# Report Closed Caption Issues Here



## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

The purpose of this thread is to report CC related issues in an attempt to build a list of what works and what does not. People that are using CC, please feel free to report what is working and what is not and I will attempt to keep a list running at the top of this thread.

This thread is for reporting purposes only. Any discussion will be moved to the general threads. Also if something is not working and starts working. Report that back also.. Goal here is to keep a running tab of what works and does not work.

*Reported Working Channels*
MAX 
HBO
5-MAX
STARZ 
SEDGE
SK&FM
SHO-E
CNBC HD

*Reported Channels with issues*
HBOSG 
HBOW
HBOFM 
HBOCY
HBOZ
MAXW 
ACMAX
HBO2E

*Reported Channels with No CC*
STARZW 
STZC


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

Based on a quick random test, CCs seem greatly improved this morning, although I have not had time to go through all HD channels, especially all the various HD movie channels to see if all of them are working (a fairly time consuming process). My longtime ABC HD problem, however, is still not fixed. Dish really needs to add testing of CCs as part of their routine protocol before putting out these software releases -- they are clearly not currently doing so.


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## olguy (Jan 9, 2006)

Thanks for starting this Ron. Yesterday I recorded 3 episodes of Skyview on Smithsonian. CC did not work on any of them. I went to Smithsonian live and no CC. And it was all new programming, by the way. I checked several other channels at that time to make sure my 622 wasn't going goofy again and they all worked.


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## DAG (Feb 7, 2006)

olguy said:


> Thanks for starting this Ron. Yesterday I recorded 3 episodes of Skyview on Smithsonian. CC did not work on any of them. I went to Smithsonian live and no CC. And it was all new programming, by the way. I checked several other channels at that time to make sure my 622 wasn't going goofy again and they all worked.


Please add some more info per Ron's suggestion in the first posting like your DVR model, software version, what channel was skyview on, etc.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

ViP722
Software 6.14

I have issues with CC on all my Atlanta local channels. Missing words, garbled words, special characters in the text, etc. Also, if I happen to skip back the CC often times takes several minutes to start again. A few times it was necessary to skip back then forward to get it back. Sometimes only a commercial break will bring it back if at all. I haven't taken the time to see which are the worst but I'll pay more attention to see if the 720p stations are better/worse than the 1080i stations.


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## olguy (Jan 9, 2006)

DAG said:


> Please add some more info per Ron's suggestion in the first posting like your DVR model, software version, what channel was skyview on, etc.


Yeah, shoulda done that.

622 with 6.14

Smithsonian on 374

And a bit more info after playing around a while this morning. Neither Smithsonian on 374 nor MGM on 385 had CC live this morning.

I checked about 12 or so recorded programs still on my 622. All were fine except the 3 Smithsonian programs and the movie Serenity recorded off SciFi 122 on 1/03 and last night's Stargate Atlantis off 122. The CC was there but words were missing and it wasn't exactly synced. Fixed that by doing a power off/on with the remote.

I did the power off/on because I was surfing and went to an OTA local that doesn't have a good signal and won't lock. It dropped out and when it came back it had no CC and should have. Kept surfing and none of the channels , both OTA and off Dish that I tried had CC. I tried some of the recordings that had worked previously and they had no CC. Did the power off/on and they all came back except the recordings off 374, 374 live and 385 live. Even Serenity and SA were now fine.


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## moman19 (Oct 22, 2004)

I have a 622 and a 722 running L6.16. CC has always been spotty on the local ABC affiliate. It's usually present every morning during GMA but almost always absent during ABC Prime Time events. (Gray's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, etc.). Occasionally, CC will resume midway through a Prime Time event but then suddenly cut out again. I have only seen this issue on ABC. I reported this to the Chief Engineer of the local station, who claims that he has monitored CC both OTA and via a D* receiver and has never seen this happen. So he obviously feels the issue must lie with the E* hardware. 

Interestingly, when CC is absent on both the OTA and sat HD channels, the SD sat channel never loses CC. Also, it can always be viewed via OTA when it is decoded by the television's internal ATSC tuner. Again, I have only observed this on the ABC affiliate, so there must be some unique incompatibility between the station's encoder and the DVR's decoder.


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## Henry (Nov 15, 2007)

dschneider said:


> Based on a quick random test, CCs seem greatly improved this morning, although I have not had time to go through all HD channels, especially all the various HD movie channels to see if all of them are working (a fairly time consuming process). My longtime ABC HD problem, however, is still not fixed. Dish really needs to add testing of CCs as part of their routine protocol before putting out these software releases -- they are clearly not currently doing so.


CCs are a hit and miss proposition. If they work today, just wait a while. I've always had one kind of issue or another with CCs, both pre- and post VIP era.

The latest is on HD channels. When I turn CCs on, I sometimes have to wait a minute or two before they start working, albeit in synch.

Other channels (mostly SD) I don't even bother due to the lack of synch.


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

I have a 622 with version 16.6. HBO HD channels show captions but they are way too fast to read. SD HBO is fine. Sometimes, the local FOX HD (OTA, not DISH) has the same problem.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

moman19 said:


> I have a 622 and a 722 running L6.16. CC has always been spotty on the local ABC affiliate. It's usually present every morning during GMA but almost always absent during ABC Prime Time events. (Gray's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, etc.). Occasionally, CC will resume midway through a Prime Time event but then suddenly cut out again. I have only seen this issue on ABC. I reported this to the Chief Engineer of the local station, who claims that he has monitored CC both OTA and via a D* receiver and has never seen this happen. So he obviously feels the issue must lie with the E* hardware.
> 
> Interestingly, when CC is absent on both the OTA and sat HD channels, the SD sat channel never loses CC. Also, it can always be viewed via OTA when it is decoded by the television's internal ATSC tuner. Again, I have only observed this on the ABC affiliate, so there must be some unique incompatibility between the station's encoder and the DVR's decoder.


