# TiVo HD Closed Captions - problems



## sonysony (Sep 20, 2003)

I have been watching HD Law and Orders and the closed captions are only showing about 60% of the time. What can be going on?


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

I've only had my S3 for a few weeks now, but I have begun to notice a number of shows being recorded without closed captions. I've also found two cases of the same show (same time & channel) being recorded on my S2 and S3 where the S2 version has closed captions and the S3 does not.

These Tivos are both fed from the same cable outlet. The S3 does not have cable cards. Neither uses a cable box. They feed the same TV. The S3 does have some shows with closed captions.

This seems like a software issue.


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## gwsat (Sep 14, 2006)

I agree that the S3 seems to have some closed captioning bugs. Last week I was watching a recording of a movie on TCM with the closed captions on but quit in the middle to watch an NFL playoff game. I turned off closed captions during my viewing of the game. When I got back to the recording of the movie and turned closed captions on again, they didnt show up. 

Most if not all of the movies shown on Universal HD seem not to have closed captions, as I have found them missing not only on the S3 but on its predecessor, an SA 8300HD.


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## hearncl (Oct 16, 2006)

Sometimes while watching HD on the S3 with closed captions on, a caption will freeze on-screen. The frozen caption may flicker on and off. Usually, hitting the replay button will start the captions working normally again. I've also had captions stop working during portions of a show, then start working again.


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

I forgot to mention that these are analog cable channels in my case. I don't have an HDTV yet, so I don't record anything digital/HD.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

If you have a problem with captions on HD, 99% of the time it is going to be the broadcast/signal, not your S3. It is an unfortunate fact of HD life that captions aren't as good as they should be on HD channels. I also have an SA8300HD, and tend to record most shows on both my DVRs. I have yet to find a show where the captions didn't work on the S3, but did on the SA. I have found shows labeled [CC] that had no captions, and I've had shows with scrambled captions. I've had shows with captions lagging the audio so badly they were unwatchable. In every case, when I go to my SA8300HD, the exact same captions are displayed (or not).

It is possible for captions to get "wacky", in which case a simple 8 second rewind usually fixes it. But that has only happened to me 2 or 3 times in the four months I've had my S3. And I watch everything with captions on.

BTW, the program guide for UnivHD says [CC] on many of their shows, but not a single caption has ever appeared on that channel (for me). 

OTOH, I did get Fox national to fix their lagging caption problem on their HD feed (do a search--you'll find the thread). Universal is next on my hit list.


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## joecm874 (Nov 17, 2006)

I've experienced a different caption problem while watching a game. Random captioning characters on the screen (and I have captioning turned off). 

Also, and not sure this is tivo related, but BSG last week played with the spanish captions, even though I did not have them on. Maybe this was a transmission issue.

Can we get an tivo update please?


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## dconner (Mar 13, 2004)

sonysony said:


> I have been watching HD Law and Orders and the closed captions are only showing about 60% of the time. What can be going on?


Do you mean "about 60% of episodes?" If so, you may be running into cable channels that don't run with closed captioning turned on 24/7. If the non-CC episodes aired between, say, midnight and 6 AM, this might be the problem.

I had forgotten about this, but ran into it again when I set up a season pass for the "Glenn Beck Show," which airs on CNN Headline News. It airs once at (I think) 7 PM, then again at midnight or later. I had the SP set up to keep only one episode at a time, and since the TiVo can't recognize the rerun (a separate perennial gripe with TiVo and/or the schedule service), it kept overwriting the early show with the later one.

Anyhoo, the later showing is aired without CC. This seems particularly common with the cable news channels, I suppose because most of their programming is live, and thus the captioning for a 3AM newscast would be a non-trivial expense.


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

In my case, I have examples of the SAME show, recorded from the same channel at the same time (analog, SD, no cable box, same coaxial feed) where the S2 has CC and the S3 does not. I cannot imagine how this would NOT be an S3 issue.


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

bmgoodman said:


> In my case, I have examples of the SAME show, recorded from the same channel at the same time (analog, SD, no cable box, same coaxial feed) where the S2 has CC and the S3 does not. I cannot imagine how this would NOT be an S3 issue.


It's not an S3 issue, more of a HD Captions issue.
New technology, lots of bugs to work out at the station level.

DirecTV HD TiVo forum has had a lot of HD CC and the lack thereof threads.

phox


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## ashu (Nov 8, 2002)

bmgoodman said:


> In my case, I have examples of the SAME show, recorded from the same channel at the same time (analog, SD, no cable box, same coaxial feed) where the S2 has CC and the S3 does not. I cannot imagine how this would NOT be an S3 issue.


Yeah, to elaborate on what phox_mulder posted, the SD and HD captions are carried differently on the (respective) streams.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Can he check this by hooking a television up to the AV Outputs of the S3, and turning CC on in the television? Presumably, the analog CC should be provided from the S3 that way, if they were provided correctly by the television station.


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## ashu (Nov 8, 2002)

bicker said:


> Can he check this by hooking a television up to the AV Outputs of the S3, and turning CC on in the television? Presumably, the analog CC should be provided from the S3 that way, if they were provided correctly by the television station.


Also ... test this with bot digital/HD channels as well as analog channels (whether OTA or from cable). As bicker correctly alluded to, it is POSSIBLE a station that doesn't push digital CC info with an HD channel won't bother to include (if it is even technically POSSIBLE!) analog CC info!


