By CLINT SWETT
Sacramento Bee
Monday, May 07, 2007
For two months early this year, Janel Edmiston and her family enjoyed their new Panasonic high-definition TV, which occupies a big chunk of the family room wall in their Elk Grove, Calif. home.
But for Edmiston, who began losing her hearing at age 23, the pleasure was fleeting.
In March, she said, closed captioning that came via her cable box disappeared.
"It's not that I'm addicted to TV, but I was missing out on time with my family in the evenings," Edmiston said of losing the captioning feature. "I'd go into another room (to read or fold laundry) while they were watching TV. ... Without captions it's like they are speaking Russian."
Edmiston's problem is a familiar story to a growing number of the estimated 31 million hearing-impaired TV viewers nationwide.
As high-definition TV gains momentum in the United States, broadcasters, set-top box manufacturers and cable and satellite companies are struggling to provide closed captioning.
While most older analog sets provide captions with the touch of a remote control button or via a simple on-screen menu, it's more complicated to get closed captioning on the newest digital TVs that get their signal through cable and satellite boxes rather than antennas. That's because the signal is processed by the box and the caption settings must be matched to the resolution of the TV display.
For the deaf community, captioning is a serious issue.
"What would (a hearing person) do if (they) turned on the TV and the volume control wasn't working and there were no voices or sound accompanying the program?" asked Sheila Conlon Mentkowski, an official with the California Department of Rehabilitation in Sacramento, Calif. and chairwoman of the National Association of the Deaf's technology committee.
There appears to be plenty of blame to go around for the captioning troubles, said Larry Goldberg, director of media access at Boston public TV station WGBH and an expert on captioning.
"I'm getting reports all the time about closed-captioning problems," said Goldberg, who helped write many of the captioning regulations for the Federal Communications Commission.
"If there was one organization we could blame it would make it a lot easier. But there are at least a few different causes."
For instance, not all broadcasters properly encode their closed-caption data, even though there's a standard mandated by the FCC, Goldberg said.
In addition, not every channel provides digital closed captions 100 percent of the time. The FCC required that digital captioning be available by 2006, but granted some exemptions.
New networks have four years to implement HD captioning, and networks with revenue under $3 million a year also are exempt.
Some long-time broadcasters however, are saying their newly launched HD channels qualify as new networks, and claim the four-year exemption, wrote Ron Bibler, a deaf financial planner in Great Falls, Mont., and an activist on the issue.
He points to NBC's Universal HD channel, which he said often doesn't provide captioning while identical programming on its sister USA Network has the captions. After complaining to NBC, Bibler said, he received a letter from the network saying Universal HD expected closed captioning by the end of 2007. Universal executives could not be reached for comment.
In addition, most high-definition cable and satellite set-top boxes control the caption settings through often obscure and confusing menus.
"I learned that ... digital captioning options must be controlled from the cable box via a hidden menu that comes with no instructions," wrote Pamela Holmes, a deaf cable customer in Madison, Wis.
In an e-mail, Holmes said it took nearly 12 hours with installers, phone support and other resources to get her closed captioning operating.
Representatives of Motorola and Scientific Atlanta, the two major makers of set-top boxes, did not respond to requests for comment on the closed captioning problem.
Further complicating things, people are now discovering that if an HDTV set is hooked to the cable box through a connection called HDMI, captions won't be displayed at all.
All of this frustrates deaf viewers, who feel they are being short-changed by the industry.
"Deaf and hard of hearing people pay the same amount for their HDTV, cable or satellite hookups and therefore should be afforded to enjoy TV as our hearing peers," wrote Sheri Farinha, chief executive of the NorCal Center on Deafness in Sacramento. "We should not have to haggle with any of the companies to get the captioning to work and/or appear on the HDTV screens."
Even as the deaf community complains about the captioning problem, the issue appears to have escaped the notice of many in the broadcast industry.
Representatives of Comcast in Sacramento, the National Cable Television Association, the Society of Cable Television Engineers, and Cable Labs, a cable technology research consortium, all said they were unaware of any problem involving closed captions on HDTV.
"To the extent it's a problem, we wouldn't know about it," said Jason Oxman, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association.
At the FCC, spokesman Clyde Ensslin said his agency is aware of the issue and is "watching it closely." Still, the FCC has received only about 70 complaints regarding "accessibility issues" in the second and third quarters of 2006.
Mentkowski, of the National Association of the Deaf, isn't sure why more closed captioning complaints haven't been filed, given that online discussion groups for the deaf are filled with postings on the issue.
"We don't sit on our couches with a piece of paper and a pen to write down the date, time, name of the program that has not had captions or has garbled captions," she wrote in an e-mail. "We usually just surf to another channel."
Goldberg of WGBH said he's confident all the issues eventually will be resolved.
"It's a matter of time and a critical mass of complaints reaching the right people," he said. "But eventually all the powers that be will deal with it."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
Missing Captions
So what is the problem if you have the CC inside your television, and it IS working on 98% of the channels, but not all. (Example, Lifetime and TLC was always CC programming...now there are NEVER CC)
Is this because those stations have already gone Digital? Do we contact the station, the cable provider, who??
I know this happened once to me with a LOCAL channel, and a phone call resolved it...apparently it was just a switch they turned off?!
i have solved the problem
i have solved the problem on my HDtv. When the menu appears on my set I bypass the TV setting and go to cable 1 and I get CC. The problem remains when I go to HD. The only thing I watch on HD is foreign films with titles. Why did I purchase the HD set? It holds no advantage to me without CC.
No CC on HDTV
have same problem. Digital cable, HDTV but no closed captions available.. frustrating. Using HDMI cables. Any ideas?
Caption problem
Similar bad experience with caption problem on HDTV.
