[mythtv-users] 0.19 Closed Captions and PVR-250

[Brian Wood]

On Feb 20, 2006, at 12:39 PM, Gregorio Gervasio, Jr. wrote:

>>>>>> Dylan Keon writes:
>
> d> When watching the Olympics with CC1 on I noticed quite a pause  
> between
> d> what the announcers were saying and the text that was displayed  
> on the
> d> screen.  If you're watching with the sound off it would be ok,  
> but if
> d> you're using CC1 as a "backup" to help you follow the show (my wife
> d> likes to do this), it's less usable.
>
>
>         Unless the captioner can watch the show well before broadcast
> (preferably with a script), the captions have to be done in real time
> and are always delayed.  Have you watched the Olympics on regular TV
> (no MythTV) to compare the caption delay?  How is the delay for  
> captions
> in commercials?
>
>         (One nice enhancement to MythTV I have considered for a
> long time but haven't been able to try is to compensate for the delay
> in real-time captions by reading them a few seconds ahead of video.)

You're quite correct about the captions, they are usually done by the  
same technique as "court stenographers" and are thus somewhat delayed.

I got a catalog the other day selling, among other things, a box  
which purported to "censor" your TV audio by monitoring the captions  
and muting the audio for certain "key" words.

I concluded it would be ineffective due to the delayed nature of live  
captions. I also concluded that some people will apparently buy  
anything :-)