HDMI not allowing Closed Captioning?

Be aware you're probably more experienced in this area than most people here. I thought CC is generally for only broadcast systems -- don't you use subtitles in DVD's? CC information is encoded into the video of broadcast television, I'm not sure if this is the same on DVD's, but I guess it is if it's what you were using before. It is very possible that an upconverting player will lose this information when it upconverts a 480i signal into 1080i/720p. Did you try the new dvd player without upconverting enabled?

Ah, I gotcha. I pointed out the upconverting, because I think I remember that CC data is encoded into a certain unused area of interlaced video -- meaning it may only be available when watching an interlaced signal, or a DVD player that properly handles the conversion from 480i to 480p. The FCC laws regarding CC are much more strict for broadcast signals, whereas for DVD players, and definitely for ones that do upconverting and so on, may not be manditory and not handle this stuff well.

Blesum

Much of the time the receiver determines if the closed caption will be readable. For example the Sony HD 200 does CC on SD very well while in HD it garbles CBS and NBC and correctly shows ABC and Fox. Not much can be done about this.

I cant say I know detaisl of CC, but you could try to use a player that outputs 480i over HDMI. Maybe that way the video is undisturbed so CC information can get to the TV, while at the same time the signal stays digital. You can rely on the internal scaler of the TV, it shouldnt be too far behind the scaler in the DVD player. This is just a geuss though.

Does the manual say anything about how to use close captioning? I tend to think there is a way that you are not considering. Most TV's (all Sharp's and I'm sure others as well) allow you to select where the audio goes. It's selectable at the source (STB or DVR) and it's selectable at the display. If you run the audio via RCA output instead of through HDMI, I'll bet it would work.

Blesum, why did they start offering CC? I had thought it had been legally mandated (maybe by the ADA?) If so, then wouldn't the manufacturers have a legal responsibility to make CC available? Have you tried contacting Scepter and Sharp Customer Service to see if they can help?

Since using the Aquos and your old dvd player at 480i worked, that's what I'd keep. You'd be missing out on the fancy HDMI cables, but in reality I bet the TV's internal scaler does a pretty good job in scaling up the images. I doubt there is that much improvement when using the HDMI dvd player. And this way you're set up for an HDDVD or BluRay player down the road (hopefully they have CC worked out a little better).

I have a Sharp 45" Aquos and have not been able to get CC working with HDMI. It is very annoying.

AFAIK there is no standard to transmit CC information over 720p/1080i interconnects and that is why you are not seeing CC information.

The CC transmission AFAIK is just for NTSC compatible signals and is sent over line21 VBI vertical blanking interval. The equivalent for this doesn't exist for 720p/1080i interconnects.

By interconnect I mean the connection between your source (DVD player, HD tuner, STB, etc.) and your display. Interconnects are normally component or HDMI/DVI.

The solution for this for was to encode the CC information into the mpg stream itself but this has the side effect that only the device that decodes the mpg (in your case the DVD player or HD tuner) has access to the CC information. Once the mpg is decoded and then needs to be transmitted to the display using component or HDMI/DVI there is no way to transmit it (ie there is no standard for the CC transmission over component/HDMI/DVI) Thus if there is CC information the source device needs to overlay that CC info on the picture prior to transmitting to the display over the interconnect.

In the case of the upconverting DVD player, if the CC information exists, the DVD player will need to be responsible for overlaying the CC info if you want to set the output of the player to 720p/1080i.

If your TV has a builtin ATSC/QAM tuner, then it is the one doing the decoding of the mpg so it will have access to the CC info and should have the ability to display in that case.

In short, I don't think there is anything broken with your displays, they are functioning as designed. I can see how it would be inconvenient and hard to understand. There are so many moving parts with AV these days it takes a rocket scientist to understand why things don't work as expected.

I probably could have been clearer then. I didn't intend to give the impression you could get your DVD player to output over the ATSC port and get CC in that way.