This is fascinating! I have the EXACT OPPOSITE problem with ABC HD here in Wash. DC! I generally have no problems with the primetime shows (Housewives, etc), instead my problems are with GMA, etc! I have had this problem since June of last year when L510 or L511 downloaded. To the best of my recollection, those releases came just a few days apart and addressed pixilation issues with ABC HD. Before that it was all good, but whatever they did to tinker with the pixilation problems screwed up the CCs. This problem is 100% consistent, and the distinction seems to be in the differences in captions that are done for scripted (primetime type shows) and non-scripted/realtime captioning done for shows like GMA, etc. In that latter category, for me CCs are messed up on all news type programming (both local and national, 20/20, etc), talk shows (Regis, Oprah, etc), award shows -- anything that is generally captioned live.

I spent months (literally) trying with good evidence to convince Dish it was the VIP 722 software. They blamed it on everything from my TV to the local affiliate (it is NOT the local affiliate!), despite the fact that it was clearly the 722 screwing things up. Here is the proof -- for the same program airing at the same time in SD, CCs are fine. A Comcast feed connected to the same TV of the same show airing at the same time -- also fine. An OTA (antenna) feed connected directly to the TV of the same program, etc is fine. BUT if I take the SAME OTA cable and switch it to the 722, the CCs are then messed up!

I finally filed a complaint about this with the FCC sometime around September of last year. Dish has still not fixed the problem, but they finally acknowledge that it is a problem with the 722 software awaiting a "vendor fix" . . . .

Vip722
Running 616 as of yesterday (problem goes way back to 510/511)
Washington, DC Metro Area


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

Yesterday, my first day with L616 was a captioning nightmare. Early this morning things looked pretty good, but as noted above, it is an ever moving target and this evening I am finding problems again although not as bad as yesterday. Here in the Wash DC area, I am not having any problems with locals (dish and ota) except the long running ABC HD problem noted in my previous post. The problems are all with satellite/cable channels, in particular the premium HD movie channels. The problems with CCs on the HD movie channels started shortly after they launched the additional HBO and Starz feeds last fall. Before that, I rarely had problems. I believe it is a signal issue vs. software (but I'm just guessing). I do know that whenever I have reported, say, HBO to have no or messed up CCs, they would make an adjustment and then it would be OK, but then at the same time one of the other HD movie feeds would go out. Seems like if they tinker with one, it is at the expense of another. At one point, they managed to get them all working for me (at the same time!) but that was very short lived. Around Thanksgiving I started having major problems with the movie channels that continue to today. As of today: (these are all HD problems -- all SD CCs are fine)

HBO - OK
HBO2E - Messed Up (garbled, skittish, etc Unwatchable)
HBOSG - Messed Up
HBOW - Messed Up
HBOFM - Messed Up
HBOCY - Messed Up
HBOZ - Messed Up

MAX - OK
MAXW - Intially messed up, but eventually straightens out, at least until you hit pause, cancel or any other remote button
ACMAX - Initially messed up (as above)
5-MAX - OK

STARZ - OK (today, for the first time since November!!)
STARZW - NO CCs
SEDGE - OK
STZC - No CCs
SK&FM - OK

SHO-E - OK

Additionally, I currently have no CCs for HGTV (which was working just this morning, but not yesterday), TWC, or DISCOVERY Channel (do not get the Smithsonian Channel, so can't comment on that one).

Tomorrow, the list could be quite different . . .


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

The CC problem does not seem to be a high priority. The Gov't requires it (I think) but if so does not police it. That leaves no one to enforce standards which are fairly simple: accurate captions that are easily read - that's all, no more or less. Some slack should be cut for live broadcasts but the technology is there even then to do better than we see today. The HOH are a relative minority and all their fussing won't have any impact on outfits like HBO. It will take government rules, standards and enforcement to get them to address caption problems.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

shortspark said:


> The CC problem does not seem to be a high priority. The Gov't requires it (I think) but if so does not police it. That leaves no one to enforce standards which are fairly simple: accurate captions that are easily read - that's all, no more or less. Some slack should be cut for live broadcasts but the technology is there even then to do better than we see today. The HOH are a relative minority and all their fussing won't have any impact on outfits like HBO. It will take government rules, standards and enforcement to get them to address caption problems.


I agree that it is a low priority -- Dish is always in the midst of some crisis/deadlilne that takes precedence over fixing CCs. It is a problem that affects a relative minority and there is no money in it. There are however laws to protect access to captioned TV and they are enforced through the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). I strongly urge that you file a complaint with them about your CC issues. You can easily and quickly do so online at www.fcc.gov. They do expect that you make reasonable attempts to report problems to the carrier first, but if you are getting nowhere, file a complaint. The FCC can impose fines on the sat/cable or whatever company for failing to comply with the law. I will say it is not a quick process. I filed my complaint back in Sept and am still waiting for a resolution (Dish got an extension). The benefit however is that it does raise the priority level, and you can also ask to be given a direct contact in Engineering to report/update problems to. That is what I did after going nearly insane dealing with CSRs. Even after contacting the Dish quality people, I was still getting emails telling me that not all programs are captioned and/or I should reboot my receiver. Might as well be talking to a wall.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil -- so speak up and complain about the quality of CCs. If no one complains and just waits for the other guy to deal with it, nothing will happen! The more people who complain, there will be more attention and resources focused on CC problem fixes.


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## olguy (Jan 9, 2006)

dschneider said:


> The benefit however is that it does raise the priority level


I will follow your advice. Maybe if enough of us do that the problem will get a high enough priority to get solved. Maybe.


