# Bolt closed captioning stuttering



## dmkagey (Nov 13, 2011)

Saw someone else had this issue but didn’t see any solutions.
Month or so ago our Bolt started “stuttering”. Words kinda there but garbled 
Played around with it tonight and it seems to work fine on the HD channels, but garbles on the SD ones
We have three Bolts. One is working fine and two are doing the garbled 
Anyone else having this issue and did you come up with a solution?
Thanks


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## Mike1111 (Mar 13, 2021)

dmkagey said:


> Saw someone else had this issue but didn't see any solutions.
> Month or so ago our Bolt started "stuttering". Words kinda there but garbled
> Played around with it tonight and it seems to work fine on the HD channels, but garbles on the SD ones


Mine started doing that around the same time - software update?
It does seem to vary from channel to channel, but not necessarily HD vs SD - some SD channels are good, some not good, likewise for HD.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

CC problems can often be traced to the settings. There are two caption streams, digital and analog. You only want one of them on at a time. If both are on, they conflict, creating garbage. It seems some of the recent updates have been changing caption settings, for reasons unknown.

Go to the Caption Settings, and note what they are. You only want ONE caption on, and it's usually digital. If both Analog & Digital are on, they conflict and create garbage. Try turning one on, then watch something. Then turn it off and turn the other one. Watch something. Play with it and see if one works better (or fixes your problem).

These are the Caption Settings under the general Settings area. 

PS: I'm referring to the caption settings under the main SETTINGS menu, where you can set type, font, color, etc. Not the caption toggle on/off setting from the Info display.


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## Mike1111 (Mar 13, 2021)

astrohip said:


> Go to the Caption Settings, and note what they are. You only want ONE caption on, and it's usually digital.


Thank you @astrohip for the suggestion. I tried this. There are 2 settings called "Standard" and "Digital" and both were on. If I turn off "Standard" and leave "Digital" on, I get no closed captions at all for SD channels, only for HD channels. If I turn off "Digital" and leave "Standard" on. I seem to get correct captions on both SD and HD channels.

I'm going to leave it this way and see if new shows being recorded are now correct. The settings do not seem to affect already recorded shows (as I'm guessing the CC stream was corrupted when the show was recorded).


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Glad it worked for you!



Mike1111 said:


> I'm going to leave it this way and see if new shows being recorded are now correct. The settings do not seem to affect already recorded shows (as I'm guessing the CC stream was corrupted when the show was recorded).


Double check again. Captions streams are all recorded, regardless of whether you even have captions on or not. Only during playback does it come into play. So if you have changed the settings to work for you, playing an older recording _should _work.


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## Mike1111 (Mar 13, 2021)

astrohip said:


> Double check again. Captions streams are all recorded, regardless of whether you even have captions on or not. Only during playback does it come into play. So if you have changed the settings to work for you, playing an older recording _should _work.


Hmm... Not only doesn't it "fix" previous recordings, but going to more channels and checking there are still problems on some of them (sadly the ones most affected are ones I watch fairly often, like TCM and The History Channel). Going into the CableCard menus I see the signal strength is 90% to 95%, so there should be no problem receiving the captions...

I went back and tried both "Digital" only and "Standard" only - no joy - for both live TV and previously recorded shows.

Thank you again for your help, but I think at least my problem is something else.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Ok, next step...

Are some channels always ok, and some channels never, or almost never ok?


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## Mike1111 (Mar 13, 2021)

That's what it appears is happening. I haven't looked exhaustively, but yes, the channels of the recorded shows that are bad are bad in live tv pretty much all the time, and vice versa for the "good" recorded shows' channels.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Is there any pattern to the bad channels, vs the good channels? Bad channels all local, or SD, or low numbers, or any pattern?

It's most likely going to be a bad/weak signal (captions are sensitive to signals), which will require your cable company to make a house call.


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## Mike1111 (Mar 13, 2021)

Yeah that's why I checked the signal strength on the bad channels - was 90% or better. It's FIOS, so I don't know if the reported signal strength is meaningful, given that there is an optical signal that's presumably unrelated to the signal strength at the cable card...

I'll go through a bunch today and see if I can see any pattern. I do believe they are mostly SD stations, but I will confirm. Thanks.


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## Mike1111 (Mar 13, 2021)

Went through a couple of hundred live channels... The bad ones right now are

CNN 100
CNBC 102
TCM 230
fetv 245 (sometimes)

All of those are SD. None of the HD channels had a problem. Also, on a couple of channels (both "good" and "bad" SD channels) there was no CC displayed at all until I turned CC off and on again.

Looking at cable card diagnostics, all of the "bad" channels above report signal strength of 90% and SNR of 36Db...


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## 96jacks (11 mo ago)

Spoke with TIVO support agent today (2/17/22) This is a known issue for TIVO. They are working on it apparently. A few suggestions from the agent--check settings, reboot, etc--but clearly those are not the cause of the problem. It appears to be systemwide.


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