When I get my new hearing aids, I’m going to give it a try at our small local theater. They seem to be the best bet for someone that is hearing impaired.
They offer Telecoil, wireless headphone, closed caption device and on Wednesday they do open caption for all four movies that have that capability.
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. My wife and I usually wait for the DVD however, we wanted the experience of seeing this one in the theater. I highly recommend The Sound of Freedom.
Just some feedback on movie-going and assistive listening. And a request at the end if telecoil in a movie theater is really of any use if I generally hear well with my hearing aids.
In a few days, I’m going to see the movie Oppenheimer. My Omnia 962s have telecoil capability, IIRC, but I think it’s turned off since I never normally use it.
It doesn’t seem like the AMC Rivercenter 11 Theaters in San Antonio offer telecoil at all as it’s not listed at all as an Assistive Option: Assistive Moviegoing (amctheatres.com).
In fact, if I go to Loop America and look up loop locations in Texas, there are only 66 listings for all of Texas, and they’re mostly churches! (pick show 100 items from the dropdown at the top left to see the entire list on the same web page): TX : Loop America (time2loopamerica.com).
I was wondering what sort of things skew teleloop/telecoil distribution this way? Mostly older people in churches, younger people in cinemas? Another thought was the Internet says that telecoil can interfere with medical electronic devices, so maybe theaters are more worried about liability (or installation expense) than churches?
Bing ChatGPT quote in response to query; “Does telecoil interfere with pacemakers or other electronic medical devices?”
Yes, telecoil can interfere with pacemakers and other medical devices. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) can occur when a telecoil is used near a pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) 1. However, the risk is generally low, unless there is a strong magnet close to the generator 1. There are reports of cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) being impacted by sources of EMI in the nonhospital environment (eg, strong magnets, cellular phones, slot machines, laptop computers, etc) 1. It is necessary to pin the neck loop away from the location of the pacemaker ensuring 150 mm or 6’’ separation between cable and pacemaker 2. The industry has solved this problem by having the radio frequencies that transmit and receive signals widely spaced apart 3. If you have any concerns about using telecoil with your pacemaker or other medical device, you should consult your doctor or healthcare provider. I hope this helps!
Since I’ve never used the telecoils on my Omnias, I’d like to ask any of you telecoil users whether it works the same as Bluetooth streaming. If the theater did happen to have a teleloop/telecoil, would I both hear the telecoil transmission and sound from my external mics, or would telecoil activation (in ReSound hearing aids) likely cut off the external mic sound? If so, I think I’ll just rely on my external mics. I went to see Avatar: The Way of the Water, and the sound and speech was great for that with just my external mics. With the movie Oppenheimer, it’s said that the music sometimes overpowers the dialog and the volume of the dialog is pretty loud (perhaps to overcome the noisyness of the IMAX 70 mm cameras), so I thought that sound direct to my ears from my telecoils might avoid reverberation problems with loud sound in a theater.
Thanks for any helpful advice.
Bing ChatGPT answer to my query about ReSound telecoil and external microphone function:
Yes, you will still be able to hear through your external hearing aid microphones if you use telecoil with ReSound Omnia hearing aids. The Resound Omnia miniRIE also provides telecoil access through the use of the ReSound Multi Mic that has a Telecoil option. This allows users to tap directly into the audio system of public venues with hearing loops and stream high-quality audio directly into both ears1. So, you can use your external hearing aid microphones and still enjoy the benefits of telecoil technology.
Not bad for an AI bot!
Update: I substituted via a fitting adjustment the Telecoil and Mic program for my Outdoor program (only allowed four basic template programs in the ReSound Smart 3D app). After doing so, the Telecoil Lo program appears in place of the Outdoor program in my Smart 3D app. There are separate controls for the telecoil sound volume and my external mics. I can adjust the volumes for each in each ear separately. In the Sound Enhancer feature, I can adjust bass, mid-tones, and treble. The only environmental processing I can adjust is noise control.
So, I should be all set if the AMC Rivercenter IMAX has a loop (I doubt it). It’s impossible to get a human being on the theater telephone number, such is the economics of the film industry these days it seems.
@jim_lewis yes I have BT and Telecoil.
I’m bimodal and when I’m in the movies or live theatre I use “live listen” on my phone very successfully.