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

olguy said:


> I will follow your advice. Maybe if enough of us do that the problem will get a high enough priority to get solved. Maybe.


I'll do the same thing - good advice.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Be sure to complain to [email protected] with a carefully worded polite descriptive email. These are the folks who can deal with Echostar Engineering, the uplink center and Technical Support coordinating work and responses to a widespread problem.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

phrelin said:


> Be sure to complain to [email protected] with a carefully worded polite descriptive email. These are the folks who can deal with Echostar Engineering, the uplink center and Technical Support coordinating work and responses to a widespread problem.


I sent a very polite, and detailed account of my ABC HD problem (as per above with the various cable connections pointing clearly to the 722 as the problem) to [email protected]. Also sent it to dish executive. All I got back was canned responses to reboot, and explaining that not all shows have CCs. It was painfully clear that no one bothered to read the email. That was the final straw for me and what prompted my complaint to the FCC. I agree, however, that sending an email to [email protected] is a very good idea (actually one I got from this forum--thanks!). Maybe you will get a better response than I got. At a minimum, it makes for excellent documentation for your FCC complaint.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

CCs on HGTV HD are completely gone

ViP722, L616, Wash DC Area


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## dhclaypool (Oct 29, 2005)

ViP 622 L6.16 Operating in Dual mode. Sony SXRD connected via HDMI.

CC works on any and all channels, however, it has a tendency to stop working on any and all channels and requires a reboot to bring back. The only consistent thing I've observed related to this is if I go to bed leaving CC on, when I wake the recorder up, CC doesn't work, although it is still toggled on. Cycling the setting off and then back on again does not re-enable it. I also have tried to disable it, snooze the receiver, wake it back up and then enable it and that doesn't work, either.

Separately, I was playing with other display settings for CC. I usually use SmallCaps, Large, Green Foreground, Translucent Background. I changed the Font and Edge settings, didn't like it and changed back to my normal. Odd thing is, when starting back up after pausing, it would startup CC with the Font and Edge settings I didn't like, and after a few scenes would revert to showing as set. Only way I stopped this behavior was setting all CC to default.


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## rexa (Aug 7, 2008)

I almost never use CC, but I thought I'd look at the situation. I have a Vip622 with 6.16. I've never seen a more horribly bug-riddled implementation in any product that made it out the door. Clearly they never tested or just don't care. 

Last night I looked at a few assorted channels. Some were ok but many had various problems that made the captions useless. The most common problem is captions that flash up and immediately disappear.

This afternoon I looked at one case that seemed the easiest to get a handle on. On local OTA the ABC channel, KGO 7, has several digital feeds. 7-1 is the main OTA with 7-2 a different content feed. 

This afternoon I checked a soap opera on 7-1. The captions were ok. I think they came from the network.

I also checked the satellite SD and HD versions that had the same broadcast as 7-1. They were ok too. 

I flipped to 7-2 which had a locally produced show. The captions appeared to be a very simple version and were broken. The CC text appeared in a box at the bottom, and the width of this box was determined by the longest line displayed so far. The problem was that there was only ever one line shown on the screen and as a new line of text appeared it wrote over the previous line, but if the new line was shorter, the end of the previous line was still there. This looks like a classic terminal display that is treating CR literally and not as CR LF.

I also have a digital receiver in my TV so I looked at the same 7-2 channel on the other TV tuner and the captions were working as they should. The display showed a two-line text box and the text in this box would scroll up as a new line was added.

After a bit I switched back to the DVR 7-2. Strangely, the CC was working properly -- scrolling just like with the TV tuner. I displayed Info to be sure I was looking at the right channel and source. I was, but when the info display box cleared, the CC was broken again.

To shorten the story a bit, I eventually figured out that if I stayed on the 7-2 channel on my DVR until it went through a period of commercials, the CC would work again when the show resumed. If I did anything to break out, display info, or swap channels, the CC on 7-2 would be broken again when it came back.

Apparently the DVR CC is figuring out something about the nature of the CC format when the CC stream begins, but never again after. I went back to my TV tuner and did all manner of switching (Info, menus, channel changes). The CC on TV's 7-2 never got broken. Apparently the CC stream can be deduced ok by a piece of software that is not brain dead.

I suspect that the common problem on the various "cable" channels (everything other than locals) where the text pops up but then disappears is similar to this terminal-style problem. The format on these channels is usually more complicated, with the CC stream (apparently) specifying separate boxes and their location, but I'd bet something like mishandling this CR vs. CR/LF issue is making the boxes disappear.

The CC menus for the DVR have lots of display options. I thought maybe if I picked some fixed setting, maybe I could block the problem. For my first attempt I tried changing the "Captioning Service". This is a number 1-6, with 1 as the default. I set it to 2. After that there was no captioning at all. OK, I set it back to 1. Still nothing. I tried lots of things. The only way I was able to get CC working at all again, was to power cycle the DVR!

I tried various other CC options in the menus. They change the look of the captions, but I never found anything that made the CR overlay problem better.

So the software seems to have many problems. One is that it sometimes figures out the CC formatting, but forgets it at the slightest provocation and is unable to detect proper formatting for the stream except at occasional points in the algorithm that it rarely gets back to.

The list has had a lot of discussion about which channels are bad. I think that is probably a waste of time. Various channels work sometimes and not at others. It did seem that HD versions of the channels were a bit more likely to be broken. The problem seems to be determined (I think) by the type of formatting the CC source is providing and the DVR software is not able to handle basic deductions about the formatting. Also there is the rare, but big, issue of the code getting itself trapped, like the time I had to power cycle to get unstuck.

Very buggy. I suspect broken in more than one place in the software.


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## rexa (Aug 7, 2008)

Here's a bit more CC information. Again on my 622 with 6.16.

