Demonstrating What Hasn’t Been Demonstrated Before

ISDCF did not meet this month, other than to review its plans for its March 9 demonstration of SMPTE DCP and closed caption standards. NATO has been moving forward with its plans to hold a demonstration of accessibility products for digital cinema at ShoWest. These two demonstrations are very different in nature, and deserve explanation.

The ISDCF demonstration is focused on standards compliance. The original goal was to demonstrate interoperability of SMPTE DCP-packaged content among capable servers. Unfortunately, while the server companies are prepared for such a demo, not all projectors are. For reasons that one should never put in writing, TI is not prepared to play SMPTE open subtitles and captions on either its Series 1 or Series 2 designs. Sony, on the other hand, is. To compensate for TI’s deficiency, some server companies have incorporated the ability to render SMPTE open subtitles and captions in the server, bypassing the need for such capability in the projector. These servers, namely Doremi, XDC, and possibly GDC, will be used in the demo. Some servers that are otherwise SMPTE DCP and closed captions compliant, including Dolby and Qube, will not be used. This is an unfortunate situation, and has to be explained over and over so as not to cast servers that do not have this capability in dim light. TI intends to release an update to its licensees for SMPTE open subtitle and open caption capability later this year.

Another quirk of the ISDCF demo is that it is not a demonstration of all available closed caption systems. Due to the focus on standards interoperability, only those closed caption systems that use the standardized CSP/RPL server output will be demonstrated. While two systems now claim such capability, only one has agreed to participate in the demonstration: USL. Doremi, which has a proprietary closed caption product that only works from the Doremi server, will not be shown as part of the demo. Doremi servers, however, can also work with CSP/RPL-driven products.

The NATO demonstration, in contrast, is geared to show all products that can deliver accessibility to audiences, and in the case of closed captions, it is not limited to products using the CSP/RPL server output. Servers that support accessibility will be on display from Dolby, Doremi, GDC, Qube, and Sony. Audio accessibility products will be shown by USL and Williams Sound. Closed caption products will be shown by Doremi, Intelligent Access, and USL. Both Intelligent Access and USL are CSP/RPL compliant.

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