When I said ATSC/QAM tuner, I mean if your TV is tuning in OTA HDTV using ATSC tuner or if it was tuning in HD channels from your cable company using the QAM tuner, then your TV is the one decoding the mpg and thus has access to the CC info and can display it.

In the case of your DVD player, the DVD player decodes the mpg and at that point has access to the CC info (if present). If the DVD player does not do something with the CC info (as in overlay it on the picture it sends out) then the CC info is lost (assuming 720p/1080i output from the DVD player) because there is no way (as in no standard) to transmit that info to the TV so that it can display the CC info.

Basically I'm saying investigate whether the upconverting DVD player has the ability to display the CC info in the picture it sends out and if not complain to them. Any TV you buy will have the same problem of not being able to display CC info for 720p/1080i signals it receives over the component or HDMI input ports.

Ok, I tested on my setup. Like he said Deinterlacing destroys the CC information. So far the best way seems to be outputting 480i from the DVD player to the LCD over Component, this works fine on my setup. This shouldnt be toob bad, you have an added conversion but the scaling should be okay. I cant test HDMI, but I am somewhat convinced that if you send 480i over HDMI that you will be able to keep the CC info, wether the TV sees it or not is up in the air, but could be worth a try. Or maybe someone in the forum with a player that has 480i over HDMI would be so kind as to test for you.

I remember that my previous Toshiba HDTV did display captions over the component inputs coming from an HD Set top box. It did this from SD channels and I think HD channels were hit and miss (sometimes garbled if at all). My current Dell HDTV (POS) doesn't show captions over the component inputs the when getting the same signal that the Toshiba did.

Another option at least for TV viewing over component or HDMI is setting the set top box to display captions. That way it overlays them onto the signal and will come through no matter what connection you use. This won't help for DVD's though. Hope you get something sorted out.

There must be a DVD player that is able to put the captions on the video itself, without using the TV to do it. Seems odd to me. I know panasonics wont but maybe some others?

Hey Paul, take a look at this thread, posts #34 - 36:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...=696821&page=2

UPDATE: there now appears to be an upconverting Panasonic DMR-EZ47VK DVD player/recorder/VHS combo which has built-in CC decoder so it can decode line21 VBI CC and overlay on the video prior to sending over component or HDMI. See this post for more info:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post12690647

Well, I have the Oppo 970HD (the model referenced in that thread was the 971H)and I see no options to display CC. There is an option to display subtitle of course. It could be I'm just not looking hard enough.

Anyway, here is the manual for the 971H and I couldn't find any reference to CC or caption.
http://www.oppodigital.com/Download/...ser_Manual.pdf

Here is the manual for the 970HD and also I couldn't find any reference to CC or caption.
http://www.oppodigital.com/dv970hd/dv970hd_manual.pdf

Here is HD-A1, also no reference to CC or caption.
http://tacp.toshiba.com/tacpassets-i...hd-a1_om_e.pdf

BTW I think you are right in that most people think subtitles are the same as CC information. For the longest time I thought the same thing until someone pointed it out to me.

I think CC is just something that fell through the cracks. I don't think any DVD players have ever decoded CC information on line 21 VBI, as they expected all TVs would be able to decode line 21 VBI because it was mandated. In fact all TVs sold after the mandated date do decode CC on line 21 VBI.

However when we started moving to HD material, the line 21 VBI was no longer present on the HD 720p/1080i signals so the TVs were no longer getting the CC information. There was an attempt to solve this by encoding the CC information into the mpg stream and this partially resolves the situation for HD material but only if the device decoding the HD source material is able to read the CC and overlay it onto the picture.

However where CC fell through the cracks is with upconverting DVD players. These DVD players were never capable of reading the line 21 VBI CC information because they depended on the TV to decode it. This was fine when DVD players were sending 480i to the TV because line 21 VBR was passed.

The problem is when these players were converted to be upconverting players, they moved to component and HDMI/DVI interfaces and 720p/1080i over these interfaces did not have any equivalent of line 21 VBI so the CC information was just lost. It isn't being sent to the TV and even if the player wanted to, there would be no way (as in no standard) for the information to be transmitted over component/HDMI/DVI at 720p/1080i. This coupled with the fact that CC decoding has never traditionally been a function of the DVD player effectively means there is no way to display CC information.

