Patent No. 4305131 Dialog between TV movies and human viewers
Patent No. 4305131 Dialog between TV movies and human viewers (Best, Dec 8, 1981) Abstract A video amusement system by which one or more viewers influence the course of a motion picture as if each viewer were a participant in a real-life drama or dialog. A speech-recognition unit recognizes a few spoken words such as "yes" and "run" spoken by a viewer at branch points in the movie, thus simulating a dialog between the screen actors and the viewer. The apparatus may read an optical videodisc containing independently addressable video frames, blocks of compressed audio, and/or animated cartoon graphics for the multiple story lines which the movie may take. A record retrieval circuit reads blocks of binary-coded control information comprising a branching structure of digital points specifying the frame sequence for each story line. A dispatcher circuit assembles a schedule of cueing commands specifying precisely