My Time Warner cable is only directed straight to HDTV, and closed caption does work. I have two splints (one line to two lines). One cable line goes to HDTV, and other line goes to DVD/VHS combo machine. HDMI cable goes from DVD/VHS combo box to HDTV, and HDTV doesn't work on closed caption with HDMI cable. I add other component cable (red/white/yellow) from DVD/VHS combo box to HDTV's audio/video (AV) like video games..... An appearing closed caption does work when I turn from TV to AV on HDTV's remoter if you watch a copy of movie VHS or DVD on DVD/VHS combo machine.
I know it's so complicated, but I solved it by myself. All HDTV makers need to fix.
Leon
Forced Closed Caption and other Issues
As a programmer (I do a music tv show which will remain nameless at this time) I try to get content that has closed captions, but many times the content I make myself by physically going out and shooting a band. There won't ever be closed captioning in that content because I personally won't ever put it there. I don't have time or resources. I maintain my own websites, Internet servers, Security, Programming Code, email, Domains, and Web hosting. Do you really think I have time to figure out Closed Captioning? Even if you Paid me $50,000 I still wouldn't have time personally, I am just too busy.
I am also a producer. I have a ZERO or MINUS budget. In other words it COSTS me money to make videos for you to enjoy for free. Many cases, I have created the only existing video there is for some bands. Getting into being historical there.
I understand why there is a real need for CC, and I do agree with that completely.
On the other hand I am talking about MUSIC (personally) which by definition is sound and frequencies. And to be honest with you I have met a lot of big rock stars that I couldn't understand a word of what they said. Sometimes not even English. Don't tell me I have to translate, or add CC for that. I won't.
Or please explain, how I, a single human with two or three cameramen, am going to translate and figure out how to sync up CC lines to a music video I created? I don't think so.
If I am forced to add CC to all my music videos the message will be, "this is a music video, it's to be heard and watched, there are no words because I can't understand what the band is saying."
There are a lot of labels that DO add CC to their videos. But I won't be just selecting that video for my show just because it has CC. If it does great, but if I personally don't like the song or band, it won't be on my timeline!!
And on my third hand. (yes I am that busy that I actually have three hands) I've recently come across the opposite annoyance.. Forced Closed Captioning. Oh joy, right over the top of the lower thirds. Hit every button on your tv, or box and still it covers the screen. Won't go away at all.
Don't get me wrong. I ABSOLUTELY agree *MOST* content should absolutely be closed captioned. I as a programmer, video producer and artist even TRY to do what I can where I can.
But not everything. I won't be dictated to, it's my spectrum the same as it's yours. You have a voice, I have a voice, your voice (while I do sympathize with the disabled) can not be allowed to trample my freedom of speech because of poor engineering.
I hope somebody out there with common sense takes what I have said here and use's it with common sense. It seems the whole world is all about profit, lies and fascism lately.
I hate to see our broadcast spectrum destroyed by bad legislation that was supposed to be well intentioned to assist the disabled.
For a parallel example of this one need only look at the (HAVA) Help America Vote Act. Created by a convicted Felon (Ken Ley) (HAVA) it was never adhered to, and instead it's only been used to exploit elections using electronic vote tabulation devices which the public can not provide oversight of because HUMANS can not physically see electronic signals. So in other words in order to comply with assisting the disabled to vote we destroyed everyone's right to have their vote counted. And in effect have lost the tools to control of our government itself.
Please think for yourself, and ask qualified folks for their opinion before you listen and blindly go with corrupt officials who only have profit instead of engineering in mind for the public.
I have a ton of media that some is historic, non of which has CC in it.
I have also covered political events, many which are blacklisted by the big five broadcast corporations.
There was a reason the First Amendment was written the way it was, don't loose it because you tossed the baby out with the bath water.
Converter DVD MAC
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I brought a HDTV, had CC and
I brought a HDTV, had CC and lost it once I connected to the cable box....the cc will come back if I bypass the cable box and connect the HDTV with the calbe wall-mount jack.
Is there anyone has the similar experience?
cc not working on new HD TV
Its the HMDI cable. cc doesn't go through it. Please watch this video. Be sure to turn on cc if you don't read ASL.
http://www.banjosworld.com/2008/09/equal-access-hdmi-is-inaccessible.html
We should not have to pay extra just for closed caption
Many cable boxes are unable to decode closed caption. Only a few are, and they require additional monthly fees which are quite excessive. Cable companies often charges an extra money per month for an HDTV Cable Box in addition to HD cable service. It forces US to have to pay for it in order to just view closed caption on our television sets, which should already have been a free service.
Many DVDs are encoded with closed caption, which is not the same as subtitles. We are then forced to NOT use HDMI when viewing the DVDs, and not take advantage of using the HDMI port and not being able to use their TV's full potential, which we have paid for.
Closed captioning has always been the function of the viewing device. HDMI.org's claim: "All HDMI specifications support Close Captioning (CC) and enable the rendering of CC signals between CE devices" is inaccurate and misleading. It only shows CC if the signal is pre-rendered and permanently printed to the video, not the same.
We should NOT have to pay extra just to be able to use closed caption.
hearing impaired suffer at hands of new tech
I watch a lot of TV shows in HD..and why buy an HD set if you can't use closed captioning with the best picture? For example, I have a Samsung 32 inch 460 series HDTV. If I watch on "component" setting ,I cannot use the cc.
"Kst" apparently doesn't understand not only the need for CC but also the desirability even for the hearing,bec it's often an advantage to be able to watch Tv with the sound off (eg an important phone call,someone trying to sleep etc)
Now I have new TV that doesn't serve a main purpose for me and I don't know what to do to correct this or how to but a TV that will easily give me CC. Also, Comcast doesn't even have CC option on their remote or menu
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