US Gov't Gives WGBH $600k To Develop Captioning For Mobile And Portable Devices

In the mobile entertainment revolution, no one will be left behind. The U.S. Department of Education has given public television station WGBH a $600K grant to research and develop captioning for mobile media services. (Boston’s WGBH helped pioneer TV closed captioning in the 1970s.) The funds will be used to create prototype devices and explore different kinds of distribution methods for the content — which could include DTV stations, wireless networks and content downloaded from the Internet and then sideloaded onto handsets, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Both device form factors and distribution will be key to making captioning services work, given the average screen sizes of iPods and mobile handsets today and the bandwidth limitations for existing mobile streaming services. Other companies involved in the project include Samsung, AOL and Hewlett-Packard.

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