“No theater should be exempted from providing captioning and description
by saying it can’t afford them unless that theater also is exempted,
on economic grounds, from providing fire exits.”

Promise, Promises and Great Expectations

Years 2000 – 2012: Cinema exhibition technology has gone through a transition from its film-based roots to magnetic-based files, the last of several entertainment technologies to do so. As a late-stage disruptive technology, the potential consequences should perhaps have been more predictable. But like most transitions from analog to digital before cinema – in the music, video and broadcast fields – complications that look obvious in hindsight seemed minor or perhaps, manageable beforehand.

There is another phenomena that often appears with a technology’s incessant march forward: Some of the clever solutions come at the end of the curve, provocative but too late to be viable in the long-term. 

In the case of cinema, working – but expensive – audio description and captioning systems for film-based movies reached a zenith just as film was approaching its nadir. DTS and Dolby both released cinema subtitling equipment, DTS with its CSS – Cinema Subtitling System (introduced in 2001) and Dolby with the ScreenTalk System (introduced in 2003). Each created a device and workflow that worked with film projection systems, using a file delivered separately from the film. They delivered audio description for blind and partially sighted people, and subtitles as open captions (using an added video projector), or closed captions (with an associated ‘light reflection system’, for example the Rear Window System), allowing deaf and hard of hearing people to read transcriptions of the words and sounds. They could also be used to provide translations for foreign language audiences. 

For a few reasons, neither of these systems were going to be easily deployable in the concurrently developing digital cinema market:

• Technically, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make these systems work with digital cinema systems in the long term. 
• Politically, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and the studios were working toward, 1) a system that utilized a single master, 2) an open standards-based system and,
  3) a system that didn’t welcome proprietary implementations that created licensing costs or stifled innovation. 
• Practically, exhibitors delayed or suspended purchasing these film-centric systems which wouldn’t work with digital cinema equipment, even while d-cinema access equipment standards and data exchange protocols weren’t yet developed, and even as many were barraged by requests and lawsuits.

The background story was the seemingly logical argument that said: Digital Cinema! – Computer-based, File-based Cinema! – File-based Captions! – Multiple Languages! – Simple! This logic was obvious, understood and repeated by all parties and their advocacy groups without question or malice, even as the standards, protocols and equipment for the cinema were always over another horizon.

In fact, the standards development process for d-cinema that began in the year 2000 has surprisingly taken until 2011 to get through the complete process, which ended with their final submissions to the ISO – the International Organization for Standardization. Two of the last SMPTE submissions were the documents that would allow manufacturers to use a common, agreed upon format for the “Simple” interface that allowed closed caption systems and the d-cinema servers to work together.