I got to wondering how CC performs on TV2 (converted to UHF and needing CC generated from the connected TV) vs the direct TV1 which gets CC generated into images by the DVR.

Here's what I found on a couple channels...

Watching "Breaking the Huddle: Integration" on HBO:
DVR TV1:
300 SD = CC OK
300 HD = Flash up then vanish
TV2:
300 SD = CC OK
300 HD = CC OK

Then "How It's Made" on Discovery
DVR TV1:
182 SD = OK
182 HD = No CC visible at all
TV2:
182 SD = OK
182 HD = OK


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

rexa said:


> I almost never use CC, but I thought I'd look at the situation. I have a Vip622 with 6.16. I've never seen a more horribly bug-riddled implementation in any product that made it out the door. Clearly they never tested or just don't care.


That's about the size of it! In the case of my ABC HD issues, they said back in October they know what the problem is, but they still haven't gotten around to doing anything about it. I had hoped 616 would have the software fix, but no luck.

The problems with the other channels and especially the movie channels are, I think unrelated to the ABC HD issue. I think they are transmission related vs. vip software problems. Seems to get worse when they are moving/adding channels. In any event, it is pretty horrendous at the moment - worse than it has been in a very long time.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

Today, the movie premiums situation has really deteriorated. I had to delete several things I recorded (722, L616) due to lack of functional captioning.

Add to the list of bad CCs:

HBO HD (garbled)
STARZ HD (no CCs)
MAX HD (garbled)

It is bad enough when the additional movie feeds go out, but when the MAIN channels for HBO, STARZ, AND CINEMAX are all screwed up you are basically shut out of all new movies/programming. At the moment only SHOtime is working.

Note to DISH -- If for some reason you can't get all the movie, etc channels working the way they are supposed to, can you at least please get the main feeds working??! I'm paying $40 a month for this!


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## rexa (Aug 7, 2008)

dschneider said:


> The problems with the other channels and especially the movie channels are, I think unrelated to the ABC HD issue. I think they are transmission related vs. vip software problems. Seems to get worse when they are moving/adding channels. In any event, it is pretty horrendous at the moment - worse than it has been in a very long time.


I don't think the problems are from the transmission; I think they must be in how the VIP handles the CC data streams. In the earlier post I listed two dish HD channels (Discovery and HBO) that had no CC or broken CC display on the video signal coming out of the Vip box. But if I viewed the CC on the same channels a minute later but via TV2, they were fine.

Surely the Vip takes the raw CC stream it has received and pumps it out though the TV2 connection. My connected TV then processed the CC and showed the captions fine. Same channel, different software/hardware processing devices. One works, one doesn't. I'd say the Vip software is broken.


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## rexa (Aug 7, 2008)

dschneider said:


> Today, the movie premiums situation has really deteriorated. I had to delete several things I recorded (722, L616) due to lack of functional captioning.


I suspect the recordings were fine. I think it is going to be just like the audio drops. Lots of recordings that were unwatchable because of many audio drops on playback, became fine after software versions fixed (or at least improved) how the recordings were processed on playback.

In my last post I mentioned why I think the CC data that is being received is not broken. (It works if you use a TV's own CC processing to show the CC after it is sent out on the TV2 cable.) Granted the video is down-res that way, but we are talking about CC now.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

rexa said:


> I don't think the problems are from the transmission; I think they must be in how the VIP handles the CC data streams. In the earlier post I listed two dish HD channels (Discovery and HBO) that had no CC or broken CC display on the video signal coming out of the Vip box. But if I viewed the CC on the same channels a minute later but via TV2, they were fine.
> 
> Surely the Vip takes the raw CC stream it has received and pumps it out though the TV2 connection. My connected TV then processed the CC and showed the captions fine. Same channel, different software/hardware processing devices. One works, one doesn't. I'd say the Vip software is broken.


I understand what you are saying, but I'm pretty sure that TV2 is SD. I just have the one TV1 hooked up, but in the 722 specs it says:

TV1 display supports five resolutions: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p Video-on-Demand

SD content is up-converted 
HD and SD output is simultaneous 
TV2 display resolution is 480i

HD content is down-converted

So I think you're not seeing 720/1080 HD video on TV2, but a down-converted signal which probably explains why the TV decoder has no problems with it.

I'm basing my assumption on the fact that when I have called in problems with specific channels like HBO, they can usually get it fixed for me, and it doesn't involve changing the VIP software. At the same time, when the requested feed was fixed, usually that subsequentially resulted in another of the HD movie feeds going out. I do know that when a transmission stream is compromised, CCs are pretty sensitive and are easily messed up. In referring to tranmission, I am not refering to what the networks provide, but rather how it is handled by the Dish side of the transmission. The problems with the HD movie channels started at the same time they added the expanded HD movie feeds last year -- never had problems before then. Also worth noting the only movie channel I NEVER have problems with is SHOtime, and it is the only one that does not yet have multiple HD feeds (yet!).

I do know what you mean about there seeming to be an initial period where the DVR seems to be trying to make sense of the CCs and there is often a delay is showing CCs at all. Then even if it does manage to get the hang of them, any button or interruption such as pause, cancel, etc. messes things up all over again (ack!!!). That particular problem started for me for the first time a few weeks ago when I still had 6.14 and continues with 6.16 so that also leads me to suspect it is not necessarily software related. My sense is that it has been worse in the past few days since getting 616, but that may or may not have anything to do with the software upgrade.

But of course I am just speculating and really don't know what the heck is going on! I just really wish Dish would exercise a little quality control with CCs, which they are clearly not doing at all at present.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

rexa said:


> I suspect the recordings were fine. I think it is going to be just like the audio drops. Lots of recordings that were unwatchable because of many audio drops on playback, became fine after software versions fixed (or at least improved) how the recordings were processed on playback.