Loops are very few and far between here in Aus.
I think we should be worried, this could make forums sites redundant!
Thanks for the suggestion! I tried Live Listen on my iPhone. It’s easy to turn on because it appears as an option down at the lower left in the iPhone Control Center (under the Ear widget icon).
It seems to employ the same excellent microphone technology used in the iPhone Voice Memo app. In that app, the iPhone microphone does an amazing job of compensating for distance. A voice 30 feet away can sound as loud and clear as a voice right next to the iPhone microphone.
I’m not sure if that sort of listening in Live Listen will favor speech over other sounds. I have noticed that with my external mics also turned on, there is a little bit of time delay between the sound from Live Listen and my external mics. It seems like the Live Listen volume may be controlled by my physical iPhone volume buttons whereas my hearing aid microphones might be controlled by the sliders in the Ear widget display(?). Do you depend solely on Live Listen sound reproduction in a movie theater? I’m also wondering whether the sort of Voice Memo technology that evens out the loudness of sound regardless of the difference in loudness caused by distance will make the movie sound too uniform in sound loudness.
I think I’ll make a point of announcing myself to the movie staff to see if they have problems with me experimenting with various listening modes during the movie by pulling out my iPhone to change settings.
And then there’s always the danger of annoying other patrons who might not appreciate that I’m just a hearing-impaired theatergoer. About nine years ago in Florida, a retired police captain got into an argument with a man and his wife seated in front of him for the man texting on his phone during the previews of coming attractions when the ex-policeman had repeatedly asked him to stop. The man turned around and threw popcorn in the retired policeman’s face. The ex-policeman pulled out his gun, shot the popcorn thrower dead, and wounded his wife. And finally was acquitted: Curtis Reeves: Retired police captain acquitted | CNN
So besides the “Does the theater have a teleloop?,” there is “What’s the risk of annoying other patrons by fiddling with my HA settings on my iPhone during the flick!?”
How did you go with the movie? There are some extremely loud noise events inOppenheimer I am considering aids right now, and while sitting in the theatre, I was wondering how the aids would cope with the sudden BANGS…
After seeing that I certainly won’t fiddle with my phone app at the theater. 
I wear occlusive ear molds. I’d say they reduce sound going directly to my eardrums by at least 10 to 15 dB. So most of what I hear is processed sound sent to my receiver. There’s an upper limit to amplification, and I think I also have a sudden loud noise squelch setting turned on. I have wondered whether some of the loud noises in theater settings are good for one’s hearing, but I think I’m reasonably protected. In my iPhone settings, I have 75 dB set as my maximum allowed streaming volume.
I haven’t seen the movie yet. When I do, I’ll update this post on how loud things like the Trinity test seemed to me.
Update: I found no sound in the movie intolerably loud. The theater bass went so low one could actually feel some of the sound in one’s body, but no sound volume was excessively loud. AMC didn’t have a teleloop - my telecoils picked up nothing - and the usher had no idea what I was talking about! Since I wear occlusive ear molds, my experience may differ from people with an open fit.
I think to understand the movie thoroughly, it probably helps to read the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus beforehand. It’s a very good but very long book! (and the movie, although three hours long, whizzes through a lot of history in a very short time). The movie is very faithful to the book except for a few dramatic liberties taken that really do enhance the movie as a work of story-telling and art. The way Robert Downey Jr.'s fate as Lewis Strauss was interwoven with Cillian Murphy’s as Oppenheimer was tremendously well-done. Downey gives an outstanding performance, almost scenery-chewing. Both deserve at least to be nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award. The way the movie cuts back and forth across time, coming back in the end to an earlier fateful encounter with Einstein that distills the differences between Strauss and Oppenheimer and what troubles them both was well worth the price of admission. I thought the pivotal character of David L. Hill was one of Nolan’s dramatic liberties, but looking Hill up in Wikipedia, his testimony in the movie is straight out of history (Hill and his testimony are not specifically mentioned in American Prometheus!).
AMC theaters do offer a bunch of assistive listening devices and closed captioning or narration, but none seems to be as useful as having telecoil or BT LE Audio would be. Except for a few places, the Oppenheimer dialog was very understandable (I have good hearing and speech recognition wearing my HA’s).
