Closed Captioning Problem

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

My cable provider (Cogeco) uses the Motorola 6208 Set top box which I have
set up to enable closed captioning. My problem is that I am having
difficulty with the captioning on programs such as "24" (FOX), "ER"(NBC),
Law and Order" (NBC) and "NYPD Blue" (ABC). With "24" the captioning seems
to be cut off at the end of a long line or does not "wrap" to the next line.
With "ER" and "Law and Order" most of the captioning consists of a few
characters interspersed with a few lines of captioning that actually follows
the dialog. With NYPD Blue there is no captioning at all. The originating
stations are the Detroit stations. Strangely, I haven't had any problems
with any CBS program.

My cable company claims that these programs are not being telecast with HDTV
closed captioning. I believe that this is hogwash.

Can anyone confirm that the above HD programs are being telecast with closed
captioning? If anyone is using Comcast in Detroit could you confirm that the
captioning is working correctly on the HD channels? Has anyone experienced a
similar problem? Was there a solution to fix it?

Thanks in advance

Gerry

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

Gerry Boulter wrote:
> My cable provider (Cogeco) uses the Motorola 6208 Set top box which I have
> set up to enable closed captioning. My problem is that I am having
> difficulty with the captioning on programs such as "24" (FOX), "ER"(NBC),
> Law and Order" (NBC) and "NYPD Blue" (ABC). With "24" the captioning seems
> to be cut off at the end of a long line or does not "wrap" to the next line.
> With "ER" and "Law and Order" most of the captioning consists of a few
> characters interspersed with a few lines of captioning that actually follows
> the dialog. With NYPD Blue there is no captioning at all. The originating
> stations are the Detroit stations. Strangely, I haven't had any problems
> with any CBS program.
>
> My cable company claims that these programs are not being telecast with HDTV
> closed captioning. I believe that this is hogwash.
>
> Can anyone confirm that the above HD programs are being telecast with closed
> captioning? If anyone is using Comcast in Detroit could you confirm that the
> captioning is working correctly on the HD channels? Has anyone experienced a
> similar problem? Was there a solution to fix it?
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Gerry

I have seen CC on the HD channels for ER and L&O. Since CBS works
fine, the problem might be with your local broadcast stations. All of
the network scripted shows should have a digital CC feed. However, I
have noticed that I am not getting CC for Discovery HD or the inHD
channels. I emailed Discovery and got a canned replay that they are
upgrading the equipment and will have it fixed by Jan. 1, 2006!

Don't believe what the CSR at the cable company tells you. All too
often, when the problem gets even slightly technical, they don't have a
clue, but that does not stop them from giving out an answer.

My local stations are in Washington DC and I get them through Comcast.
I was getting garbled CC for the CBS station and discovered that if I
switched to Digital 2, it worked fine. But then it did not work for most
of the other channels or I would get CC in Spanish. So after a month of
this, I emailed the station about the problem, got a response that my
complaint would be forwarded to an engineer. Three days later, I found
that the CC for the digital 1 setting worked fine for the CBS station.
Don't know if this was a coincidence or not, but there must have been a
problem at the local station that they fixed.

Moral of the story is that if there is a problem, at least make an
attempt via email to make them aware of it. They may or may not do
something about it, but if no one complains, they may not even know
there is a problem.

Alan F

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

"Gerry Boulter" <gboulterca@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:FRKTd.4837$If1.722538@read2.cgocable.net...
My cable provider (Cogeco) uses the Motorola 6208 Set top box which I have
set up to enable closed captioning. My problem is that I am having
difficulty with the captioning on programs such as "24" (FOX), "ER"(NBC),
Law and Order" (NBC) and "NYPD Blue" (ABC). With "24" the captioning seems
to be cut off at the end of a long line or does not "wrap" to the next line.
With "ER" and "Law and Order" most of the captioning consists of a few
characters interspersed with a few lines of captioning that actually follows
the dialog. With NYPD Blue there is no captioning at all. The originating
stations are the Detroit stations. Strangely, I haven't had any problems
with any CBS program.

My cable company claims that these programs are not being telecast with HDTV
closed captioning. I believe that this is hogwash.

Can anyone confirm that the above HD programs are being telecast with closed
captioning? If anyone is using Comcast in Detroit could you confirm that the
captioning is working correctly on the HD channels? Has anyone experienced a
similar problem? Was there a solution to fix it?

Thanks in advance

Gerry
===================

I noticed this, too. Last night, local (Seattle) HD CBS's (channel 7)
broadcast of Survivor had no subtitles and wasn't even in 16:9 size. The
next program, CSI, while it was in wide screen, was also without subtitles.

I noticed one other item from the local HD broadcasts: the sound is of less
quality. The regular (480) broadcast is both louder and of better quality
than on the HD broadcast.

Frustrating to have such a clear picture (1040 versus 480) and then get
cheated out of closed captioning and sound quality.

J.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

J. wrote:

> I noticed this, too. Last night, local (Seattle) HD CBS's (channel 7)
> broadcast of Survivor had no subtitles and wasn't even in 16:9 size. The
> next program, CSI, while it was in wide screen, was also without subtitles.