You could be right! I guess that's one advantage of being deaf -- if I've got audio dropouts, they aren't bothering me! :lol:


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## rexa (Aug 7, 2008)

dschneider said:


> I understand what you are saying, but I'm pretty sure that TV2 is SD. I just have the one TV1 hooked up, but in the 722 specs it says:
> 
> TV1 display supports five resolutions: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p Video-on-Demand
> 
> ...


Yes, definitely the video on TV2 is not really HD, but both the SD and HD versions of the channels are available in the guide for TV2. If you select the SD channel, you essentially see the same thing on TV1 or TV2. If you select the HD version on TV2 you get a letterbox version of the HD program.

If you look at the page about Closed Captioning in the ViP User guide, you will see a box describing how it works in dual mode -- which is what I have been talking about (guess I should have mentioned that part.) It says this:
TV1 - CC available through the receiver.
TV2 - CC must be enabled on the TV.

That's why I tried it. I'm pretty sure all these assumptions are correct.

I can get by without needing CC. I feel your pain and frustration.


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

Yes, usually cc on tv2 are good because either the tv does a better job with the decoding and/or it is not in HD. Unlike a tv, I have a projector for tv1 which does not decode cc so I am totally at the mercy of the 622 to do this job. Like I said in previous post, no one seems to police standards. What are the government regulations for this, if any? I think they require decoding capability of tvs that are manufactured but I'm talking of the stream itself, be it from local stations or the networks themselves. My experiments are similar to some of those mentioned here and I have concluded it is how Dish (their software) handles the decoding. It is not the stations themselves because, for the most part, the captions are there. The problem is they break-up or scroll too quickly to be read. Even if they are presented properly, the spelling is such that it looks like Russian or some other foreign language, again, useless. We won't be heard. The government needs to police this somehow - that's the only way they'll listen.

I want to add something before I start messing with this. Has anyone noticed any difference in cc when the Dish receiver is connected to your display in different ways and methods? By that I mean, are captions coming through better over HDMI than a component connection? How about other, older technology connections such as Svideo or analog coax?


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

shortspark said:


> I want to add something before I start messing with this. Has anyone noticed any difference in cc when the Dish receiver is connected to your display in different ways and methods? By that I mean, are captions coming through better over HDMI than a component connection? How about other, older technology connections such as Svideo or analog coax?


I am using an HDMI connection from my 722 and having problems.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

shortspark said:


> Like I said in previous post, no one seems to police standards. What are the government regulations for this, if any? I think they require decoding capability of tvs that are manufactured but I'm talking of the stream itself, be it from local stations or the networks themselves. My experiments are similar to some of those mentioned here and I have concluded it is how Dish (their software) handles the decoding. It is not the stations themselves because, for the most part, the captions are there. The problem is they break-up or scroll too quickly to be read. Even if they are presented properly, the spelling is such that it looks like Russian or some other foreign language, again, useless. We won't be heard. The government needs to police this somehow - that's the only way they'll listen..


Check out the FCC website. The law is about access in accordance with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). I agree that at this point for the most part it is no longer the various networks/stations that are at fault, although that was a battle that went on for years trying to get them to finally comply with providing CCs. The FCC will follow up on complaints, but as far as I know they do not monitor. They do police, but it's up to us to first report the "crime."


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

dschneider said:


> Check out the FCC website. The law is about access in accordance with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). I agree that at this point for the most part it is no longer the various networks/stations that are at fault, although that was a battle that went on for years trying to get them to finally comply with providing CCs. The FCC will follow up on complaints, but as far as I know they do not monitor. They do police, but it's up to us to first report the "crime."


The FCC does nothing, as impotent as the rest of the government. This problem has been brought to their attention I'm sure many times and for at least as long as Dish has been in business and we still have the problem. According to the FCC website, they say on the disability rights homepage, that "it is a very high priority for us that people with disabilities (HOH) get the same opportunities...." But that is just talk.

According to the website, Congress established back in 1996, that signal distributors (including satellite) provide increasing amounts of cc service. The schedule they established is shown in the link below and is quite extensive.

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/closedcaption.html

As to complaints, they require first a letter to the distributor (Dish) then the response, then to them - the usual red tape and bureaucratic BS. You know, double talk such as this, "the complaint should be sent before the end of the calendar quarter following the calendar quarter when the problem happened". Crap like that instead of bold charge to the root of the problem when brought to their attention, any time and in any way.

This is just like illegal immigration. Lip service is paid to the enforcement of rules but little is actually done to address the problem.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

shortspark said:


> The FCC does nothing, as impotent as the rest of the government. This problem has been brought to their attention I'm sure many times and for at least as long as Dish has been in business and we still have the problem. According to the FCC website, they say on the disability rights homepage, that "it is a very high priority for us that people with disabilities (HOH) get the same opportunities...." But that is just talk.
> 
> According to the website, Congress established back in 1996, that signal distributors (including satellite) provide increasing amounts of cc service. The schedule they established is shown in the link below and is quite extensive.
> 
> ...


Well I must admit I haven't had luck (yet!) with my own FCC complaint, but I think it is the best shot I've got! BTW, when I filed my complaint, they (the FCC) accepted my forwarded email/responses to dish executive/quality as the equivalent of the letter requirements. It was actually pretty easy to file everything online. And I know for a fact that Dish's legal department is aware of the complaint.


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## Henry (Nov 15, 2007)

No change in my CCs since being upgraded to 6.16. Still a crap shoot ... they work ... they don't... they work ...

At least its consistent.


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## russ9 (Jan 28, 2004)

CNBC HD works


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

Yesterday I watched FOX ch 205 and my wife had left CC on. Boy was it bad. Many, many seconds delay in the captioning. Totally worthless.


