Ross Campbell wrote:
<Semi-related> does anyone else feel like timestretch is there to challenge how fast you can watch TV? Do you think people can learn to watch TV faster just like people learn to read faster? Is there an upper bound to this?
Read up on "rapid serial visual presentation". Basically, with a little practice, you can learn to read (and take in information) much faster than your brain can subvocalise the text. I'm not sure how this compares to auditory processing, but it seems logical that the eyes have a higher bandwidth than the ears, so with subtitling it should be possible to watch TV at stupidly high speeds.
I can certainly follow relatively slow programming at 1.6x or more with subtitles while I lose the plot with audio alone at about 1.4x. That may say more about my own (suspected dodgy) auditory processing than anything else, but it's still rather cool.
I wonder what brain signals look like for someone watching TV at 1.7X vs. someone watching at 1.0X. My untested hypothesis is that while people "zone out" in front of TV at regular speeds, watching TV at timstretch factors above 1.5 requires more viewer attention and participation and could be a significant mental stimulus as opposed to an opiate or "eyeball massage".
I wouldn't be surprised if it became easier with practice. Which would mean you could turn the speed up and up until reaching some sort of bandwith limit (eventually the audio will turn to mush, and the video will drop so many frames it'll stop making much sense), probably determined by the amount of actual 'content' in the programme.
I can just see it now... yuppie parents sitting their kids in front of mythtv to watch Baby Einstein videos at 1.7X speed
I need a <1.0 time stretch factor to make sense of most modern children's TV. Ahh, the ADHD generation... ;)
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