[blindkid] A Christmas Story with DVS

Richard Holloway rholloway at gopbc.org
Mon Dec 26 16:46:02 UTC 2011


This is a  little bit late to be a lot of help this year and hopefully I'll think to post a reminder just before next Christmas too, but...

TBS (Comcast 39 here in Atlanta) traditionally shows "A Christmas Story" starting around 6pm (or is it 8pm?) Christmas Eve and they cycle over and over, every 2 hours, for about 24 hours. For some reason, just before the last showing started last night at 6:00, I decided to check, and it turns out they run it described. Here's how you get to it with audio description:

First of all, at least here in our market, it ONLY was running described on the standard definition feed. In our case, TBS runs on cable chan 39 and the same programs run in High Definition on chan 807. I have found this on several other networks-- generally when they send shows out audio described, the only seem to do it on the standard def. feed.

So go to the STANDARD DEF channel, and select SPANISH for the language and you'll find yourself listening to ENGLISH as always, but with audio description added. Note that some cable decoders have a special place to turn on Audio Description. That is NOT where I found this, and I have never sound  a single program on my system feeding DVS audio there-- For broadcast shows, I only find DVS audio under "Spanish" audio.

One more thing to note: The last time I checked with TBS, they stated very clearly that the did not offer Audio Described programming-- this by email and it was posted on their site, even though I had found a DVS program on their station a few days before. No matter what you read or what you don't see listed, check next year and there is a good chance you'll be able to watch the described version of A Christmas Story as many times as you like, for 24 hours! 

Oh, and at least if you're using TiVo (and I assume it will work with other DVR's. so long as you are set to hear Spanish), you'll be able to record this program with the DVS. (Same thing for a VHS machine, of you still use video tape). I actually recorded it twice, once with description off and again with it on. That is nearly as handy as having a DVD with both options, which I do not believe has ever been released.

Happy Holidays!

Richard Holloway, Vice President
Georgia Organization of Parents of Blind Children
www.gopbc.org








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