Low-intensity multimedia entertainment (for nervous distress)

I enjoyed Katie Hafner's article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/23/technology/circuits/23ALBU.html in which she explored new ways in which people are using photograph collections, now that they are available in digital form.

Her account of entrepreneur Bill Baker's "picture[ ] flippers" struck an especially responsive chord. If he reads this, he may discover an interesting niche market for his gear that might prove rewarding.

Since the mid-to-late 1990's, I've used a system not unlike Baker's to provide low-intensity entertainment for a patient with Alzheimer's Disease (AD).

Back in those times the common drug which addressed the symptoms of AD had the unfortunate effect of leaving the patient still prone to anxiety, and even a mild environmental stimulant like a quiet television program would prove intolerable. At the same time, a silent, motionless room might bore the patient, who would complain on that account.

Sadly, it is not always convenient to let the patient enjoy something like a walk outside for quiet entertainment. Even in safe locales, patients with AD eventually need a chaperone when going outside, and issues with the various infirmities of age make outings especially problematic in winter.

Thus I sought to provide a means of "going outside", even during winter, which would provide a stimulating, but not over-stimulating, entertainment. I was inspired by a scene in the film "Soylent Green", in which the elderly character played by Edward G. Robinson submits himself to euthanasia in a planetarium-like theatre which portrays a beautiful natural world, now long gone due to overpopulation and its effects.

While the planetarium [aspect] might be a bit over-budget, I thought, what's so hard about something like that on a living-room television set?

TECHNICAL DETAILS

I took advantage of the technology readily available at the time. An old PC running Microsoft Windows-for-Workgroups (WfW), based on an Intel 386/40 with 8MB of memory would provide the image generation platform. Rather than use a more expensive external "scan converter" for making the VGA output available as NTSC television video, I was able to use an internal board that sold for $50 then. (The last time I looked, a similar board now cost only $19. And now many motherboards bundle on-board video including a TV-out port.)

For software, I leveraged stuff that could be downloaded for free from the Internet. Microsoft had published a version of Internet Explorer that ran on WfW, which would enable me to display JPG images without writing any image decompression code myself. When the PC was powered up, I arranged a GW-BASIC program to look at all the JPG images in a directory pointed at by a file, and write a Web page for each image, which would embed its respective image. The Web pages would advance between one another by means of a REFRESH META-tag, in a round-robin manner. (For variety, a random picture order would be computed at each boot.) Unlike Mr. Baker's 3-second update period, I used a 60-second period for reasons of serenity.

Since watching would be a solitary experience, not one meant to elicit discussion, I decided to add music to the show. I used the ad- and DJ-free feed of instrumental "elevator music" one could get by subscribing to DirecTV. It cost $15 per month at the time, but now one can also consider using XM satellite radio, for $10 a month. Other alternatives include FM subcarrier feeds for those close enough to the transmitter to enjoy reliable reception. And of course, one has the choice of things like CD and MP3 players. For an old person, a set of scratchy old vinyl record[s] "ripped" into a modern CD player will preserve the familiar old sounds, warts and all, while providing the convenience of a modern jukebox mechanism.

To this day, DirecTV accompanies its music channels with screens which are blank, save for some information about the song currently playing. Perhaps they might consider adding slide shows of the type described here, too. Of course, at the time I built my system, I realized it would be faster to assemble some gear than persuade DirecTV they should change their business!

The audio feed from DirecTV was combined with the video feed from the PC via a modulator one can buy at an electronics store, to deliver the combined medium to the television set. This would allow an easily-confused patient to adjust the TV sound volume in the customary manner of many decades standing. (The panic/call button in the room also automatically shut off the TV set, too.)

For all the complaints about old versions of Windows, generally the system runs hours on end, day in and day out, with few crashes per month. At the time my system was assembled, Netscape Navigator was very flaky running on Linux, which is why I did not try that alternative combination.

