Description of App
Welcome to Spectrum Access, formerly known as Actiview. Enjoy free audio descriptions and closed captioning for the movies and TV shows you love. Download your preferred assistive track, choosing from over 300 titles. Sync your tracks to the TV with your device's microphone. Sit back and enjoy an inclusive entertainment experience.
Your feedback is essential. If you have a suggestion to enhance your Spectrum Access experience, please contact us at spectrumaccess@charter.com to let us know.
Comments
Cool
This app sounds really cool, I don’t really watch TV much though so I’m not sure if I’ll ever check it out. nevertheless this seems really promising.
my concerns
I have a couple of concerns, are we going to get updated content, and are we also going to get content for movies in theaters?
Not available in Canada: (
Any idea if/when this wonderful app might be available in Canada? Active view was great… Hoping spectrum access will be available to us in Canada.
Audio Description in Theaters and new content
There are a lot of moving parts to consider. The company that produces and distributes the films will ultimately decide if the theatrical release will have audio description. Secondly, the theater must have auditoriums that support the hardware including receivers for movie patrons. Fortunately, most of the big national chains have installed this equipment and the "Hollywood" studios that produce the content are adding AD to many, many releases.
If a particular movie has AD but the theater does not support it, theoretically, this app would be helpful if it has the particular audio description.
Finally, I would imagine that the people behind this app are going to have to secure the rights to distribute the audio description. If the industry makes that difficult, there will not be a lot of new content.
One good thing is that many of the films that are listed on the web site for the app were not originally released in theaters with AD or the theaters were not equipped with the hardware so this may be the first time we can enjoy them with AD.
Not available in the UK boo!!! and... Audiovault
This is an old idea and has been around for a while. It's an issue of content. I'm not quite sure how rights work to audio descprtion, even with the full audio track, look at audio vault.net ... But the idea of having a separate audio track, as in one by itself without the main audio track, using something like aftershockz or AirPods Pro, makes watching films with family at home possible.
Just need the RNIB to get on with it over here.
Interestingly, and though this is a bit of a digression, the audio description track in the UK for live TV is separate from the content audio track. I'm using the Channels app with a HDHomerun and, in this way, can watch 'Normal' tv with my parents whilst running the description track through my AirPods Pro in transparent mode. It's pretty great though limited to terrestrial live tv.
Index of content?
This looks like an interesting app. Is an index of content available online?