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## ZBoomer (Feb 21, 2008)

SOME caption problems are from the source, specifically timing. The source has to send the caption properly, correctly timed or it won't matter what your receiver is doing.

Captions for LIVE events will always run quite a bit behind, since they are being typed in live by a person. Captions on a recorded even SHOULD be timed with the speaker, but they aren't always.

When I see this it's annoying, but then I remember captions are really for hearing-impaired people, and to them the timing is much less important. If the words are three seconds behind what they're saying on screen it doesn't matter.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

ZBoomer said:


> SOME caption problems are from the source, specifically timing. The source has to send the caption properly, correctly timed or it won't matter what your receiver is doing.
> 
> Captions for LIVE events will always run quite a bit behind, since they are being typed in live by a person. Captions on a recorded even SHOULD be timed with the speaker, but they aren't always.
> 
> When I see this it's annoying, but then I remember captions are really for hearing-impaired people, and to them the timing is much less important. If the words are three seconds behind what they're saying on screen it doesn't matter.


Actually it often DOES matter -- you wind up not being able to tell who is saying what. Try watching a talk show some time with delayed CCs! But the delay problem is the least of the problems we are experiencing with CCs missing entirely on HD channels and/or so garbled as to be completely useless.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

Just received L6.16 on ViP722. CC isn't any better.


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## Henry (Nov 15, 2007)

Wireless headsets work real fine.


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## ZBoomer (Feb 21, 2008)

dschneider said:


> Actually it often DOES matter -- you wind up not being able to tell who is saying what. Try watching a talk show some time with delayed CCs! But the delay problem is the least of the problems we are experiencing with CCs missing entirely on HD channels and/or so garbled as to be completely useless.


I agree actually, I hate delayed captions, but to a deaf person a 1-second delay wouldn't matter much, as the captions just need to come close to matching the action on the screen, not be lip-synced with the actors.

I'm having some caption issues on an HBO program from last night (Best of CatHouse); the captions pop up for like .1 second, and disappear. Useless. I have no idea if it's the program or the receiver.

While watching CSI last night, captions were perfect. In time, stayed on screen the proper time.

I don't know enough about the technical side of captions to know if the problems could be entirely in the receiver, or some fault could fall on the program. I would think if the caption signal was weak, it would cause problems, but I'm not sure it can even be weak, like I said I don't know enough about how its imbedded.

The bottom line of my post was I doubt ALL the issues seen are the receivers fault, especially ones dealing with timing.


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

Well, tonight was the worse yet. No CC on any channel, HD or SD or local OTA - nothing! I went to the menu and selected return to default, then to preferences to turn CCs back on, all for naught. What a pile of BS!


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## Chevy1965 (Apr 26, 2008)

Running a 722 L616 dual mode.

I find my locals in Chicago seem to be pretty good. I rarely see them messed up, but I watch OTA when I can. Live shows are of course out of sync, but the primetime shows seem to be perfect. My problems all seem to be on the premium HD channels and it is hit and miss. One thing I have noticed is that if you pause or even hit cancel to view the time remaining, it wrecks the cc for a couple minutes and then it slowly comes back to sync. This definitely implies a priority problem on the 722. This is regardless of whether I am playing back a recording or watching in realtime.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

shortspark said:


> I want to add something before I start messing with this. Has anyone noticed any difference in cc when the Dish receiver is connected to your display in different ways and methods? By that I mean, are captions coming through better over HDMI than a component connection? How about other, older technology connections such as Svideo or analog coax?


One thing to keep in mind (This is how I understand it). CC in HD is generated by the receiver and overlayed on the Content. CC in SD on Coax, Composite and svideo is passed through to the TV itself. This is any the feature of Mute causing CC to display can't work with a HD receiver. Mute signal goes to the TV while CC with HD output is generated by the receiver.

One test would be to compare the CC output of an HD channel both through the SD output (svideo, composite) and the Component and HDMI. MY guess HDMI and component will be the same.

Where i got foggy is where is the stream coming from. Is it the same stream as the SD CC? I Would suspect it is and the issues the receivers are running into is getting the conversion to work in the HD world.

One thing to point out here. Based on my limited CC exposure I have also thought they are struggling with getting it to work at the sending side of the equation combined with possible some defect on the receiving side. By sending side I mean both Dish and the orginators. This would explain why sometimes it works and sometimes it does not on the same channels.

I have definitely found OTA with the DVRs to work much better but that is most likely because that is MPEG2 and not MPEG4.

Well that is my 2 cents. Keeping the comments coming. I will try and post specific channels and information at the top of this thread when I see it.


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## dreslism (Nov 14, 2006)

rexa said:


> I don't think the problems are from the transmission; I think they must be in how the VIP handles the CC data streams. In the earlier post I listed two dish HD channels (Discovery and HBO) that had no CC or broken CC display on the video signal coming out of the Vip box. But if I viewed the CC on the same channels a minute later but via TV2, they were fine.
> 
> Surely the Vip takes the raw CC stream it has received and pumps it out though the TV2 connection. My connected TV then processed the CC and showed the captions fine. Same channel, different software/hardware processing devices. One works, one doesn't. I'd say the Vip software is broken.


NO, TV2 and TV1 are 2 different beasts with CC. I have been fighting with Dish on CC on the vip622 for over 2 years!

As dschneider suggested to you guys, I have also filed a complaint with the FCC over 2 years ago about this issue. I have been in direct contact with dish engineers, and even had hour long phone conversations with the director of engineering on this issue.

Here is the info I got out of Dish.

CC on TV2 will always work fine as it is a direct SD output. i.e. normal old Tv, CC has always been line xx of the video feed, so it is always there and always decoded by your TV, NOT the dish box, so that works and always will work.