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

bmgoodman said:


> In my case, I have examples of the SAME show, recorded from the same channel at the same time (analog, SD, no cable box, same coaxial feed) where the S2 has CC and the S3 does not. I cannot imagine how this would NOT be an S3 issue.


Does this happen consistently with any specific show? If so, post it here, and I will record it on my S2 & S3, and see if we can narrow down where the problem is. As a 100% caption viewer, I am sympathetic to anyone with a caption problem.

I still think it's probably an HD problem, but let's see if we can dupe it. The differences between SD & HD captions is depressing. For example, until a week ago, the captions on FOX-HD lagged the audio by 3-6 seconds. Same show, same captions, just timed differently. Who knows why? But at least that one is fixed!


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

I did a test last night with Heroes.

Recorded it on both my S3 and my HR10-250, both OTA from the same antenna, same station.

S3 did in fact have a problem displaying the captions, they were there but often garbled.

HR10 didn't have a problem, except one instance where a white square block showed up instead of a letter.

I watched the first 10 minutes on the S3, then after deciding the captions weren't going to fix themself, I switched to the HR10 and watched it from the beginning through to the end.

Consensus? The S3 might indeed have a problem, at least with that channel.
I know other channels have been just fine on the S3.


phox


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## Ivomir (Apr 5, 2006)

I also noticed captions problems with Heros last night in HD. Most of the time the last 1 or 2 characters from each caption line were missing. Haven't seen this happen before.

Ivo


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

astrohip said:


> Does this happen consistently with any specific show? If so, post it here, and I will record it on my S2 & S3, and see if we can narrow down where the problem is. As a 100% caption viewer, I am sympathetic to anyone with a caption problem.
> 
> I still think it's probably an HD problem, but let's see if we can dupe it. The differences between SD & HD captions is depressing. For example, until a week ago, the captions on FOX-HD lagged the audio by 3-6 seconds. Same show, same captions, just timed differently. Who knows why? But at least that one is fixed!


I have seen a number of shows missing CC, but only occasionally does the same show get recorded on the S3 and S2. This makes it difficult to say definitively that the S3 itself is the problem. That being said, I have had two cases where the exact same analog cable channel was recorded at exactly the same time on both units, and the S3 was entirely missing the CC.

Just to reiterate, Astrohip, at least in my case, I am dealing exclusively with analog, no-cable-box, SD channels. Both units are split from the same cable feed.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

astrohip said:


> Does this happen consistently with any specific show? If so, post it here, and I will record it on my S2 & S3, and see if we can narrow down where the problem is. As a 100% caption viewer, I am sympathetic to anyone with a caption problem.
> 
> I still think it's probably an HD problem, but let's see if we can dupe it. The differences between SD & HD captions is depressing. For example, until a week ago, the captions on FOX-HD lagged the audio by 3-6 seconds. Same show, same captions, just timed differently. Who knows why? But at least that one is fixed!


astro - I appreciate your efforts on this. I use captions on all shows except sports, so I'm very interested, too. And, I also noticed that Fox captioning lately has been better.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Ivomir said:


> I also noticed captions problems with Heros last night in HD. Most of the time the last 1 or 2 characters from each caption line were missing. Haven't seen this happen before.
> 
> Ivo


Finally watched Heroes last night. Watched it on the S3, and the captions were perfect until about 3/4 of the way thru, there were some garbled sentences. You could _almost_ read the entire sentence, but a few letters were #%[email protected] This went on for about one minute, then went away.

Went up to our SA8300HD, and watched Heroes on it (I'm so paranoid I record the same shows on several DVRs). *Exact same captioning!* It was perfect except for that one stretch.

All this tells us is that the S3 is not causing this particular problem, this one time. It could be my signal, my cableco, or even NBC/Heroes.

Tracking down caption problems can be a real challenge. Our best hope is that as more & more of the boomers go deaf, captioning will rise to become a top issue, and it will be forced to get better. <-(said only partly in jest)


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

astrohip said:


> ...Our best hope is that as more & more of the boomers go deaf, captioning will rise to become a top issue, and it will be forced to get better. <-(said only partly in jest)


Hey....you're talking about me now....


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## syounger64 (Aug 13, 2004)

Hello! As for HDtv, Tivo HD and captioning issues...you might want to check this out:
http://www.eegent.com/hardware/hdtv-captioning/en530/

Its a caption decoder for hdtv! It will provide OPEN captions which is transferrable to any dvd or Sony psp recording!

Ive emailed them for more information but let me know what you guys think.

A little background: I use a tivo 2, a caption decoder and memory card recorder to copy my tv shows to transfer to my Sony PSP. I love being able to watch my shows on the way to and from work.

I want to be able to do the same thing with my just purchased tivo hd. I plan to set it up tmrw am.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Bierboy said:


> Hey....you're talking about me now....


At the time you posted this reply, 2 1/2 yrs ago, I just smiled because I was one of those boomers going deaf. But since syounger64 revived this thread, dormant since Jan 2007, things have changed. I've gone from hard-of-hearing... to deaf.  Had a cochlear implant about a year ago, and now can hear again.

Oh, and to keep from total thread drift, I still use captions.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

syounger64 said:


> I want to be able to do the same thing with my just purchased tivo hd. I plan to set it up tmrw am.


For what you're trying to do, you can already do it with the built in Tivo captions.