From a design standpoint, since there is no way (as in no standard) to transmit the CC info over component/HDMI/DVI for 720p/1080i, it is impossible for a TV to decode CC for you, it never receives the info so it can never decode it.

The only way you are ever going to get the CC decoded and displayed on an upconverting DVD player connected to your TV using component/HDMI/DVI at 720p/1080i is if the DVD player is redesigned to decode CC and overlay it onto the output prior to sending it to the TV.

From a practical perspective, I don't see this is something you'd be able to convince the big conglomerates to do arguing as individuals. You'd most likely have to band together or create some noise to effect change. I don't really follow this stuff closely so I do not even know if it would be required for any manufacturer to support such decoding of CC. The requirement as far as I know was for the TVs to decode CC info on line 21 VBI, which they are all doing. The TVs cannot help they are not receiving any line 21 VBI info when you choose to upconvert your DVDs to 720p/1080i and use the component/HDMI/DVI interfaces.

The first counterargument would of course be that you could just use subtitles instead of CC. By doing so they would convert the issue into "quality" of subtitles vs CC which IMO weakens your argument that CC should work, at least in terms of public perception. You'd have a stronger argument if neither CC nor subtitled worked and as a hearing impaired person this is denying you ability to enjoy content.

The second counterargument would be you could just continue using your current 480i DVD player and not go with a fancy upconverting player.

----

Now the following is a separate test, unrelated to the upconverting DVD discussion above.

To test out my assertion that for HD material, the CC information is encoded in the mpg stream and the TV is able to decode CC for HD material that is received using the internal HDTV (QAM/ATSC) tuner I performed an experiment.

I have a Sharp Aquos LC-45GX6U HDTV. I tuned to local 1080i PBS channel (using cable TV and Sharp's QAM tuner) which I knew was transmitting CC encoded into the mpg stream. I enabled CC on the display. Sure enough the Close Caption information showed up on my display. I then switched to OTA (over-the-air) antenna and performed the same experiment using the ATSC tuner. Once again CC info was displayed.

So basically the Sharp LCD TV does in fact decode CC properly for HD signals when the information is made available to the TV. Obviously if the CC information is not made available to the TV, it will be impossible for it to decode and since there is no way (as in no standard) to transmit CC information over component/HDMI/DVI with 720p/1080i, with current infrastructure, it will never be able to receive CC info over those interconnects.

I also verified that my Motorola DCT-5100 cable Set Top Box has the ability to decode CC information located on the mpg stream and overlay onto the picture prior to sending to my Sharp display. It is located on a special setup menu where I can enable CC. It isn't on the standard config menu and it cannot be turned on using a button on the remote. I need to turn the unit off and go into the special setup menu.

So the bottom line is for HD material and for upconverted DVDs, the only device which can possibly decode CC and display it is the device which decodes the mpg stream. After the picture passes over component/HDMI/DVI the CC information is lost and cannot be recovered.

This is the way it will work for all TVs, so if you are returning the TVs because you think another TV will behave differently, don't bother, they will all behave this way. If however, you are returning the TV and are giving up on HD because the current situation is not acceptable, then that is a reasonable reason to return everything.

Your old Sony DVD player happens to "work" with CC not because the DVD is superior, but because it is connecting to your TV at 480i which has line 21 VBI information, thus CC is being passed to the TV so the TVs CC decoder can do its job. If you asked the Sony DVD player to decode CC internally and overlay onto the picture it won't be able to do that.

You could of course configure your upconverting DVD player to use 480i and then the CC information should pass to the TV and the TV should be able to decode it, but then what would be the point of getting your "upconverting" DVD player.

A solution is to use a computer with DVI/HDMI output. Many software DVD players support closed captioning. Depending on the software & hardware involved, you may get OK to excellent picture quality out of this.