Now, the feed going to TV1 is an HD output of the dish box, which bypasses your HD TV's tuner, so the decoding must be done by the dish box.

Here lies the problem. In the HD video feed, the CC is no longer line XX of the video feed, so it took a while for them to get it "right". Also to make matters worse, the standard was different for different HD resolutions.

For 720p it could be on line ww or yy, and some channels chose ww to feed it in , and some channels chose yy to feed it in.

ABC is a 720p feed, not 1080, so they were always the worse, especially 2 years ago when HD really started. Dish has caught up a bit, and it seems better now a days.

I still get the issue today where the CC feed will go away on it's own, ( I have not spent the time to track this one down like I have with all the other issues I reported to them.) When it does go away, it will not come back until you reboot the controller.

Nice thing to have to do when you sit down at 8:30 at night to watch a recorded show from last night, yet you are currently recording a show, so you can't reboot it since it will screw up your recording, and you can't watch the taped show due to hearing impairment, as there is no CC.

Frustrating out the wazoo, yet those who use CC are the minority, so it is low priority at Dish.

Anyhow, I was told that when the CC goes away completely that it was an issue with the firmware in the CC decoder that hicups the decoder and it goes braindead until rebooted. I was also told that the CC decoder is provided by a dish vendor, not dish, and that they were not sure if it could be fixed in a software update, or not.

For me with the vip622, the food network, and TLC are the WORST for CC.

Usually non existent, or if you watch the show for 3 minutes, then it starts, then you can rewind back to the beginning of the show, and the CC is there.

Very frustrating, especially with what we pay per month, and especially since they confirmed with me that "Yes CC works with that receiver" BEFORE i ordered service with them 2 years ago.

--Scott


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## moman19 (Oct 22, 2004)

I find that CC can come or go any time on the local ABC HD channel and it doesn't matter if it's via sat or OTA. Reboots are not necessary. However, the same OTA channel will never lose CC on other ATSC TV's in the house that are decoding the CC info via OTA internally. One would think that this would prove the issue is located somewhere within the DVR itself. 

Interestingly, I have not experienced any CC loss with the local Fox HD channel, which is also 720p.

On occasion, I've noticed that CC is absent altogether on a national HD sat channel, but I assumed that it was simply not being provided. Nor have I ever noticed CC come and go on a national sat channel.


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

Is there anyone here, one single person with a 622 or 722 who gets all the HBO high definition channels with good to perfect captions all or at least most of the time?


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## rexa (Aug 7, 2008)

shortspark said:


> Is there anyone here, one single person with a 622 or 722 who gets all the HBO high definition channels with good to perfect captions all or at least most of the time?


I doubt it. That is, I think there is a major problem so anyone who has the occasion to use CC on (at minimum what I use -- 622) will see it on TV1.

I think the symptoms are a moving target because the Dish bugs effect depends a lot on how the source media provider decided to encode their CC.

I've been trying to quantify how the CC is broken with the dish decoder. It clearly is and for some reason seems to be worse on HD channels.

I don't really want to go search for the specifications of all the ways CC can be formatted and encoded, but, I suspect looking at that may show some hints to the pattern of failures.


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## rexa (Aug 7, 2008)

dreslism said:


> NO, TV2 and TV1 are 2 different beasts with CC. I have been fighting with Dish on CC on the vip622 for over 2 years!
> 
> As dschneider suggested to you guys, I have also filed a complaint with the FCC over 2 years ago about this issue. I have been in direct contact with dish engineers, and even had hour long phone conversations with the director of engineering on this issue.
> 
> ...


Ok, here's my thought. Why should you or me or anyone believe the details of what Dish is telling you? If they really understood what the problem is, it would or SHOULD already be fixed.

Do you have any friends who have DTV or cable? Is the CC functional on their HBO HD? I don't know for sure, but I'd bet yes.

I pointed out the differences between TV1 and TV2 because I think it probably proves the DVR's decoder is broken. The output on TV2 is not just standard SD. As I mentioned before, the TV2 video looks different between SD and HD versions of the same channel. The SD that gets to TV2 for an HD channel is a down-converted letterbox version of the HD channel. I suppose there is some magic they could throw in there, but my suspicion is that the CC stream that gets to the TV2 from an HD channel has to be the same stream that the DVR starts with to make its broken CC display on TV1.

I was just giving specific reasons why the DVR is clearly broken on CC.

Then there are also the multiple anomalies and problems I listed with one OTA channel from the DVR where my TV's tuner on the same channel was fine.

The DVR is broken. You are right. I agree.

I've been trying to add some specific observations about when, why and how it is broken. This should help the engineers if they ever actually take these problems seriously and start trying to fix them.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

Based on what I have seen (and in the absence of information known only to Dish!!) the conclusion I've come to is that in recent months, various Dish HD signals/transmissions have changed due to MPEG conversion, adding/moving stations etc. At this point, the signal/encoded CCs have been altered for various reasons to such an extent that the HD DVR decoding software is no longer effective at successfully decoding CCs in a reliable manner, ie, the DVR software is now broken. And from what I understand, there is no time frame for fixing it, so I guess we get to suffer until they get around to it.

Basically, I had no problems with HD sat/premiums for a very long time. The problems all started in late summer/early fall of 08 when they added the expanded HD movie feeds (ie, not in conjunction with a software change). Upon contacting Dish, they were able to temporarily fix the problem, presumably with signal adjustments. But then in late November, things went south again, and note that at the time that happened, this was also not due to a new software release. It just happened. 

