Comments on: It's like closed captioning in reverse!

It's like closed captioning in reverse!

revgeorge — Sat, 21 May 2005 10:15:19 -0800

The Simpsons as read by WGBH. WFMU's Station Manager Ken discovers an extra audio track on the Simpsons that describes the visuals for blind people. He even provides a 21 MB, 23 minute MP3 of a recent episode that is surprisingly listenable. Sure it's missing all the sex and drugs, but your iPod is a handy way to take the Simpsons with you. Are podcasts of TV show audio tracks next? Will we be listening to Family Guy and the Daily Show during our commutes?

By: revgeorge

revgeorge — Sat, 21 May 2005 10:16:12 -0800

And no, I don't think this is something you'd need a TV to understand.

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Sat, 21 May 2005 10:31:53 -0800

that's pretty cool. I wonder if someone's taken the VCR yet.

By: Balisong

Balisong — Sat, 21 May 2005 10:41:31 -0800

I'd listen to old, or new Daily Show episodes on my commute. More entertaining that Rush, Sean, or Mike...

By: riffola

riffola — Sat, 21 May 2005 10:54:09 -0800

Discovers? Uh The Simpsons have had the AD logo in their title sequence for a long time, I believe there are 3 audio tracks for each episode, English, Spanish, and Audio Description. Here's a list of Audio Description carrying shows currently on TV.

By: riffola

riffola — Sat, 21 May 2005 10:56:38 -0800

My mistake, the logo in The Simpsons title sequence is SAP (Secondary Audio Program) which also implies that the spanish audio is embeded in it.

By: First Post

First Post — Sat, 21 May 2005 11:13:19 -0800

Interesting. I knew they did this for "Blind Justice", but I didn't know if that was specifically because the protagonist was blind. (That was a great show, btw. Of course, like most good shows, it's being canceled.)

By: shepd

shepd — Sat, 21 May 2005 11:19:35 -0800

ExpressVu satellite in Canada has at least one (in fact, I think it's many more, now) dedicated descriptive video channel. Note for the bored that one of the special editions of Terminator 2 includes the descriptive audio for the video. It was actually far less exciting than I had hoped, but what the hell! :-D

By: NickDouglas

NickDouglas — Sat, 21 May 2005 11:50:07 -0800

I'd actually listen to a Daily Show descriptive audio, though I'd miss Stewart's expressions and the awkwardly staring interviewees from the field segments. You can't put that in words. Once I popped in a rented "Field of Dreams" and discovered they gave me the DA version. I watched anyway, and by the end I didn't even notice. You know how you can recall hearing English in a foreign film, even though it was actually subtitled? It was that effect -- I can't remember the DA from all but the first scene of "Field of Dreams."

By: selfmedicating

selfmedicating — Sat, 21 May 2005 12:11:03 -0800

Wacky. My tivo mistakenly picked the extra audio channel on The Simpsons up last week too. Personally I found it distracting and I don't think it comes close to making the simpsons into a radio show. After all, this is animation -- goofy, over-the-top visual gags are the whole point of the medium.

By: joeclark

joeclark — Sat, 21 May 2005 12:17:50 -0800

Joining us late? The icon that Fox superimposes on The Simpsons is the now-outdated WGBH description pictograph, whose history I have covered. There's a better alternative available. SAP is a single monaural audio channel. You can use it for description or a second language, but not both. Blind Justice was indeed described (by the mom-'n'-pop shop We See TV [sic]) solely because it features (inevitably) a sighted actor playing a blind character. I've given up on it after three full homophobic episodes, but I ran a Watch column for a while. My issue with the T2 description was the boring-as-shit narrator. There are a (laughably) few dozen other DVDs with description; I outsourced the list to Wikipedia. First-run movies are another description source. And there's certainly a lot more described programming on Canadian TV than in the U.S., where our friends at the MPAA, among others, sued to have a description requirement rescinded and won.

By: AloneOssifer

AloneOssifer — Sat, 21 May 2005 12:41:04 -0800

Great find..

By: myopicman

myopicman — Sat, 21 May 2005 14:32:10 -0800

A few years ago, Showcase in Canada aired must've aired the audio description version of The Last Days of Disco. I had been told by some people that Stillman's characters were very articulate but I never expected the constant narration, which made for a better viewing experience than the regular audio.

By: yupislyr

yupislyr — Sat, 21 May 2005 16:09:43 -0800

This has happened a number of times, where the descriptive audio during the Simpsons has gone out over the air for everyone to hear on the Detroit FOX affiliate. Just out of nowhere a narrator is heard describing the action on screen for a few seconds. Then he's gone.

By: Silky Slim

Silky Slim — Sat, 21 May 2005 16:33:19 -0800

i didn't see this episode, but for some reason i'm finding it funnier and more enjoyable than any simpsons episode in recent memory. maybe it's the fact that i have to imagine all the settings, like in a book. turns out my imaginary style is very different from the usual simpsons animation... i pictured grampa simpson running across photo-realistic salt flats, cobalt blue sky, in a wide angle medium close-up, as the yellow bus pulls towards the horizon... great find. fascinating. thanks!

By: meehawl

meehawl — Sat, 21 May 2005 16:50:19 -0800

your iPod is a handy way to take the Simpsons with you Of course, those of us with personal video players have been taking the Simpsons with us for years. Watching movies on a small screen does encounter certain limitations, but TV-scale animations are more than acceptable. The H10 is a nice little machine for this sort of thing. Hell, I even have Simpsons and Futurama episodes encoded directly from my ReplayTV onto my 2001-era Archos. Of course (since we're on the subject), one bonus of the Archos with Rockbox is that it actually provides talking navigation menus for blind people, so they can easily navigate to the content stored on the machine.

By: meehawl

meehawl — Sat, 21 May 2005 17:01:27 -0800

H320, not h10, sorry.

By: joeclark

joeclark — Sat, 21 May 2005 17:01:33 -0800

A few years ago, Showcase in Canada aired must've aired the [open-described] version of The Last Days of Disco

...which was about as well-done as you'd expect from AudioVision Canada.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Sat, 21 May 2005 20:21:56 -0800

This has to be an old, old Simpsons. It's amusing, but the editing (is it still editing when it's an animation? maybe the pacing) is a little jarring, as though they're still having issues moving from the short Tracey Ullman segment format. Or maybe it just seems that way in audio.

By: Silky Slim

Silky Slim — Sat, 21 May 2005 22:11:55 -0800

blacklite: it's from 2 weeks ago,

By: anarcation

anarcation — Sat, 21 May 2005 22:27:10 -0800

For info on the episode, check out May 8 here

By: SirOmega

SirOmega — Sat, 21 May 2005 23:11:34 -0800

Wow, I want all the simpsons episodes like this. I can sit in my cube and code, or be on a long drive and still have the simpsons with me. Yea!

By: Down10

Down10 — Sun, 22 May 2005 15:30:43 -0800

A Daily Show podcast would make a fortune. If only someone would bring it to fruition...