Survivor is not an HD program. It is shot in 4:3 SD and is upconverted
for broadcast out the HD digital channel. Except for American Idol on
Fox and only a few other reality shows so far, all reality shows are
currently shot in 4:3 SD. This is changing as portable professional HD
cameras become more widely used, but the point of reality shows is that
they are generally cheap to produce, so they don't spend money making
them in HD.

In general, when you see a 4:3 or pillarboxed image, it is upconverted
from a SD source. The exception may be movies which might have been
filmed in 1.37:1 (older movies) or 1.66:1 (ABC broadcast of Aladdin
a while back was in Original Aspect Ratio of 1.66:1 so it had small
black bars on either side).

> I noticed one other item from the local HD broadcasts: the sound is of less
> quality. The regular (480) broadcast is both louder and of better quality
> than on the HD broadcast.
>
> Frustrating to have such a clear picture (1040 versus 480) and then get
> cheated out of closed captioning and sound quality.
>
> J.

Before I got a 5.1 sound receiver, I was frustrated by the sound
sometimes for DVD movies. The stereo mix often buries the dialog in the
background sounds and music. I think the sound mixers pay more attention
to the 5.1 track because that is what they listen to at home than to the
stereo tracks. I suspect the same thing is happening to the HD shows
where they are adding 5.1 sound to the HD feed. But to get 5.1, your
local station has to have the hardware to receive and broadcast the 5.1
feed from the network and a lot of them don't.

I should add I wear a hearing aid. When I upgraded to a receiver with
just 2 decent quality left and right speakers and a subwoofer (2.1 sound
if you will), I found the dialog a lot easier to follow. The speakers in
most TVs are just not very good.

Alan F

 

[bobt]

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 14:18:08 -0500, "Gerry Boulter"
<gboulterca@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>My cable provider (Cogeco) uses the Motorola 6208 Set top box which I have
>set up to enable closed captioning. My problem is that I am having
>difficulty with the captioning on programs such as "24" (FOX), "ER"(NBC),
>Law and Order" (NBC) and "NYPD Blue" (ABC). With "24" the captioning seems
>to be cut off at the end of a long line or does not "wrap" to the next line.
>With "ER" and "Law and Order" most of the captioning consists of a few
>characters interspersed with a few lines of captioning that actually follows
>the dialog. With NYPD Blue there is no captioning at all. The originating
>stations are the Detroit stations. Strangely, I haven't had any problems
>with any CBS program.
>
>My cable company claims that these programs are not being telecast with HDTV
>closed captioning. I believe that this is hogwash.

NYPD and L&O, as broadcast OTA in HD in Chicago both have CC's. Hard
to imagine this would be different in Detroit, so I would surely look
to the cable company as the source of the problem.

As an aside, this newsgroup has been replete with posts about HD
quality problems on cable, where posts from OTA users report no
problem on same program. Not much help if you are not within OTA
range of the sources, but just FYI.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

"Alan Figgatt" <afiggatt@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:gfadnaJY7_XtvL3fRVn-jw@comcast.com...
J. wrote:

> I noticed this, too. Last night, local (Seattle) HD CBS's (channel 7)
> broadcast of Survivor had no subtitles and wasn't even in 16:9 size. The
> next program, CSI, while it was in wide screen, was also without
subtitles.

Survivor is not an HD program. It is shot in 4:3 SD and is upconverted
for broadcast out the HD digital channel. Except for American Idol on
Fox and only a few other reality shows so far, all reality shows are
currently shot in 4:3 SD. This is changing as portable professional HD
cameras become more widely used, but the point of reality shows is that
they are generally cheap to produce, so they don't spend money making
them in HD.

In general, when you see a 4:3 or pillarboxed image, it is upconverted
from a SD source. The exception may be movies which might have been
filmed in 1.37:1 (older movies) or 1.66:1 (ABC broadcast of Aladdin
a while back was in Original Aspect Ratio of 1.66:1 so it had small
black bars on either side).

> I noticed one other item from the local HD broadcasts: the sound is of
less
> quality. The regular (480) broadcast is both louder and of better quality
> than on the HD broadcast.
>
> Frustrating to have such a clear picture (1040 versus 480) and then get
> cheated out of closed captioning and sound quality.
>
> J.

Before I got a 5.1 sound receiver, I was frustrated by the sound
sometimes for DVD movies. The stereo mix often buries the dialog in the
background sounds and music. I think the sound mixers pay more attention
to the 5.1 track because that is what they listen to at home than to the
stereo tracks. I suspect the same thing is happening to the HD shows
where they are adding 5.1 sound to the HD feed. But to get 5.1, your
local station has to have the hardware to receive and broadcast the 5.1
feed from the network and a lot of them don't.

I should add I wear a hearing aid. When I upgraded to a receiver with
just 2 decent quality left and right speakers and a subwoofer (2.1 sound
if you will), I found the dialog a lot easier to follow. The speakers in
most TVs are just not very good.

Alan F
===========

Alan: you must have been talking with the wife -- she, too, wants me to get
a hearing aid

Come on, world -- I don't need no hearing aid -- just everyone talk a little
louder!

J.