Currently the HD movie feeds are a mess, along with other satellite/cable channels like HGTV, Discovery and more. The thing that finally gelled my opinion on this was that the other day I tried playing back a bunch of older recordings (mostly HD movies HBO HD, etc from months back) from my 722/EHD. ALL OF THE OLD RECORDINGS, WITHOUT FAIL OR UNDUE COAXING DISPLAYED CCs PERFECTLY! Only the new stuff is screwed up. To me, that says new material is being transmitted in a way that is incompatible with the current HD-DVR decoder which still works fine for older formats.

So it appears to me that Dish went ahead with a lot of transmission changes without regard as to whether or not the current CC decoder could still do its job, which it cannot.


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

That sounds like the most plausible explanation of all. Now, what do we do about it?


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## ZBoomer (Feb 21, 2008)

That's what I was thinking; it works great on some channels always, but other channels suck. To me that points to a problem at the source more so than the receiver.


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

shortspark said:


> That sounds like the most plausible explanation of all. Now, what do we do about it?


Complain, loudly, and often! I'm sure engineering has their hands full with many other issues and the only way resources will be assigned to fixing the CC problem is if Dish feels our pain. I updated my FCC complaint last week (feel free to chime in!) and asked them to please take some kind of action as I do not think anything will happen anytime soon otherwise. My feeling is that Dish will string this out indefinitely if they are allowed to. Beyond that, there isn't much else to be done . . . . wonder how things are over at DirectTV with CCs??


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## grog (Jul 3, 2007)

We have always had a problem with our Microwave upstairs.

When the Microwave is going we get pixel city on both our VIP622's.

Keep reading, this gets good! 

So TNT was showing "Without a Trace" and we were watching it in HD on the 32" LCD upstairs.

There is no closed caption on the show. 

Then my wife puts something in the Microwave. The interference caused the show to do it's pixel dance. Now the interference is not extreme. We can still see most of what is going on, just the pixel interruption. 

This time when the event occurred I noticed we were getting closed caption. The words were garbled but some of the words were correct.

Like I said, this was an interesting event.

This should also be a key to what is going on.


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## bhodgins (Nov 29, 2005)

CC since 6.15 and 6.16 has been TRULY awful! No rhyme or pattern to it that I can see. I watch mostly network TV and it's garbled. And for the first time, SD TV2 is messed up as well.


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## ZBoomer (Feb 21, 2008)

I get CC consistently perfect on network TV, horrible on most HBO channels, hit or miss on other stuff. (Vip 722 on 6.16)


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## dschneider (Aug 23, 2007)

Heads up to CC users -- Dish is rolling out L6.17 with fixes for CC problems! I received 6.17 as a targeted download (with a heads up from Dish) on Thursday morning, and it does seem to have fixed all the issues I had with the HBO, etc HD premium movie channels. However, unfortunately now as a side effect, I have problems with CCs Locals CBS and NBC HD. Please see my post on the discussion of L6.17 software bugs at the top of the Vip612/622/722 Support Forum and please post your experiences if you have received the L6.17 download.

After my earlier postings in this thread I reached out again to my contact at the FCC regarding my complaint expressing considerable frustration (shared by others!) about the lack of response by Dish to CC issues. I believe L6.17 may be a direct result of those complaints. So thanks to all who also filed FCC complaints -- I do think it is making a difference. I am in communication with Dish engineering about CC function with L6.17 and they do seem to be actively working to correct the situation.


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

dschneider said:


> Heads up to CC users -- Dish is rolling out L6.17 with fixes for CC problems! I received 6.17 as a targeted download (with a heads up from Dish) on Thursday morning, and it does seem to have fixed all the issues I had with the HBO, etc HD premium movie channels. However, unfortunately now as a side effect, I have problems with CCs Locals CBS and NBC HD. Please see my post on the discussion of L6.17 software bugs at the top of the Vip612/622/722 Support Forum and please post your experiences if you have received the L6.17 download.
> 
> After my earlier postings in this thread I reached out again to my contact at the FCC regarding my complaint expressing considerable frustration (shared by others!) about the lack of response by Dish to CC issues. I believe L6.17 may be a direct result of those complaints. So thanks to all who also filed FCC complaints -- I do think it is making a difference. I am in communication with Dish engineering about CC function with L6.17 and they do seem to be actively working to correct the situation.


Thanks to you dschneider for your efforts. I'm sure without your involvement we would never have gotten a fix. I hate to hear that now the locals are screwed up but that might be on a market to market basis. As soon as I get the new firmware upgrade I'll post my findings.


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## olguy (Jan 9, 2006)

Ron Barry posted in another thread requesting information be posted in this one also so here's what's going on for me.

622 with 6.17 - 6.17 fixed the CC on the HBO, et al HD channels but brought it's own set of problems. Here's what I have in Houston:

Watching satellite:

Channel 2 KPRC NBC affiliate - on the HD channel no CC on recorded or live, network feed or local programming. CC works fine on the SD channel.

Channel 11 KHOU CBS affiliate - same problems as KPRC

Channel 8 KUHT PBS - SD only via satellite and no problems

Channel 13 KTRK ABC affiliate - no problems on HD or SD

Channel 26 KPRV Fox Broadcasting - No problems on HD or SD

And recording date makes no difference. Before or after 6.17 doesn't matter.
Watching OTA via the 622:

No problems on any of the HD channels including the PBS which is HD OTA.

And I've not seen problems on the few other channels I've watched such as USA and SciFi

And in a reply to an email I sent this weekend I was told the problem will be forwarded to the Locals Engineering Department. I'll keep you updated on that.


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## belador (Nov 9, 2002)

dreslism said:


> For me with the vip622, the food network, and TLC are the WORST for CC.


Aye Scott, I have the 722 and it's the same thing. Seems that I have to let it play a bit before it gets synced up. :icon_cry:

Also, I seeing CC problems on a bunch of channels!!!

belador


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