In other words, it sounds like you're trying to just record (real time) the Tivo show with captions.

I do this ALL THE TIME with my S3 & TivoHD to my hard drive/DVD recorder for various shows that I want to record (unattended) to the other recorder so that I can then watch them faster-than-realtime-with-sound. I leave the captions on so that I can catch the vast majority of any words that I miss. (I only do this for reality shows, game shows, documentaries.. Not standard dramas or sitcoms, at least not most of the time.. Once in a while I'll skim through a slow part.)


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## syounger64 (Aug 13, 2004)

astrohip said:


> At the time you posted this reply, 2 1/2 yrs ago, I just smiled because I was one of those boomers going deaf. But since syounger64 revived this thread, dormant since Jan 2007, things have changed. I've gone from hard-of-hearing... to deaf.  Had a cochlear implant about a year ago, and now can hear again.
> 
> Oh, and to keep from total thread drift, I still use captions.


Hi..Good for you. :up: I'm profoundly Deaf and I use captions 100% of the time so you'll understand why I'm researching on captions and tivo hd. I think its great that tivo hd has its own caption decoder. That's a good start but shame on amazon/unbox/netflix for not addressing captions on movie downloads. It's not right and is essentially a discriminatory practice regardless of tech issues. :down:

No captions = a blank tv for me and many others who depend on captions.


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## syounger64 (Aug 13, 2004)

mattack said:


> For what you're trying to do, you can already do it with the built in Tivo captions.
> 
> In other words, it sounds like you're trying to just record (real time) the Tivo show with captions.
> 
> I do this ALL THE TIME with my S3 & TivoHD to my hard drive/DVD recorder for various shows that I want to record (unattended) to the other recorder so that I can then watch them faster-than-realtime-with-sound. I leave the captions on so that I can catch the vast majority of any words that I miss. (I only do this for reality shows, game shows, documentaries.. Not standard dramas or sitcoms, at least not most of the time.. Once in a while I'll skim through a slow part.)


That's great because I do the same speed-watching with my tivo shows while I work out daily on the wiifit! 

But what I'm talking about is the ability to see the captions as a permanent part of the screen whenever I transfer it to a dvd or my sony PSP. That's open captions that is a permanent part of the display when u transfer it. Closed captions cannot be transferred.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

YES THEY CAN. That's exactly what I mean. If you are simply recording THE VIDEO OUT, you get the captions 'burned' into the recording..

So they end up being 'open' captions.


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## syounger64 (Aug 13, 2004)

mattack said:


> YES THEY CAN. That's exactly what I mean. If you are simply recording THE VIDEO OUT, you get the captions 'burned' into the recording..
> 
> So they end up being 'open' captions.


 I saw your comment on the same day and tried it out on my new Tivo HD. WOW! I can't tell you how pleased I was with the new Tivo plus to be able to transfer open captioned recordings to my memory card for my PSP! :up:


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Though you might be less impressed as you see more 'garbagey' captions as time goes on. It would actually be interesting if you did try the other hardware and it somehow provided better captions. 

I guess it was a different caption thread, but at least based on a very few anecdotal experiences, even when my TV's captions are garbagey, they're *less* garbagey than the output of the Tivo captions.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

We rely on the captions, and the TiVo captions are as good as or better than captions available from other sources. I don't see any basis for calling the captions delivered by TiVo as "garbagey".


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I'll mention that I've found a few channels (ABC Family for example) where the digital captions are screwed up. They are either non-existent or garbled. The problem with the TiVo software is that if both digital captions and text captions are turned on in the settings menu, the TiVo software prefers the digital captions (even if they are missing or broken).

In almost all cases I've found that turning off digital captions in the CC settings, "fixes" closed captioning display.


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## Das Achteck (Mar 9, 2005)

One problem with TiVo CCs is that for some channels the CC are trashed on the way to your computer. Even when you immediately bring them back they are trashed.

This seems to be for the most part confined to movie channels and seems to be confined to the digital version of a channel, but not the analog version. It shows up as repeating characters.

TCM is one example.

For all I know this may be a function of your provider, or even the equipment used in your region. T2SAMI has been tweaked over time to deal with this and you can usually extract a clean CC file.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

We haven't watched ABC Family since The Middleman and Kyle XY were on. This wasn't a problem back then, so something must have happened more recently (or be more local to your area).


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

bicker said:


> We rely on the captions, and the TiVo captions are as good as or better than captions available from other sources. I don't see any basis for calling the captions delivered by TiVo as "garbagey".


I watch both analog channels on my Series 3, and (now that I have cablecards) digital channels on my TivoHD. Both have garbagey closed captions, and I have closed captions on almost all of the time.

I have to check again whether I have both analog & digital CC turned on, but I could swear I've tried that in the past (turning the analog ones off), and it didn't make a difference.

Others have confirmed what I've said in other CC threads. Basically, I see a *LOT* of Spanish captions mixed in with the English text. It's more than that, but I see lots of partial Spanish words..

Also, watching Merlin last week, I kept seeing "MERLIN" show up mixed into the output. No, nobody was saying it nor was it relevant at that moment.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Where do those other people live, mattack? It must be a local problem because I am definitely not seeing what you're seeing, on Merlin.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

mattack said:


> I have to check again whether I have both analog & digital CC turned on, but I could swear I've tried that in the past *(turning the analog ones off)*, and it didn't make a difference.