SYSTEM OPERATION

An interesting problem was locating a source of 640x480-pixel-quality photos of beautiful natural outdoor scenes. While commercial stock sources for placement in mass media were easy to find, my novel application was not being addressed. I landed up downloading many free images from a binary Usenet newsgroup, despite the willingness to pay for suitable material.

Some nursing homes serving AD patients have experimented with past-era decor to make patients feel more comfortable. A monthly publication titled "Reminisce" prints stories and photographs from a bygone era, too, and might prove a source of imagery for systems like that I describe.

A television set can be a much better way to help a person with AD enjoy photographs, whether inspirational, historical or personal. Someone with AD may find flipping the pages in an album too challenging an activity, even if sight of the successive images is pleasing. Or [she] may engage in potentially vandalous dyspraxias out of confusion, with the result that a treasured token of memory is hidden in a forgotten place or physically destroyed forever. Finally, many older people tend to have poor eyesight and old 3x5 snapshots may be lots harder to see than they once were. A big, bright version on a large TV set will yield a much more satisfying experience, even if the technical resolution of conventional television is inferior to that of even a small emulsion-based image.

The system has proved admirably suited to its intended purpose and has worked without maintenance for many years. I have an "image" of the hard disk in case restoration is required, but have not had to use it. The system is operated by applying and removing mains power to the PC via home automation gear - I am pleased this rude way of shutting the system down has not led to any problems, even after many years of use.

RELATED ACTIVITIES

Nursing homes [which] treat AD patients have experimented with various forms of low-intensity entertainment. One example is use of an aquarium. I think the setup I've described here is less problematic than an aquarium, if it suits the patient(s) it is meant to serve.

In recent years I saw a TV program which described work by NASA to design capsule environments for extended space missions. One design feature was use of the landscape photos I've also used to foster a sense of freedom!

Persons interested in the use of technology to help the infirm may like to visit my Web site here: http://geocities.datacellar.net/neohephaestus/

RF

The video game industry's premier conference, E3, was anomolously held in Atlanta in 1997 and 1998. At the 1997 show, I was surprised to see Microsoft's WebTV division exhibiting. So I was disappointed when WebTV did not return in 1998 - I had wanted to talk to them about supporting the application described above on their platform. The technology issues are trivial - I really wanted to make them aware of the product design and marketing possibilities.

Anyway, in the years following the development of my PC-based system, various commercial firms introduced stand-alone picture frame appliances that also provided a "slide show" of still images. The products included these:

As far as I know, the first four products listed above only provide output to an integral liquid crystal display (LCD) - not NTSC video for display on a television set. But the last product, introduced this year, does. At a MSRP of $499+, this is not a cheap way to support our application - but it's the only turn-key solution for the video aspect about which I know. For your money, you get a massive 5 GB hard drive. In our application, a far smaller EEPROM-based memory would do fine instead - and maybe such a version will come onto the market yet.

Should you find yourself in possession of one of the LCD-only products above, all is not lost if you want to use it to build a system like the one I describe. While not an ideal solution, you can use a small color video camera to capture the LCD image and show it on a TV set of whatever size. There is a potential for unwanted visual artifacts. However, LCDs tend to be temporally languid - so flicker heterodyning should not be too bad. If there is an issue of spatial moire, it can be greatly diminished by imperfect focus of the camera on the LCD. One important fact to confirm when buying a camera is that you can adjust its lens so that the image is in sharp focus when it is close enough to the LCD that the latter, however small it may be, fills the camera's field of view (FOV).

Color video cameras are now rather cheap. Some products which might work fine are these $50 color CMOS video cameras (320x240 picture elements) from X-10:

I have not tested these specific units, but I know other cameras from X-10 can be focused at objects well under an inch away - so that a postage stamp exceeds the field-of-view.

Recent investigation reveals that a device performing the function discussed above might best be implemented using a low-cost DVD player, if a limited number of still images are acceptable and the lowest capitalization cost is desired.

