# CC on Nomad & iPad app



## argonpaul (Jan 25, 2008)

Does transcoded Nomad content or the iPad live streaming support Close Captioning?

If not, I hope the ADA people don't hear about it.


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## markrogo (Sep 18, 2007)

I believe at this point there is no closed captioning. There will be complaints (have been some here already). It turns out that transcoding content with closed captioning info in it is a bit of a pain in the rear. They're going to have to do some work to make this work (it's been a surprising pain on things like BluRays that get ripped, let alone transcoded). Perhaps a future rev of the software.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

There is no captioning and no legal requirement for it. In the future they may add the option to caption a program when it's being transcoded, but at that point you would have the captions 100% of the time.


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## KenW (Nov 16, 2005)

Stuart Sweet said:


> There is no captioning and no legal requirement for it. In the future they may add the option to caption a program when it's being transcoded, but at that point you would have the captions 100% of the time.


All or none is OK with me. Most times I just leave them on full-time anyway. If the receiver just puts them into the stream sent to nomad, it doesn't seem that complex. That's pretty much what happens when you record to a DVD from DirecTV. Captions are just part of the picture. Is there some issue here I'm missing?

If you want to be able to control them from the client, I can understand it gets harder. Still DirecTV controls the platform. If changes are needed on one side or the other, they can make it happen.

Legal requirement aside, it's about customer demand and priorities. I would hope V2 of the client is already in testing.


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## markrogo (Sep 18, 2007)

Stuart Sweet said:


> There is no captioning and no legal requirement for it. In the future they may add the option to caption a program when it's being transcoded, but at that point you would have the captions 100% of the time.


Programs like Handbrake can take caption data and "remux" it into the datastream so it can be turned on or off as needed.

Your answer implies you know this will never be available on Nomad recordings. That suggests that Nomad hardware is somehow good enough to read and reformat the caption data, but incapable of re-storing it as accessible data for the client to retrieve and display as standard captions. I find this weird.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Weird though it may be, I believe it to be the truth.


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## markrogo (Sep 18, 2007)

Stuart Sweet said:


> Weird though it may be, I believe it to be the truth.


Seems lazy of them then Stuart. They are basically willing to solve a huge chunk of the problem, but not make it pretty, which relatively speaking is not terribly hard. With all the negative publicity Netflix got over bad support for captioning, I'm surprised DirecTV is going this path. That said, the demographics of Nomad users are probably poorly correlated with the hard of hearing (on average, exceptions apply) and when they fix the low client volume problem, most people won't care much. Still seems odd.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

I didn't say they were willing. I said it was possible.


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## markrogo (Sep 18, 2007)

Stuart Sweet said:


> I didn't say they were willing. I said it was possible.


Your cryptic messages have now left me incapable of parsing what you're saying (and not saying).


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## leesweet (Jul 15, 2003)

Posted in the app thread before seeing this one.... I think Nomad has concrete issues to adding CC. But I've never understood why/how live streams had a problem including it. And since it is technically Internet TV, it may need a court case to decide where this falls. One more VOD channel or what....

And yes, Netflix got whipped for it where the same movies are available in Apple TV/iTunes with CC. I dropped Netflix and spend that $20 and more (sometimes a lot more) with Apple.


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## KenW (Nov 16, 2005)

I'd not heard about the FCC drive for captions on Internet TV.

http://www.coataccess.org/node/10058


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## leesweet (Jul 15, 2003)

I was thinking of 'TV on the web' which is law now (CC being phased in) but I guess the FCC is now thinking ahead for once!


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