Turn the *digital *CC off. That's what fixes it. Leave the analog captions, and only the analog captions, on.


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## jmemmott (Jul 12, 2003)

astrohip said:


> Turn the *digital *CC off. That's what fixes it. Leave the analog captions, and only the analog captions, on.


I would second this. Most of the time that I am seeing problems ( even in T2Sami/TivoToGo) it is because more than one copy of the captioning data is ending up in the video stream. Some time the captioning data has different language content but the stream ids are the same which results in the mixed languages, etc. In any case it doesn't process very well. Locally ABC digital channels are the worst offenders - with both sets on, freezing and lockups. With only analog on, it is fine.

The FCC ruled in November that all programming that includes captioning must include the analog captions even if the channels are all digital. The reasoning was to provide support for people using DTAs with non-digital TVs after the analog broadcast cutoff. For us that means we are not going to miss any captioning if we shut off digital captions whild leaving the analog ones on.


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## syounger64 (Aug 13, 2004)

I'm quite happy with my new tivo hd but I was a little upset to see that TIVO no longer captions their own broadcasts. They put in a caption decoder in the new tivo and don't caption their own broadcasts??!?!?!? :down:

Im talking about those help video files that comes with the new tivos. These files were captioned when I bought series 2 tivos back then.

I need to find a way to contact them to complain about this.


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## Das Achteck (Mar 9, 2005)

jmemmott said:


> With only analog on, it is fine.


Unfortunately, that doesn't resolve the character doubling issue.


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## jmemmott (Jul 12, 2003)

Das Achteck said:


> Unfortunately, that doesn't resolve the character doubling issue.


If you are referring to the character doubling that we found on some of the movie channels, then it doesn't surprise me because the root cause is in the source material those networks are sending out. Those networks are also the ones that need to clean that one up. I try to clean this up when I extract captions in T2Sami by intentionally ignoring some parts of the FCC captioning standards when I know it will be a problem. Since the Tivo decodes the captions in hardware, I don't think they have that same option.


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## Nelson2009 (Mar 21, 2009)

I had my TiVo HD since March 2009 
I also notice the Closed Captioning need to be alignment in the center. They are way over to the right. Anyone notice that ?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Placement of captions is generally in the hands of the captioner. I haven't noticed any bias in that regard between my TiVo S3 and any other devices.


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## Das Achteck (Mar 9, 2005)

jmemmott said:


> If you are referring to the character doubling that we found on some of the movie channels


Yes, that's it. You have done a nice job of cleaning it up, and the captions can be injected back in. Still, it is time consuming and a lossy process, a bit like recoding audio and video. Thanks for the tools.

What I don't understand is how the TiVo can properly decode the captions in the original stream, but not in the returned stream. Doesn't that indicate that something must be happening in the muxing-demuxing?


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## jmemmott (Jul 12, 2003)

Das Achteck said:


> What I don't understand is how the TiVo can properly decode the captions in the original stream, but not in the returned stream. Doesn't that indicate that something must be happening in the muxing-demuxing?


You are right that the mux/demux process is bringing the problem to the foreground but the cause runs deeper. Broadcast video is sent in the Transport stream (TS) format which has its own defined mechanism for transporting captions. For digital broadcasts, the Tivo simply stores that on disk and reuses it for playback - no problems. When the Tivo sends it to your computer it converts it to a Program stream (PS) format because that matches the analog programming that T2G has always used. Unfortunately on these specific network channels, the video stream already has additional, anomalous, PS formatted captions embedded within it. I would argue that since the source is TS, they should not be present, but since no one will ever look for or use them in the broadcast context, they are harmless. When converted for T2G, however, this results in two copies of the captions being embedded in the PS with the consequence of doubling everything. It would take a lot of work for the Tivo to catch this because the PS captions are carried in the same stream with program category ratings and other data. Selectively screening and removing captioning packets that shouldn't be there without throwing out other useful information is not something the Tivo is or even should be expected to do.


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## Das Achteck (Mar 9, 2005)

Thanks for the explanation. A TiVo CSR recently admitted to me that this is a known issue and I did not get the impression that it would ever be addressed. And it would seem that the networks would not be responsive since the issue arises only when someone tampers with their stream while transferring the content to another device.


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## Lori S (Feb 3, 2009)

I wish the HD TIVO would leave the captioning to my TV.
Instead it takes over.
If by chance you have set up the TIVO to show you the time in the bottom right corner of the screen, the Captioning only works if you set it AGAIN to "on."
If you change from live TV to something you have recorded or the other way around, you have to turn it on again, even though your TIVO says it's already on. This is just a bit infuriating.


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## Das Achteck (Mar 9, 2005)

Component and HDMI cables cannot pass CC data to your TV. If you want your TV to do the processing you will have to use composite or S-Video cables. In fact I have such a connection on my DVD player for use when I watch a movie with no subtitles, but with CC. Of course the video suffers.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Yes, digital captions must always be decoded at the tuner or playback device.


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## syounger64 (Aug 13, 2004)

mattack said:


> Though you might be less impressed as you see more 'garbagey' captions as time goes on. It would actually be interesting if you did try the other hardware and it somehow provided better captions.
> 
> I guess it was a different caption thread, but at least based on a very few anecdotal experiences, even when my TV's captions are garbagey, they're *less* garbagey than the output of the Tivo captions.


