Perhaps the most instantly-identifiable feature of Niconico Douga, the Japanese video sharing website, is the fast right-to-left stream of user comments overlaid in a rather annoying manner across their videos. The same comment-streaming feature is available from Niconico for terrestrial television, suddenly turning the one-way nature of traditional TV into a social discussion forum, such that it expands the participants of living room banter to the entire Internet.

Last August, Entis Co announced a digital subtitle device, the EN-NL1068, which pulls the social discussion comments from the Niconico website and overlays it on digital TV broadcasts in real time via HDMI, to be available in early September.

Entis announced last week that the digital subtitle devices will receive a firmware upgrade to extend functionality to pulling real-time comments from the (infamous) 2channel board, a multi-topic Internet forum with enormous influence on Internet culture in Japan, as part of its stated long-term plan to gradually add additional features to the software, including RSS and Twitter feeds.

Interesting fact: the streaming comments on Niconico Douga can take up the entire vertical length of the videos; Entis promises that its device will only display a maximum of three lines at the top of the screen, ensuring an uncluttered and unblocked viewing experience for its customers.