[mythtv-users] Closed Captioning with HDHomerun and PVR-500 (Philips chipset)

Daniel Kristjansson danielk at cuymedia.net
Sat Apr 7 02:22:45 UTC 2007


On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 14:21 -0700, JS Boyd wrote:
> Captions are an issue on my current setup SVN 3181.
> 
> ATSC via HDHomerun captions work, but do not have black backgrounds on 
> most channels and tend to overwrite on top of each other basically 
> making them pretty useless. However, there is an exception. ABC 
> primetime programs like "Lost" seem to work properly: logically placed 
> black backgrounded captions.

With EIA-708 the broadcaster specifies whether the captions
will have a background as well as the color of the text,
it's background and the size and angle of the text shadow
and/or outlining as well as the font, location and animations.
At this time there is no way to override what the broadcaster
specifies in MythTV, but this is in my long term plan for
EIA-708 caption support.

Most of the captions you are seeing are EIA-608 captions
that have been poorly converted into EIA-708 captions.
Some programs made for HD, such as "Arrested Development" and
other top shelf programming have true EIA-708 captions,
probably because the producers expect a long syndication run.
"Lost" may well contain well produced EIA-708 captions,
or they may simply have no EIA-708 captions since "Lost"
will never be rebroadcast so they want to spare the expense
of future proofing the program and MythTV is falling back
to the EIA-608 captions they do broadcast.

-- Daniel



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