It’s pretty difficult to understand speech in a movie theater even for normal hearing people. A lot of loud noise.
I’d look for a subtitled movie instead
In addition, I mostly watch movies silent and with subtitles
One or two years ago, I watched the shining this way and I’d never scared due to not listening to soundtracks
As my hearing got worse, going to the movies got silly. Missing dialog meant losing the plot. Watching at home was a fix.
Going back with hearing aids was fantastic. Even Oppenheimer, with dialog mixed with sounds and music, I never missed a word.
@jim_lewis Agree about the movie. It was a superb history lesson. One of the best movies I have seen. It was like walking through a book. My wife(who is Japanese) and I took lunch with us to the screening. Despite my so called bad hearing, I could hear it fine. Some of the “bangs” made me jump a mile, and the bass was travelling through seat into my chest.
I missed a lot of the movie because of bad sound. It might have been the theater. The speakers sounded like they were overdriven. The dynamics were hard to take. I’ll watch again when it streams.
I have trouble seeing any movie as good history. At best it distorts real situations by cutting out something that can be depicted on screen. That’s ‘at best’. I have a particularly hard time with the scenes around poisoning the apple, which even the book says might not have happened. I can’t imagine a thinking person throwing a poisoned apply into normal trash.
We streamed using our android box…
I was very disturbed watching the movie. Did watch it to the end.
DaveL
Toronto
We’re venturing into “SOCIAL” territory here as opposed to understanding speech in movies. It would be a lot of preparation to see the movie, but two excellent, very long Pulitzer Prize-winning books are The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (won General Non-Fiction Pulitzer) and American Prometheus by Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird (Biography Pulitzer). The first book is one of the best books I have ever read. It’s the whole enchilada of the historical events in Europe and developments in 20th-century physics that led to the making of the atomic bomb and its use and examines the background of many of the scientists involved in making the bomb. Rhodes explains everything about the Manhattan Project, including the nuclear physics, in very clear layman’s terms. The scientists making the bomb weren’t naive; they knew it would be a terrible weapon but were driven by desperation in what they saw as a race against the Nazis to make it. They thought it would make war unthinkable, and there would have to be a world government, at least for nuclear arms, to control the future possibility of nuclear armageddon. We didn’t quite make it there, but at least we have SALT and nuclear non-proliferation treaties that most of the world follows.
Having read both books, I thought Christopher Nolan condensed an incredible amount of stuff, almost all accurately, into a very short time frame. My wife has read neither book, and she said without me gossiping to her about Oppenheimer’s life as I read American Prometheus, she would have had a tough time understanding exactly what was going on in the movie. I would think it would be even harder for a hearing-impaired person who doesn’t have excellent corrected word recognition. It might spoil the movie, but reading the Wikipedia entries for the film or either of the books, instead of the very long books themselves, might help you understand the film more, especially if you are severely hearing impaired and likely to miss key dialog in key scenes.
The very final scene in the movie wasn’t historically accurate, but it was so beautifully and artistically done. The whole way Nolan built up the drama and led the viewer back to that scene depicted earlier in the movie was totally awesome. We’re all Prometheans now, at least regarding the possibility of being tortured by the gods for our release of knowledge.
I remember being in school in Maryland. The drill was the alarm. And then we would get under the desk.
Grade 4.
DaveL
“About 50% of Americans -and the majority of young people- watch videos with subtitles on most of the time, according to surveys, in large part because they are struggling to decipher what actors are saying.” (NYT 18 Aug 2023).
Gee, and I thought there was something wrong with me…
@RobHooft , Yes, I can relate to this. My wife is Japanese, and while speaking very good English, she some times struggles to understand TV and Movies because of fast speaking and dialects. Hence, we mostly use subtitles. I am a native English speaker, and now enjoy the subtitles, as although I listen to the speech, sometimes it is not clear, and often very fast, and the subtitles, being a tad after the actual speech, reinforce what I heard, or think I heard.
I thought my hearing of speech was not “too bad”. But when I did the speech test with an Audiologist, I realised how much I guess the words, often wrong. Audio said I rely on the speech context to guess the words.
Must be the Oppenheimer movie, when i went to my local library to borrow the book, American Prometheus by Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, I am 120 on the wait list.