Well that other captioning equipment costs about $ 3,000. Ouch...so that option isnt viable for most of us as I learned from a rep that it's intended for professional use. Oh well. No captioning issues here and I'm even more impressed that I can transfer recordings from my series 2 tivo to my tivo hd AND still get open captions. Along with caption options in tivo settings...I'd have to say that I'm impressed at the very least. :up:


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## sowildpaul (Jul 1, 2009)

Das Achteck said:


> Component and HDMI cables cannot pass CC data to your TV. If you want your TV to do the processing you will have to use composite or S-Video cables. In fact I have such a connection on my DVD player for use when I watch a movie with no subtitles, but with CC. Of course the video suffers.


99% wrong! I use HDMI cable from my Verzion HD DVR (FIOS) to my TV and I turn both analog and digital CC on in that DVR and TV's CC off. It works. It depends on your TV. For example, my TV doesn't show CC via component video cable from my DVD player when there's no subtitles available so like you said, via S-Video cable, it shows CC. My friend's TV is different from mine, via component video from his cable HD DVR to the TV, it shows CC but not via HDMI. He's disappointed cuz he prefers HDMI. Therefore, it depends on your TV. So next time before I buy a new TV, I would read its manual first to make sure that it accepts CC via both component video and HDMI inputs.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

There is no such thing as accepting closed captioning via HDMI inputs. Since digital closed caption decoding is to take place at the tuner or playback device, what it transported through the HDMI cable is open captions (i.e., after the captions are decoded).

What folks want to do is making sure all their DVRs, DVD players/burners and Blu-Ray players decode closed captions inside the player, instead of relying on the television.


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## sonysony (Sep 20, 2003)

And has been stated in here, shutting off Digital Captions, and just leaving on standard captions has fixed all my problems. I had thought that HD needed digital captions, but I was wrong. If you are having problems, turn off the digital captions in your TiVo.


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## Das Achteck (Mar 9, 2005)

sowildpaul said:


> 99% wrong!


Not quite.

Google closed captions hdmi


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## sonysony (Sep 20, 2003)

I let TiVo put the closed captions on the recorded video. They work on all 4 of my TiVos, 2 HDMI, 2 component. I don't use the TVs closed captions.


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## sowildpaul (Jul 1, 2009)

Das Achteck said:


> Not quite.
> 
> Google closed captions hdmi


OK I got it. I thought you meant that we would not be able to see CC via HDMI AT ALL. I just tested it by turning off CC in my Motorola HD DVR and TV's CC on and I don't see CC via HDMI until I turned DVR's CC on. So I understand now that you meant HDMI/component cables cannot carry "invisible" CC data. I am sorry about what I said before.
I read wikibook.org regarding how to use a Motorola DVR/Setup and found the article;

Closed Caption: HDMI, Component, etc
You must use the USER SETTINGS menu on the DVR if you connect with any other cable type, including HDMI and component (YPbPr). You can not use your TV's closed caption features because these other connections can not carry the closed caption signal. Instead, you must tell the DVR to decode closed captions, and then overlay them on the video sent to the TV.

Another article from HDMI.com;

How CC works in HDMI and other digital connections:
The TV remote's CC button does not enable/disable CC on HDMI sources. To enable CC, the user must enable it at the source either through a source remote control key (i.e. CC button) or by going through the setup menu of the source. The source will then combine the video content with the CC information and output that (video + CC) via HDMI to the TV. 
The CC rendering is done at the source and not at the TV as it was with analog connections. For example, with a typical cable box the CC is enable by going to the cable box setup menu and not the TV remote's CC button. The TV remote's CC only controls the analog CC and does not control the CC for each of the HDMI source devices. CC must be enabled from each of the individual HDMI sources.


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## sowildpaul (Jul 1, 2009)

sonysony said:


> And has been stated in here, shutting off Digital Captions, and just leaving on standard captions has fixed all my problems. I had thought that HD needed digital captions, but I was wrong. If you are having problems, turn off the digital captions in your TiVo.


That sucks cuz that means we are not able to set font type, size and color on analog captions.

Is Tivo going to fix the problem with digital captions or what?


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## sowildpaul (Jul 1, 2009)

bicker said:


> There is no such thing as accepting closed captioning via HDMI inputs. Since digital closed caption decoding is to take place at the tuner or playback device, what it transported through the HDMI cable is open captions (i.e., after the captions are decoded).
> 
> What folks want to do is making sure all their DVRs, DVD players/burners and Blu-Ray players decode closed captions inside the player, instead of relying on the television.


Yeah, I understand that now. BTW, I didn't know that DVD/Blu-ray players have a built-in CC decoder. My DVD players don't have it. Are you talking about subtitles which are not the same as CC?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

sowildpaul said:


> That sucks cuz that means we are not able to set font type, size and color on analog captions.


You should be able to set all these for analog captions since those settings affect the output. They aren't source dependent.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

sowildpaul said:


> Yeah, I understand that now. BTW, I didn't know that DVD/Blu-ray players have a built-in CC decoder. My DVD players don't have it. Are you talking about subtitles which are not the same as CC?


Very few DVD players have a built-in closed captioning decoders.... *that's* part of the problem. My Pioneer 810-HS did, but that was remarkable.

