New Venue Caption Units

Since 2009, Digital 4 has supplied over 150 Caption Units to Theatres in the UK transforming Theatre Captioning and Access to the Theatre for deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing audiences with bespoke Caption Units and Captioning Software supplied to venues throughout the UK, in Europe and America.

“During my time with Stagetext up to November 2011 when I stepped down from the Board, Roger provided a caption unit that offered much improved quality over the earlier low-definition units…..the continuous improvements in the hardware and software have been instrumental in the creation of the high quality captioning experience we see today.”

Peter J Pullan MBE Stagetext Co-founder & Chair, 2000 – 2011

 

We designed the first generation of bespoke single-colour Caption Units back in 2009, nearly 10 years later we were faced with a decision – do we continue to manufacture these units for another 10 years or do we sit down with a blank piece of paper and see what we could offer if we started again from scratch? What opportunities do recent developments in LED Technology have to offer Access?  If we were to re-write the software what would it look like and what functionality would we add? How do we persuade Theatres to invest more in Access?

These are some of the challenges we set ourselves: 

• Make a multi-functional Venue Display so Theatres investing in Access have a system that will work for them in other ways too – Opera Surtitling, Theatre Sub-Titling, Live Events, Advertising around the Theatre and more.
• Reduce the cost of Caption Units
• Extend the range of fonts available and include the facility import and display of Foreign Languages
• Different Captions to different Displays – Bi-lingual Captioning.
• Keep backward compatibility where possible – all files should still be usable but also old-style brackets and other sundries should still work for the new units
• The new system should work for Verbatim Captioning but offer the opportunity for Venues to explore Creative Captioning
• Extend the range of Display Devices and the functionality of the software do that any show can be made Accessible
• Integrate our learning form CaptionCue into our new Software and Hardware.

 

We believe these new units represent significant progress for Theatre Captioning:

 

Venue Caption Units – Full Colour & Multi-Functional

 

 

We launched our new units in 2017 and have supplied about 40 so far to theatres who are successfully using them for Verbatim and Creative Captioning, Opera Surtitling, Theatre Sub-Titling and for Live Events.

Answers to FAQ’s:

Why do they cost less than the Amber single-colour Caption Units?

1. Almost all LED’s are made in China and they now concentrate on making full-colour RGB modules. As a result it is now cheaper to manufacture a full-colour Caption Unit than a Single Colour unit, this means our end-user price to a Venue for a new Venue Caption Unit is less than it was in 2009.

 

 

Are there other benefits to full-colour Caption Units?

1. Theatres can choose the colour of the Captions – universally, by section, by line, and by word. 
2. Full colour units can also display image bitmaps e.g. of Theatre Logos and even be used as Video Walls.
3. If requested, we can offer Venue Caption Units in non-standard sizes by using modules of the same pixel resolution but with different pitch – pitch is the distance between pixels.
4. Auto-rotate pre-show cues.
5. Output in any font rendered on the operating lap-top
6. Multi-Stream output – output different Captions to different displays
7. Multi-Stream output – output Captions in different languages to different displays.
8. Output mixed Language Captions – e.g. English and Arabic in one Caption.
9. Create Caption “time-lines” for automatic outputting.
10. Trigger cues to the displays by OSC command or Ethernet over ArtNet.

Why connect them via Ethernet?

1. Ethernet sends the data faster which reduces latency – the time between sending and displaying the text.
2. Ethernet facilitates the extra data required to be sent for full-colour options. 
3. Ethernet connection means that we can make give each display an individual address and send different Captions to different displays.
4. Outputting to a wide range of Caption Display Devices simpler and more robust.
5. Theatres are already in the process of replacing XLR runs with Local Area Networks.

 

 

What has remained the same?

1. The 354 x 64 pixel resolution of the original units has been retained so that any stg. files prepared for the single colour Amber Units can still be used.
2. We have retained the position of all fixing points so that any brackets purchase for the old style units will still fit and can be used.
3. We have introduced Soprtatext Captioning Software so that any Theatres who only wish to use Venue Caption Units for Captioning can do so using a software that is familiar to them.
4. Free-Issue Software for Captioners – Sopratext Captioning is Free-Issue to Captioners.
5. We have a colour option in Sopratext Captioning that matches our older single-colour Amber units. 
6. We have output options in Sopratext Captioning so that it is possible to output to a mix of Venue Caption Units and the older single-colour Amber Units. 

 

 

We offer Venue Caption Units for Purchase or Hire – please contact us for more details