Most DVD players - including the very cheapest ones, which sell for well under $100, will play VCD (Video Compact Disk) -format compact disks. I believe this format was introduced in 1987, but generally hasn't been very successful outside of Asia. But for our purposes, since it can encapsulate electronic-still-image slide shows, it seems to be ideal. That's because very cheap players are now available following from the mass production of DVD players. While they are playable by DVD devices, VCDs can be manufactured with ordinary CD-burners - which are extremely cheap and plentiful today compared to DVD burners.

The VCD format is discussed here. Compatibility with a particular DVD player can be verified here. One way to produce slide shows on VCDs is to follow the instructions here, which describe the use of free software ("freeware") called VCDEasy, whose home page is found here. Various alternate methods are enumerated here.

An example of a low-cost DVD player which handles VCD media is the Apex AD-1500. It's compatibility specifications are found here. A recent short critical review of this model, which cites a street price of $70, is found here. A comparison of prices charged by various vendors is located here.

Today I ran across an interesting product now on remainder sale. From the advertising, I am not sure it completely meets the needs described above, but it sure is very low in cost.

TigerDirect is offering the Microsoft TV Photo Viewer for $29.99 "while supplies last", saying that it is a "$159.99 Retail Value!". (Whatever.) This floppy-disk-based consumer device produces baseband video, (like the typical DVD players mentioned above), so either you need a modern TV set with baseband video input or you need to buy a video modulator. Because it uses a humble 3.5" floppy disk, the number of (JPEG-compressed) pictures you can display from any one disk is rather limited: "Up to 40 pictures fit on a standard 3.5-inch floppy disk" they insist. An automated slide-show mode is available - but they do not say if you can automaatically control the dwell time of individual images in such a show (which is my point of concern for the application discussed on this Web page.) But in any case, this unit might be a useful way to show the slides accompanying a short lecture - certainly a very cheap alternative to using even a reconditioned laptop PC.

Still, I suspect many people would be willing to spend an extra $35 beyond the $30 to get a full-blown DVD player instead. A single VCD can contain slide shows enormously larger, too, even if one is not also interested in commercial movie viewing. While making up VCD slide shows requires editing software (q.v. above), sadly the same is true for the MIcrosoft TV Photo Viewer (albeit the editor is bundled free). I would have made it possible simply to dump a bunch of JPEG images onto a floppy and then play them back in "directory order" to obviate such a requirement.

At a press briefing held in advance of the E3 conference of spring 2003, Microsoft announced Xbox Music Mixer, which brought slide shows to the television set using their mainstream X-Box gaming console, embracing the concept as of broad interest. http://news.com.com/2100-1043-1001133.html?tag=nl reported that:

DVD players continue to plummet in price. I now watch Video CD slideshows on a DVD player which barely cost $40. And I had seen a DVD player advertised for under $30 by Christmas 2003, although I did not verify Video CD support by that model. Finally, it is promised that one day not that far off, elderly "Jewish mothers" everywhere, sei gesund, can look forward to a world where photographs will "automagically" arrange themselves, too. Random, shmandom!

By late spring, I finally encountered DVD titles which capture the original vision articulated toward the top of this page: a "plot-free" video in which the viewer "wanders" the natural world as he listens to soothing instrumental music. What is all the more remarkable, these new "relaxation" genre videos are very inexpensive as well.

The particular collection of titles I found were mastered at C3 Film GmbH in Vienna, and are sold under the "Tranquil World" brand by copyright holder Delta Entertainment Corporation. The disks I reviewed were released in late 2002. Buy them at DVD Planet for only $6.99 each.

While genuine video provides the most realistic experience for now, continuing advances in technology make virtual reality worlds increasingly viable for entertainment of the type considered on this page. The rich scenery and complicated topography of many video games in general, and massive multiplayer games in particular, could easily lend themselves to the application considered here, as long as the typical conflict and violence can be expurgated, and an automatic pseudo-random "tour" mode can be activated. More structured experiences, such as those provided by Microsoft Train Simulator, can be suitable, too.

As Myst proved over a decade ago, computer fun need not include explosions to sell to millions.