By the same token, as much as we like to think of it otherwise, DVDs are digital storage for what is ostensibly "analog" television (480i). So while it is digital, the "rules" that apply are the rules associated with "analog" television, i.e., closed captions are transmitted across analog connections to your display. If you use the digital connections, then there are no rules and therefore you're not necessarily going to get closed captioning support (unless you have a DVD player like my Pioneer 810-HS). Of course, with DVDs, you can often rely on subtitles instead.

Once you go up to Blu-Ray, you're exclusively in the land of subtitles anyway, not closed captions.


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## sowildpaul (Jul 1, 2009)

morac said:


> You should be able to set all these for analog captions since those settings affect the output. They aren't source dependent.


Analog captions with those options? That's new to me. I know in the past a few SD commericals rarely showed analog captions with a different text color but it was under their control, not ours.

I read a viewer's guide (.pdf) for Tivo HD XL DVR but not enough details about CC so it looks like I have to buy the machine to try it out.

To tell you the truth, yellow text with black background is perfect for me, very readable and much better (smoother) than standard white text that's too bright causing a blur (that makes me think my eyes are bad) so that's why I demand those options.


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## jmemmott (Jul 12, 2003)

sowildpaul said:


> Analog captions with those options? That's new to me. I know in the past a few SD commericals rarely showed analog captions with a different text color but it was under their control, not ours.
> 
> I read a viewer's guide (.pdf) for Tivo HD XL DVR but not enough details about CC so it looks like I have to buy the machine to try it out.
> 
> To tell you the truth, yellow text with black background is perfect for me, very readable and much better (smoother) than standard white text that's too bright causing a blur (that makes me think my eyes are bad) so that's why I demand those options.


Analog caption can do colors but as you point out, it is rarely actually ever done. As a result, most closed captions end up in the EIA-608 defaults : black and white. As long as you let the Tivo HD do the caption decoding, it lets you set up a new default for font, colors and size. If the captions being broadcast do not actively control the colors, you get your default choice. You have a limited set of choices in each category and there is no transparency control but it is still much better than many television sets allow. Your yellow on black format is one that is available.


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## abredt (Nov 5, 2004)

Can someone tell me how to do closed captioning?
Does it have to be all-or-nothing, or can I just have some programs recorded with closed caption?

Thanks, CB


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

abredt said:


> Can someone tell me how to do closed captioning?
> Does it have to be all-or-nothing, or can I just have some programs recorded with closed caption?
> 
> Thanks, CB


The closed captions are broadcast with the program. You don't control whether they get recorded or not. If a show is captioned (and most are), the captions will be recorded.

What you can control is whether the captions are *displayed*. You can turn captions on or off at anytime, as often as you like. So if you want to watch captions on a show, turn 'em on. If you don't, turn 'em off.


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## Palmdale-CA (Jan 6, 2005)

Turning off the digital captions and leaving on the analog captions only did the trick for me. :up:
Thanks everyone!!


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## aslsigner (Nov 13, 2006)

We just bought a Tivo-HD with lifetime service using an antenna to get free digital HD. My wife is deaf and so we are dependent on Closed Captioning (CC). We have the television already set for CC and weve gone through Tivos setup screens that enable CC.

Over the air programming has been pretty good with captioning digital content. However, after buying this new Tivo, CC has been intermittent on programs that normally have CC.

We first noticed the CC problems watching Criminal Minds on Ion (formerly Pax). The OTA (over the air) antenna signal carries CC as weve been watching this show without Tivo for several months and CC worked just fine. Once we started watching our recorded programs, the Criminal Minds was no longer captioned. Figuring it was an anomaly, we waited until we could watch the program live using OTA antenna and alternate between Tivo. The direct antenna feed STILL has CC while the Tivo had nothing. We experienced this again tonight while watch How I Met Your Mother. The live antenna feed had CC while the Tivo recording did not. When I went through the Info while in Tivo, I scrolled down to the icon indicating Closed Captions. The title said No Captions are available for this program which is obviously not true since the feed that bypassed the Tivo and went straight into the TV worked just fine. I changed to each of the digital caption feeds (1 through 6) in Tivo to no avail.

So Im thinking this is an error in the Tivo programming? Maybe someone at Tivo has to flip some switch for the Tivo to turn on captioning recognition? I know that sounds silly but what else am I missing?

PS. Were watching Law & Order RIGHT NOW and the Tivo clearly says in the Info section that captions are available. The OTA version of the show is captioned. But the Tivo Live TV is showing NOTHING!!!
Ahh

Thanks for any guidance.


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## GISJason420 (Feb 9, 2009)

astrohip said:


> OTOH, I did get Fox national to fix their lagging caption problem on their HD feed (do a search--you'll find the thread). Universal is next on my hit list.


Nice!! Please add the CW Station to the list!!!! Supernatural & Smallville caption streams constantly drop and fail on their station... I've been able to pinpoint it to their station as the one w/ the issue cuz it has never really quite worked right on there even thur 3 different providers, I've been having to use downloaded releases & subtitles from the internet instead of watching it off the TiVo 

I've tried getting CW's attention to this issue, they fixed it once before tho but now it's actin up again 

All this is via SD off my S2 DT Box, not HD, But for everyone else in this thread it certainly seems like a HD captioning issue!



syounger64 said:


> Hi..Good for you. :up: I'm profoundly Deaf and I use captions 100% of the time so you'll understand why I'm researching on captions and tivo hd. I think its great that tivo hd has its own caption decoder. That's a good start but shame on amazon/unbox/netflix for not addressing captions on movie downloads. It's not right and is essentially a discriminatory practice regardless of tech issues. :down:
> 
> No captions = a blank tv for me and many others who depend on captions.


