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From: mlf@teddy.UUCP (Matt L. Fichtenbaum)
Newsgroups: net.singles,net.consumers
Subject: Re: Re: Commercial ventures
Message-ID: <940@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Nov-84 16:33:59 EST
Article-I.D.: teddy.940
Posted: Tue Nov 27 16:33:59 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Nov-84 07:51:24 EST
Reply-To: mlf@teddy.UUCP (Matt L. Fichtenbaum)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 25
Xref: genrad net.singles:5237 net.consumers:1515

>> > > ... What about fast Chinese? I don't know of any national
>> > > chains.
>> > 
>> > Better yet, why not start a chain serving middle eastern food, and you
>> > could call it Bulghur King.
>> > 

   My wife suggests that one could start a Chinese health-food restaurant
and call it Lo Fat.

   My own idea for an indispensible consumer product takes note of the fact
that many TV programs are now being broadcast "closed captioned."  These
send character codes for the subtitles during the picture blanking interval.
This means that the receiver has the subtitle text in machine-readable form
(the decoder then generates the video for the characters).

   Now, hardware to synthesize speech is available and, because of the
prevalence of LSI chips, becoming cheaper and cheaper.  One could take the
character codes corresponding to the subtitles, process them into words
with a microprocessor, and convert the resulting words into speech.  Said
another way, one could build a little box to speak the subtitles!

   That way, even blind people could watch TV!

						Matt