# Closed Caption Location



## cg1200 (Aug 30, 2007)

I have an HR20-100 running software 0x312 and I was wondering if there is some way to reposition the closed captioning box to the bottom of the screen. For some reason whenever I use the captions they appear toward the top/middle part of the screen and blocking a lot of the faces. I've never seen any captioning do this. Usually the captions are on the bottom of the screen so they don't interfere with the actual picture. My wife is a little hard of hearing so we watch everything with the captions. Is it possible to move them? I've looked in the menus and found nothing.


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## kenmoo (Oct 3, 2006)

I don't have an answer for you but have patience and one of the CC experts may be able to help you. I have 3 different HR2x's and they all seem to position the captions in the lower left corner except at the beginning credits of a program. There were a lot of CC issues in the beginning and Capmeister & Milomindbender2 were very knowledgeable on the issue and got a lot of CC changes enacted. I haven't seen either post in awhile but hopefully they're still part of the Forum and will see your question.


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

I just switched between several different shows (News, L&O, War of the Worlds) and closed captioning is on the bottom for all of them.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

You will get a new firmware update soon, and it will have another option that will always position any cc on the bottom of the screen, and look a little different too... I suggest trying it...


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

cg1200 said:


> I have an HR20-100 running software 0x312 and I was wondering if there is some way to reposition the closed captioning box to the bottom of the screen. For some reason whenever I use the captions they appear toward the top/middle part of the screen and blocking a lot of the faces. I've never seen any captioning do this. Usually the captions are on the bottom of the screen so they don't interfere with the actual picture. My wife is a little hard of hearing so we watch everything with the captions. Is it possible to move them? I've looked in the menus and found nothing.


Normally... DIRECTV has been pretty good (for the last year or so) honoring the correct placement of the Captions as dictated by the caption encoding (the closed caption authors have quite a bit of control over the placement.) Our very own Capmeister spent a lot of time educating people about proper CC placement and easy ways to test. So my inclination is DIRECTV likely has it right or your unit needs a reboot (which is still surprising, but anything is possible.)

Another way to test is to use an composite or S-Video signal to your TV and let it show the CC. If they are in the same location as DIRECTVs, then it is the fault of the CC authors. (Sometimes on live or news events, they run out of places to put the CC without interfering with other graphics onscreen.)

Cheers,
Tom


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## cg1200 (Aug 30, 2007)

My non-DVR receivers position the captions on the bottom so it would seem it isn't D* itself but rather the DVR. I can try a reboot easy enough. When can I expect the new firmware? I live on the east coast in CT. Thanks for the replies. Appreciate the help.


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## joed32 (Jul 27, 2006)

Sometimes I wish I could move it away from the bottom because it's blocking the score, etc.


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## cg1200 (Aug 30, 2007)

A reboot of my receiver seems to have fixed the issue. The captions are now on the bottom again. So odd how it got to the top/middle.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

I've noticed that when the opening credits are being shown at the bottom of the screen, cc is displayed at the top.


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## scrybigtv (Jan 25, 2008)

I have only one HD DVR receiver (HR21-100), which replaced a dead HR21-700, but both of those receivers would show the cpationing in alternating positions. Sometimes the captioning would be at the upper left portion of the screen and sometimes at the bottom right. I never tried a re-set to see if it would affect the positioning. Also, I've never paid any attention to where the captioning appears on my SD receivers.

Depending on the programming you're watching, the captions can be in the way of what you're trying to see whether they're at the top or at the bottom.


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

cg1200 said:


> A reboot of my receiver seems to have fixed the issue. The captions are now on the bottom again. So odd how it got to the top/middle.


That's good (I love a happy ending).

Captioning often includes an x-y designation for where the line appears on the screen, as well as a time stamp for when it is to appear. It seems to me that maybe your DVR lost the service that interprets the x-y designation and defaulted to the middle of the screen.