I'm in the same boat as you are! I've always ended up having to use the internet for my sources of best quality shows with good close-captioning support... But the downside is It usually is a week or so before the new captioning files for each show that just finished airing on stations is released as there are kind souls out there that actually take their time to make the captioning files perfectly timed with scene releases, lately it's been awful keeping up with shows off CW's station as they have the worst Captioning support I've ever seen from any station off the tube!

I get what your saying about all of these download services like Netflix / Amazon / etc.. So many awesome new technologies have surfaced where I really want to be able to enjoy all of them if possible like off the 360 you can download full shows / episodes etc.. But it's pointless as they're not close captioned... Same for a ton of classes I want to take off M$'s webcasts and seminars but all pointless to purchase the course as no captioning support is available.... These companies are still trying to catch up or they just don't find it worthwhile to fix 

I think you will find the Scene is much more better with captioning support when it comes to their releases, they even strip out commercials and crap we don't need to waste our time watching as well!


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## SpiritualPoet (Jan 14, 2007)

A friend of mine works for the NCI (National Captioning Institute). In order to be a person who types closed captions, one uses a machine that is like a computerized typewriter. In fact, court reporters have to attend a court reporting school to do their job. The same functionality and shortcut keyboarding skills a court reporter utilizes is what it takes to do closed captioning. It's pitiful that many firms that hire closed captioners don't police them very well. Either due to carelessness or not knowing how words are spelled, quite often the captions are misspelled, with all sorts of bizarre characters in place. This even happens on some movies that are eventually made onto DVDs. Those who close caption are reading from a script when typing into the machine. They have to often shorten sentences or avoid some words or even complete phrases to make certain the main meaning of what is spoken appears on the screen when needed. Dialogue in programming often is at a much faster speed than all the text can appear unless edited.


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## GISJason420 (Feb 9, 2009)

SpiritualPoet said:


> A friend of mine works for the NCI (National Captioning Institute). In order to be a person who types closed captions, one uses a machine that is like a computerized typewriter. It's pitiful that many firms that hire closed captioners don't police them very well. Either due to carelessness or not knowing how words are spelled, quite often the captions are misspelled, with all sorts of bizarre characters in place. This even happens on some movies that are eventually made onto DVDs.


Never really noticed that there were issues and errors in closed captions! Let alone on DVDs! But yeah I'm deaf so really can't tell when they're not sayin what the captioning is sayin.... Happen to know which DVD had a issue like that? I'd assume they're all like perfect.... Only issue is the format and technology bugs they've got to work out glitches and bugs from transmission of them across various of streams and whatever to get to the end user so certainly en-route they get broke up or scrambled but as for a DVD Shouldn't have that issue at all! Would you happen to have that friend's contact info? I'd like to inquiry him on how I can obtain copies of the transcript for each show after it's done airing so I can quickly convert to .srt format and enjoy the shows as soon as they're done airing instead of waiting a week or 2!  If that's ok with him!


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

aslsigner said:


> Over the air programming has been pretty good with captioning digital content. However, after buying this new Tivo, CC has been intermittent on programs that normally have CC.
> <snip>The title said No Captions are available for this program which is obviously not true since the feed that bypassed the Tivo and went straight into the TV worked just fine. I changed to each of the digital caption feeds (1 through 6) in Tivo to no avail.


Turn OFF all digital captions. Turn ON ANALOG captions. All of your caption problems should be solved.

The problem seems to be caused by digital captions. Sometimes by themselves, sometimes when used at the same time as analog captions. So simply turning off digital captions always solves this problem.

Any show that is captioned will have analog captions, so turning off digital will not cause you to miss any captions.


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## aslsigner (Nov 13, 2006)

astrohip said:


> Turn OFF all digital captions. Turn ON ANALOG captions. All of your caption problems should be solved.
> 
> The problem seems to be caused by digital captions. Sometimes by themselves, sometimes when used at the same time as analog captions. So simply turning off digital captions always solves this problem.
> 
> Any show that is captioned will have analog captions, so turning off digital will not cause you to miss any captions.


BRILLIANT!!! Gold star for the day! :up::up::up:
My wife thinks I'm a genius... little does she know that I know how to post in a forum.

Mods should make this post by astrohip a sticky somewhere...

Thanks, astrohip.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

aslsigner said:


> BRILLIANT!!! Gold star for the day! :up::up::up:
> My wife thinks I'm a genius... little does she know that I know how to post in a forum.
> 
> Mods should make this post by astrohip a sticky somewhere...
> ...


[modestly bowing]
Thanks. As a 100% closed caption watcher, I share your wife's pain, and spent hours fiddling with the settings when I first upgraded to an HiDef Tivo, until I figured this out. It seems to always work.

Now I'm on a mission to get the networks to "upgrade" the quality of their captions. I find ABC captions lag a fraction of a second behind the sound; just enough to be a PITA. I'm workin' on it . . .


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## Dr_Zoidberg (Jan 4, 2004)

CCs are a mixed bag. I like to see CCs on shows I'm watching in the background, so I can catch what was actually said. I sincerely hate it when captions appear BEFORE you hear the actor saying the lines. This really sucks when you're watching comedy.

