How about using eye tracking technology to enhance your home theatrical experience? If we use information about where a viewer’s eyes are focusing as an indicator of attention, we could shift the audio “focus” of a film in real-time. Since the projected media information would change from viewing to viewing based on what the user is interested in, the viewing experience would be fresh each time.
An example — a party scene in a film. By looking at given cluster of people (probably the main characters), the conversation becomes “in focus” and its sounds are the loudest among the general buzz. However, if the viewer looks at a different character participating in a separate conversation, that conversation has its volume amplified while the others are suppressed.
This sort of interactive viewing would require multiple audio channels for films, as well as some way of weighting the input from multiple viewers to reach some sort of compromise that the local speakers can handle. I’m not certain about the aptitude of current commercially available eye-motion-trackers at handling more than one pair of eyes or about the necessary extra production costs for cramming in those additional audio flows, but only the former seems like a serious technical challenge.
While we’re in the realm of futuristic film enjoyment, we could extend the notion a little further and suggest the possibility of multiple planes of focus or selective highlighting for the visual side of movies to boot! Sony, are you taking notes?
