Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Luca Beltrami

Jeremy Lee Dewey

Martin D Hall

David Ruzyski

Kedar Hirve

Jason Kepner

Evelyn R Thomas

Brian Stone

Joshua R McCammon

Adam Miller

Stephen E Giscombe

Heather Grantham Brodie

Tom Langan

Travis St Onge

Aaron Cardwell

Matthew Labunka

Ijaz Akram

Rod Boyd

Examples described herein provide various devices that enable users to participate in a session. The examples allow a user that is unable to hear, or that is incapable of hearing, to participate in an in-session voice chat by receiving text messages that have been converted from speech to text (e.g., transcribed messages). The user enables a speech-to-text conversion feature on his or her own device. Based on the enabled feature, a notification can be sent to other devices participating in the session. Based on the notification, the other devices are tasked with capturing utterances and sending corresponding speech data to a speech-to-text conversion device so that voice communications can be converted to text messages. Subsequent to conversion, the text messages can be displayed in a chat interface presented as part of the displayed content for the session.

Session speech-to-text conversion

A shared environment is provided for electronic media devices such as game consoles which have Internet connectivity for receiving streaming video content. The shared environment is a virtual world which includes the video content as well as avatars which represent a group of users who have agreed to watch the content together, and scene elements which provide a realistic and eye-catching appearance. The users can enter commands to cause their avatars to emote, such as by cheering. The users can also explore the shared environment from different camera angles. A voice and/or video chat channel can also be enabled to allow the users to speak to and see one another. The video content is synchronized among the electronic media devices of the users so that the users' interactions are more meaningful as they can react to the same portion of the video content in real time.

Interactive and shared viewing experience

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Luca Beltrami