Meanwhile, what is it with TV shows that now have their captions float high on the screen at the opening while they're showing credits at the bottom of the screen? it completely defeats the purpose if what you're watching is blocked by the captions, so that you can see who helped make the show possible. That's irritating.

Is it possible that those captions are the digital ones? I guess when I get home I'll be fiddling with the CC settings!


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## Impulses (Jan 25, 2006)

Yeah, the CW is definitey THE worst network when it comes to CC... I've had CC issues w/other networks in the past but they never lasted more than a week or two and usually solved themselves (or someone else like astrochip complained and they took care of it  ).

With the CW however I've seen CC completely vanish twice now... Personally I don't care all that much because I don't need 'em, but my mother does. First time it happened she called and made a stink about it and eventually the CW got it's act together (about 4 months later). This time she hasn't really bothered (it's been going on for about 5-6 months) since she isn't watching any shows on CW right now (had some mild interest in 
Life Unexpected but not enough to go thru all the hassles).

I think our particular situation is even more complicated because our cable co. (Onelink) re-transmits state-side stations (we mostly get NY's stuff, tho some networks have special PR/Caribbean transmissions it seems)... So it's a hassle to even find out if it's Onelink's fault or the CW's fault.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Dr_Zoidberg said:


> CCs are a mixed bag. I like to see CCs on shows I'm watching in the background, so I can catch what was actually said. I sincerely hate it when captions appear BEFORE you hear the actor saying the lines. This really sucks when you're watching comedy.


The captions should appear a split second BEFORE the vocals. That way your brain has time to start reading them, and can associate the words with the sounds (or the lips, for the deaf). If the words are even a split second late, it is extremely disconcerting to the HOH. You are hearing sounds and have no idea what they are saying. So it may suck for you, but for those of us who depend on them, we really need the words just a flash before the sounds.



Dr_Zoidberg said:


> Meanwhile, what is it with TV shows that now have their captions float high on the screen at the opening while they're showing credits at the bottom of the screen? it completely defeats the purpose if what you're watching is blocked by the captions, so that you can see who helped make the show possible. That's irritating.


It is irritating, but it's pretty much the norm these days. I guess the names of all 108 producers are more important than letting us see the actors faces.



Dr_Zoidberg said:


> Is it possible that those captions are the digital ones? I guess when I get home I'll be fiddling with the CC settings!


It happens whether you are watching digital or analog captions.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Dr_Zoidberg said:


> Meanwhile, what is it with TV shows that now have their captions float high on the screen at the opening while they're showing credits at the bottom of the screen? it completely defeats the purpose if what you're watching is blocked by the captions, so that you can see who helped make the show possible. That's irritating.


I definitely LIKE it when the captions move out of the way... e.g. *some* of the poker shows seem to do captions right (move the captions so you see the community cards), some don't.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

mattack said:


> I definitely LIKE it when the captions move out of the way... e.g. *some* of the poker shows seem to do captions right (move the captions so you see the community cards), some don't.


What DrZ is referring to is the captions at the beginning of a show, when they move them up only so one can see the credits. It's irritating because it almost always covers the actors faces, and it's only so we can see credits, which most people don't really care about.

But when captions are moved about for a logical reason, like poker, that's pretty smart! :up:


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## wireless200 (Apr 15, 2004)

astrohip said:


> Turn OFF all digital captions. Turn ON ANALOG captions. All of your caption problems should be solved.
> 
> [...]QUOTE]
> 
> Thanks Dude!


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## wtherrell (Dec 23, 2004)

Lori S said:


> I wish the HD TIVO would leave the captioning to my TV.
> Instead it takes over.
> If by chance you have set up the TIVO to show you the time in the bottom right corner of the screen, the Captioning only works if you set it AGAIN to "on."
> If you change from live TV to something you have recorded or the other way around, you have to turn it on again, even though your TIVO says it's already on. This is just a bit infuriating.


Yep. Now 2011 and they have not fixed this yet. If you have the time display on you have to go into info and turn off, then turn on captions again for them to work. However, I am glad that Tivo has the CC display as my Vizio TV will show captions only on the TV or HDMI inputs, not component. I have to hook my Tivo to the Component input because the HDMI on my THD has never worked at all.


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## sissy3 (Jan 16, 2006)

This has become a very frustrating issue. We never had this problem with our previous Tivo. The HD Tivo is nice, but when we watch Royal Pains and White Collar on USA HD our CC is sporadic, at best. TNT HD has the same problem.

Anything new to fix this issue?

Thank you.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

sissy3 said:


> *This has become a very frustrating issue. * We never had this problem with our previous Tivo. The HD Tivo is nice, but when we watch Royal Pains and White Collar on USA HD our CC is sporadic, at best. TNT HD has the same problem.
> 
> Anything new to fix this issue?
> 
> Thank you.


What is your specific issue? Sorry to ask, but this thread is long enough (and old enough) that I'm not sure what you are referring to. I'll try to help if I can.

From a fellow CC user...


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## Iluvatar (Jul 22, 2006)

One method that fixed 95% of the issues I had with incorrect or missing captions was to completely disable digital captions and stick with Standard captions. TiVo seems to favor the digital versions and in my area they are always messed up. SyFy never had correct captions and only sporadically showed at all until I figured this out.

Settings -> Displays -> Captioning -> CC1 = ON, Digital Captions = NONE


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