Comments on: Samsung DVD-HD860 won’t display closed captioning

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:39:43 +0000

There are a couple of Panasonic DVD recorders that merge closed captions with the picture before sending over HDMI. I just purchased a panasonic DMREZ28 from best buy and after hooking up hdmi and activateding analog and digital CC in the dvd players setup was able to view Stargate Season 1 disc 1 with CC via HDMI, even though I had turned off my tvs closed caption decoder as a test, to confirm that the dvd recorder had the caption decoder built in. It worked perfectly and now I can view my old dvds with CCs and upconverted up to 1080p. It is pricier than a standalone dvd player. The recorder costs around $230 but is worth every penny. There is an older model that does the same thing, the DMREZ27. Please know that none of the panasonic dvd “players” have this feature, only the recorders.

By: Keith

Keith — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:08:02 +0000

Nice Post! Thanks For The Info..

By: Norm

Norm — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:03:52 +0000

I did much the same as Mara. I use HDMI when it has subtitles, and use a composite connection when I want CC. The picture is degraded, but at least I can understand what’s going on.

By: Lean Wind

Lean Wind — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:36:48 +0000

The component/composite solution is just a workaround. I did not pay a few grand for my HD system to watch videos in 480i. The problem has been discussed at length over at avsforum.com and it seems there is no solution at this point to this issue. Here is a link http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=699933 or you can just google “hdmi closed captions” and go for the first hit.

By: Mara

Mara — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:56:27 +0000

My mom got a Sony HD TV and a Sony DVPNS77H upconvert DVD player hooked up by an HDMI cable. The quality is great, but when she played DVDs recorded from regular TV, no closed caption appeared. We hooked up her old DVD player via component cables and the CC appeared, so we know it’s not the TV.

I contacted Sony and their reply was:
At this time, televisions do not have the ability to decode closed captioned signals from an HDMI connection.

So I ended up connecting the new DVD player to the TV twice…one connection with the HDMI and one with component. For DVDs that only have CC, we switch the input to the component connection, and it works fine this way.

By: Scott Vela

Scott Vela — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:51:14 +0000

Hey Grayson Peddie,

I just got my HDTV samsung with 1080p 46″ LCD HDTV and I ordered HD digital cable box (Motorola). I was upset when my HDTV doesnt display captions until I find this page and saw your comment and I went into Motorola and saw the Captions display in menu… turned it on… still no captions…. hmmm. Maybe the digital box is broken. Cable man will come saturday to check it out. Glad I read this forum because I was about to bash it on Samsung. I did spoke to samsung and they explained me that RF coxal and A/V inputs has captions decoder but HDMI, Componet, and PC modes doesn’t have captions decoder. So that explains. Future techs gonna be major problems for us deafies. (I was told that Bill Gates hired 250 people to work on talking computer without using keyboard.) Sound bad for deafies ha. Unless they thought of another way for deaf people too?

Now I am able to play PS3 on my 46″ hdtv and it was coolest! My Blu Ray will have to use subtitles since HDMI donest allow captions on my HDTV. Boo Hoo Wah!

By: roger novak

roger novak — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:46:57 +0000

FYI: My Samsung 50″ DPT will not display CC over the HDMI inputs, CC is displayed at STD resolution tho. However my Sanyo CRT HDTV WILL display CC from OTA ATSC signals.

By: Grayson Peddie

Grayson Peddie — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 02:10:25 +0000

Because your TV doesn’t display closed-captions, you will have to set this up with a DVD player. Same with HD digital cable box. With Motorola, I had to go into Menu (with power turned off), enable closed caption, turn it back on, and I’m done!

By: Neo

Neo — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:00:21 +0000

What kind of HDMI cable you have? I think HDMI with low price as low quality is no good. Just try buy from best buy for test if not work then you can get money back.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=6826036&st=HDMI+cable&lp=7&type=product&cp=2&id=1091101681522

BTW MCE 2005 and HTPC are waste of money.

By: What Is A Name?

What Is A Name? — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:07:55 +0000

The problem here is that DVD’s use the EIA608 method of closed captioning which depends entirely on the TV displaying the closed captions with its built in closed caption decoder circuitry.

AFAIK, EIA608 only works for NTSC video streams which includes composite, s-video, and sometimes component (480i only). When you’re talking about an upsampling DVD player that displays over the DVI/HDMI or high resolution component (720p/1080i), then it is not reasonable to expect the TV’s closed captioning decoder to work because it’s not supposed to! This is why closed captioning is not being displayed on DVD’s on upsampling DVD players (to my knowledge) at high resolutions. Only subtitles work, and subtitles on DVDs are an entirely different beast - they’re actually subpictures and it is the responsibility of the DVD player to display the subpicture/subtitles, NOT the TV.

Hope this sheds more light on your CC dilemma. It is also why I strongly recommend the HTPC route for displaying upsampled DVD’s with CC because the software DOES take the extra step of getting the captions to be displayed because it is the PC doing the rendering of the closed caption text, NOT the TV.