There are a couple things about CC that still bug me. One is that often the captioners misplace where the time stamp should be, and a line will appear for a split second to be replaced by another line. Another is when the captioner can't figure out what the person is saying and guesses (or simply stops captioning for a bit), which is usually when I need them to be accurate (when the audio is hard to make out).

708-flavor (digital) captioning is still a pretty new technology, and there are still a lot of bugs. Decoders in some sets have unique issues that most others don't, and some HD encoders have problems that only show up on certain sets, all of which explains why it isn't yet perfect. I also suspect that there is not a lot of redundancy in the 708 signal, so while there may be enough redundancy to mask or replace missing bits in the video or audio, a marginal reception problem seems to affect captioning even more.

I still see issues with lines overlapping on certain channels, too.


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

Tom Robertson said:


> Normally... DIRECTV has been pretty good (for the last year or so) honoring the correct placement of the Captions as dictated by the caption encoding (the closed caption authors have quite a bit of control over the placement.) Our very own Capmeister spent a lot of time educating people about proper CC placement and easy ways to test...


This seems to indicate that DTV has a active say in where captioning is located. Is that how this works? I would have suspected that DTV passes captioning through unchanged. I understand the issues regarding MPEG and captions, in that it is difficult to encode and crossencode captioning, two things that DTV has to do to most signals, but do DTV engineers also have to worry about placement issues?


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## HDTVFreak07 (Sep 12, 2007)

DirecTV has NOTHING to do with closed captioning because all receivers only provides the decoder. It is up to the programmers (or TV shows) on the rest. I do noticed that the closed captioning remains on top for far too long, especially on the TV show called "Mentalist".

My only beef is the ABC station (or stations). Their closed captioning on the digital channel is delayed badly. I have been notifying my local ABC station about this problem and they never did anything about it. I thought that once analog gets cut off (June 12th), they will start fixing the problem but nothing's been done.


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

BubblePuppy said:


> I've noticed that when the opening credits are being shown at the bottom of the screen, cc is displayed at the top.





HDTVFreak07 said:


> I do noticed that the closed captioning remains on top for far too long, especially on the TV show called "Mentalist".


Closed captioners are usually working from a version of the show that isn't completely "finished" -- it'll have all the video editing finished, but the audio may not be completed, and the on-screen graphics won't be there yet.

Therefore, the captioners are dependent on someone from the editing facility calling them to tell them "the opening credits will be finished at time code 1:05:29" (or whatever) to let them know at what point the captions should switch from top placement to bottom placement.

Back when I worked as a captioner, just in case we never got that call, we would temporarily put the captions at the top for the first 4 minutes after the opening credits on one-hour shows (2 minutes on half-hour shows). That's my guess on what the issue would be with "The Mentalist."


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## JJJBBB (May 26, 2007)

Closed captioning on HD sports channels which have the RED button feature (scoreguide) no longer work or the captions come in sporadicly. Example, ESPN HD closed captions for the hearing impaired are difficult or impossible to activate with the yellow button, but then if somehow activated, captions come to screen sporadicly. No idea whatsoever if this is happening on SD channels too, but they work perfectly on other HD channels. I have found no setting to disable scoreguide feature to fix this problem, so it remains a problem for me and probably others who rely on the closed caption system.


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## DogLover (Mar 19, 2007)

JJJBBB said:


> Closed captioning on HD sports channels which have the RED button feature (scoreguide) no longer work or the captions come in sporadicly. Example, ESPN HD closed captions for the hearing impaired are difficult or impossible to activate with the yellow button, but then if somehow activated, captions come to screen sporadicly. No idea whatsoever if this is happening on SD channels too, but they work perfectly on other HD channels. I have found no setting to disable scoreguide feature to fix this problem, so it remains a problem for me and probably others who rely on the closed caption system.


I'm thinking that the exit button cancels all of the interactive content, like scoreguide. Try that and see if it helps.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

Don't forget captioning on live sporting events is done real time by someone typing away so its usually much less accurate and farther behind as well.


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