It has been a long time since Polaroid Corp has found anything really new to do with its instant picture technology but it has now come up with something – capturing still images from your television set, or at least from televisions designed with the system built in. It’s hard to believe that too many people will want to capture images off air, but the system works when you are playing a video as well. Called TV Picture Print, the system was developed by Video Technologies Inc and Zenith Electronics Corp with Polaroid, and Zenith is showing the technology in specially adapted 35 and 27 televisions at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The set has to be adapted because the image must be frozen before it is captured – once frozen, multiple copies can be taken. On the Zenith sets, the user pushes a button on the television or remote control to freeze a frame of a movie, sporting event, video of the child’s first birthday party, wedding video or even a video game, and a colour Polaroid picture is created. The image appears frozen in the bottom right corner of the screen, like a picture-in-picture set, while the broadcast or video continues to roll. The partners also see applications in estate and government agencies and the medical field. The system uses standard Polaroid Captiva instant film, at about $10 for a 10-picture cartridge. No price or ship date was given by Zenith.
