it comes to hearing aids. The 500 people or so who currently wear the device swear by it.

Cost? You wear the hearing aid up until the battery runs out – which can end up going about 120 days but that varies based on environmental factors and your hearing loss. They charge an annual subscription fee of $2,900 to $3,600 (less if the hearing loss is in one ear). That would add up to a little more than the $6,000 or so I would pay for BTE hearing aids that last me 3 or 4 years. It would be worth it if they prove themselves to be better than my BTE options. Check out this New York Times article on the Lyric.

I’ll be trying the Lyric out myself in the next couple months and I’ll let you know what I think. It probably won’t be a good long term fit for me because I’m in the water almost every single day surfing (and I won’t stop doing so). But I’m very curious- I might as well try something on a 30 day trial or your money back that many State Laws provide.

Their website for consumers has well made videos but they need to freaking add some captions to them if their consumers are hearing impaired.

 

Which Hearing Aids Do You Wear?

I have a couple questions for my great readers:

Which hearing aids do you wear? Are you happy with them? – How do they help change your life for the better? What don’t you like about them?

Did you pay for them out of pocket? Were you able to get financial assistance from Insurance or other sources? Is the current recession affecting your choice to buy a hearing aid?

If you want to let me know anonymously, email me at davidsigismund@gmail.com. All information shared with me is confidential and private. Otherwise, just post here. Thank you for reading this blog. Your opinions matter to me.

 

Psilocybin and Hearing Loss

Mind altering substances of many kinds may have something to teach us but they’ve been mostly dismissed, demonized, and cast into broad legal categories that aren’t meaningful.

I had a curious experience a number years ago with one of these schedule 1 substances that led to a bit of an epiphany. No, I didn’t discover the meaning of everything; nor did I experience some radical realization that I needed to join Scientology to save my thetan. My discovery was far more pragmatical and relevant.